# Using ReplayTV Mpegs



## Rich A

Hi all,


I thought I'd start a new thread here for those of us who are using "extracted" ReplayTV mpegs outside of the ReplayTV environment.


For some time now, I had been using the Extract_RTV program with my 3000 series Replay. (removing the drive to stick into a Win2K system for extraction) About 95 percent of the time I was able to make quite nice "mini-dvds". Mostly used the ReplayTV low quality mpeg, which happen to be frame compatible with the DVD specs for 1/2 D1. Only had to re-encode the audio from 32 kHz to 48 to make it fully compatible. Very seldom did I have any problems and when I did, it was usually at a "cut" portion of the Mpeg where I removed a commercial. I attributed that to possibly a bad job done by my Mgeg editor, and it only happened maybe 1 out 10 times.


Now fast forward to today with our new ReplayTV 4000 series. I have a 4080. I'd like to hear comments from anyone who is using those mpegs (from the 4000 series) and how they are working. I've been having a lot of trouble with my "extracted" mpegs from the new 4080. I'm using the ReplayPC.exe program to do this. When I first tried this (with one of the very early versions of the software) everything worked just fine. I could play the Mpegs in my Windows environment and even made a few test Mini-DVD discs. Once (after editing) I just burned the mpeg in it's raw state across three discs only wanting to store it for later use. On a whim I stuck the disc into my Sampo DVD player and the thing came up with a directory of the disc (which had the "saved name" of the mpeg on it in a menu like thing. Clicking on the mpeg listed, started the player and to my amazement it played the whole disc perfectly. So I was pretty happy having found a way to simply "store" my movies temporarily until a later time when I had more time to author a "proper" Mini-DVD.


Over the last couple days .. however .. I'm now finding that my replaytv Mpegs are really pretty messed up. I'm getting large "marcro-blocks" when viewing in various editors, and problems with playback in the PC environment. Haven't tried authoring any as I can't get the mpeg cleaned up enough for my DVD authoring software to accept it.


FWIW, I have had some kind of major problem with my computer recently and there's a good possibility that or some change caused by that may be the problem.


Meanwhile, I like to hear comments from anyone else, as to whether or not you are having trouble or what-ever.


Thanks ...


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## nator

as per the info in other threads, the replay is storing information in DVD format (720x480) and does not need to be "fixed up"... however, even without the fix up bit i have been running into problems. A large chunk of my problems is that I am a moron, the next largest chunk is that i have read a whole bunch of info off of www.vcdhelp.com and it is all just a blur in my mind. I dl-ed all the apps, and I am never sure what i did last time, so I am having a hard time making progress on anything. Also, without a clear cut idea of what i am trying to accomplish, I probably won't get good results.


but, from what i remember, this seems to be my problem.


working with a MPEG file which has not been fixed up. when i run it throught TMPG, it only sees about half of it... now it might be stopping at the first commercial break, but i don't know.


when i try to de-multiplex and re-multiplex, the resulting file won't work.


I know that the mpg file is a DVD format, but how close is it to "True" dvd.


next questions, is the Medium a SVCD format? and if so can i just cut and burn it?


any info is good, and thanks to those who have made this possible.


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## Ed Rempalski

This will be a very helpfull thread, it'd be nice to keep the MPEG manipulation focused. I've had zero time to do much. I did pull a file from my 4040 with Replayer.jar and could not import it into Adobe Premiere (but I too am a moron and haven't worked with Primiere enough to get a good template set up, it may work). I was able to view the clip in Media Player on XPpro. I was able to import it into DVDit PE and create a DVD image. It was easy, however DVDit transcoded it to create the image and even with a 2Ghz P4 it takes about 6 hours to do the job. I did read that someone burned SVCD's easily and hopefully more directly. For TV archiving I'd probably settle for less quality.


If people would post the steps they used (what programs)


The time it took per step


The hardware (if speed is influenced by CPU)


Again, for TV I'd like to grab a file, snip out the fluff, and burn it in as short a time as possible...


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## CProgrammer

This is slightly off the subject, but since you guys are familiar with extracting MPEG files, I was wondering if you have ever experienced the following problem. On two different Replay 3060's, I have had consistent problems with the duration of the video stream being truncated when playing the extracted files using the Womble MPEG2VCR editor. The problem mostly occurs when I have recorded shows in high-quality mode. The Womble editor will report, for example, that the duration of a show is 25 minutes, when in reality, the running time is 60 minutes when the show is played from ReplayTV (I have also verified that a number of other editing products--such as Adobe Premiere-- believe the clip is 25 minutes long). I have read numerous explanations on this bulletin board about ReplayTV momentarily pausing its recording because of a fluctuation in the tv signal strength, yet in many cases, the video I am seeing appears reasonably normal when viewed directly from ReplayTV. The extract_rtv MPEG's with abnormal durations are almost unusable because 1) I cannot access certain parts of the video since the editor is convinced that the stream is shorter than it is, and 2) the audio is way out of sync with the video. Any comments or suggestions (I've tried Zones-777, cooling the unit with a fan, etc.) would be appreciated.


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## Rich A

What is the date of your Womble Mpeg editor? On the title bar at the top you should see it. If it's not November 2001, then you need to update.


Also, I've not been able to get Womble's MPEG2VCR editor to properly edit ReplayTV mpegs in the Windows XP environment. Win 2K, or ME are fine.


I believe there might be some issues with the 2/4 GB limitations using a FAT 32 file system. None of my extracts have been that large as I use mainly the low and medium. But I believe you probably want to be using NTFS for the least amount of trouble.


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## mlinehan

yep, even though I started this whole ReplayPC thing, my 4080 is my first PVR, so I'm a total newbie when it comes to editing and manipuling mpeg streams.


Those of you in the know, please enlighten us!


What are the sugested ways of archiving large mpegs for thoes of us without a DVD burner.


DivX is probably a good option if your targeting playpack on the PC, but what is the best destination format for real DVD players?


Who thinks that DVD-R will begin to showup in power machines for Christmas 2002? I do!


mlinehan out


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## q3ded

Quote:

_Originally posted by mlinehan_

Who thinks that DVD-R will begin to showup in power machines for Christmas 2002? I do!
Well, they are already in iMacs, so in the PC world in force in 12 months.... sure!


hehe 

-q3ded


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## NoFreakinWay

OK, so I downloaded my MPEGS, medium quality (replaypc .3) now

what? I tried DVDIT PE that came with my DVD Burner (pioneer A03) but it says there is no decoder for the file. ROXIO Video Pack is a very cool program, for VCD and SVD it turns out, even though they have a DVD option. I'm new at the Video Disk burning game, but everything I've seen so far is a pain.

What would be your sequence of events if you were going to burn a DVD either with menus or that starts automatically when inserted. Can anyone enlighten me...


Thanks


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## mkruss

FYI,

I have had success with the following:

1) Download from the 4k using REPLAYPC (with the fix-up option).

2) Edit commercials out using Womble 3.0 and then record with the PS option. (Takes about 8 mins. for 1/2 hour show on a P3-933.)

3) Master to DVD (Pioneer A03) using Ulead DVD Movie Factory.

4) Play on my stand alone DVD player.


-- Mike --


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## Ed Rempalski

mkruss, Great info! Could you detail a little more?


What quality level was the Replay clip?


Womble 3.0, just download it and import away? What is the "PS" option? Then Womble took 8 minutes to process an output file or burn? Is Womble 3 around $300?


That output file was then loaded into Ulead DVD Movie Studio for mastering (like adding menu buttons etc) or burning?


I've got an A03 and Ulead Movie Studio 5 with DVD plugin but it wouldn't let me import my medium quality Replayer.jar extracted clip. Would you be up to trying the Replayer Java app for extract just to see if it works the same?


So a 30 minute clip from Replay to DVD is _______ Minutes


This is so close to my best hopes for extracting!


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## Rich A

Nice to see some interest. First, I have to say we are not far behind the Macs. Pioneer's DVD recorder for the PC market can be found for under 500 $ now. HP has one in that price range as do a couple other manufacturers.


But the media. (IMO) opinion is the deal killer. Even if you buy in bulk it's going to cost about 8 bucks a disc. I'm sure they will fall in price as the sales increase. I've been burning all kinds of "digital" media for some time now. VCD, SVCD, DVD content on CDR discs and even some tape.


Way back I started doing VCD. Did every episode of the original Star Trek, with menus, and interviews with actors, writers and directors. Was able to fit it all on one 650 MB CDR. The quality was good enough to be able to sit back and enjoy the shows on my TV.


Then came SVCD and now I'm playing with "mini-dvds" More on that later.


On to the nitty - gritty. The 2000 and 3000 ReplayTV Mpeg had three frame sizes of Mpeg-2 variable video bit rate and all had 32 kHz of audio. The three frames were (low) 352x480 (1/2 D1) at 1.8 M/bs nominal video bit rate. (Medium) 720x480 at 4 Mb/s and High which was 720x480 at 8 Mb/s


The new 4000 series have the same frame sizes and bit rates, BUT they now have 48 kHz audio which is what you need if you want to author DVD of any type.


I've found the lowest quality to be a good trade off when balancing quality vs size if you are limited to CDR discs. After editing out commercials, you'll end up with 43 minutes mpeg. The RPTV at it's low setting will end up around 600 Mb total. And the quality when viewed on a TV (played back via a stand alone DVD player) is surprizingly good. At least as good as a decent SVCD.


I have several hundred archived shows, mostly Sci-Fi series and some movies. I've been at this for a while. For me this whole process has to be quick, inexpensive and of a quality that I can enjoy on a 32 in TV. I've got the full deal down to under 20 minutes per episode. That's from the minute I sit down at the computer to when I get up, with a "mini-dvd", burned and labeled, and ready to stick in the DVD player.


A word of warning .. Not many stand alone DVD players will play DVD Title Sets burned to CDR media. But the list of ones that can is growing daily. I have a Sampo 620 that does a decent job playing back any kind of mpeg burned to CDR. I've tested it with 8 Mb/s DVD D1 frames. No problem. Except that at those parameters I have to stick a new disc in every 12 minutes. That's why I'm doing the low quality. One episode per disc.


So ... here's what I do. For the old 2/3000 series, I have it's hard drive mounted in a removable drive rack that matches a similer setup in my computer. I pull the mpegs off using the Extract_RTV program. I've never needed to do anything other than re-encode the Audio. I do have the latest Womble editor (version 3.11 ... the November 2001 version). That one will re-encode the audio to 48 khz while it's assemblying the editied mpeg without have to de-multiplex the two into elementary streams so you can re-encode the audio. It's all one step now. Pulling the mpeg off the drive takes a couple minutes. Editing and saving with Womble takes about 10 to 12 minutes. I use SpruceUp DVD authoring with custom templates all set for each series I'm doing. So it only takes a few minutes to have it compile the mpeg and save to a title set. Then Nero burns the Title Set to a CDR in about 5 minutes. Having the Womble editor re-encode the audio adds a few minutes to the time. I'm working with some pretty quick equipment. 2 gHz computer, 4 disc RAID array, 16 and 20 x CDR burners. I use Nero as it has the ability to burn to multiple CDR burners at the same time. I usually burn all these in multiple sets for a couple friends who can't get the cable TV coverage I have.


Now with the 4000 series, it's even easier. No need to putz with the audio. The 4K units are already 48 kHz. There's also no need for any patching or fixing of the mpeg out of the ReplayTV. Not with the 4K units. I've burned the raw mpeg straight to the CDR without editng and it worked just fine. There's a couple things I've found however. One drove me crazy the last couple days, which is what prompted me to start this thread. Every mpeg I pulled off the 4K unit was being rejected at one point or another from my authoring software. I have since found out two interesting things. First my video card was actually causing a problem. I was getting macro-blocks showing up at random and some artifacts. I also was having trouble with my computer often not recognising the AGP video card and trying to install "new hardware" in the form of a standard PCI video card. That prompted me to swap out the video card. Guess what ? The raw ReplayTV mpge was once again perfect.


That brought up problem number two. The mpeg as checked out of the replay was fine. But I do a lot of testing and other work with my computer so I often use different operating systems from time to time. To make a long story short, I found that Windows XP was creating several problems with my ReplayTV mpeg. All my system and data discs in the NLE machine are NTFS. Normally I use Windows 2000 for video editing. I became suspicious when I switched to XP and started having trouble again with my SpruceUp not accepting the mpeg. I found two problems .. one was that the mpeg was getting glitched during the download. I noticed while watching the KB counter going as it downloaded, that every once in a while the counter would stop. In Win2K it was just a steady flow, from start to finish. Something was interupting the flow. It was not the replay. Oh by the way, you don't want to be extracting a high quality Replay Mpeg if the Replay is in the middle of (or about to) do a recording. That also caused me problems.


So I've gone back to Windows 2K for all the work .. downloading and editing. And never had a problem again. Last tip .. Womble doesn't work well in XP. Put a perfectly good Replay Mpeg in, do some edits, and the final file is quite a mess. Of course all this could be "system specific" to my weird computer setup. But if you are having trouble, and are using software or equipment like mine .. this may help.


Because of the time savings I'm seeing with the new ReplayTV 4000 series, I've started archiving some of my more favorite shows in medium quality. Using 830 Mb discs (with Nero's and my burner's over-burning capabilites) I can generally fit the 43 minutes onto two discs. And the playback is pretty impressive.


So now my quest is to find a "multiple disc" player that CAN decode DVD title sets burned to CDR. That'll keep me happy until the DVD-R media comes down to a couple bucks a disc.


FWIW I've found what works best for me is SpruceUp DVD authoring. Very fast .. decent features, but unfortunately was bought out by Apple and is no longer being sold in the PC market. If you look around you might find it somewhere yet. Womble is my editor of choice for all my mpeg work. And their web site is incorrect. The August date release they note on their web site is most likely for the Mpeg-1 only editor and not the Mpeg2vcr. The big editor has an updated version dated November 2001. (look in the top title bar in the GUI and you'll see the date) There's been some enhancements and bug fixes between August and November. One was that they fixed a "post edit sync problem" they were having with the ATI capture card generated Mpeg-2. The other was to enable the "saving" of the edited mpeg where you could change the audio and not have to re-encode or touch the video OR de-multicplex the streams to do the audio edit separate.


Oh .. one last bit of information. If you are going to go the "mini-dvd" route and split up the movie into two parts .. have fun. You'll find it's not easy to make the "split" where it won't destroy the "flow" of the show. It just seems that the darn commercial breaks (an obvious good spot to cut) are never at JUST the right place. So you end up with something like 480 MB on one side and 780 on the other. If you try to move the spit to the next commercial break so as to balance the amount on each CD .. you sometimes can't. It's feast or famine for one of the discs. Of course it gets a lot worse if you are only working with 650 meg discs. There's not enough "extra" space to move that break point around. If you have a good burner and good burning software that'll over burn .. then the 700 and 800 and even 830 Mb discs make things a little easier. But make sure you test them first on your DVD player. Not only can many burners NOT over-burn, but many players also can't handle the over-burn during playback. I have a couple decent Plextor SCSI CDRW's and they are one of the best, BUT not that great for serious over-burning. I picked up an "LG" 16x10x IDE with burn proof technology (I did a lot of research and this one was highly touted for it's over-burning abilty) It has no trouble hitting 800 Mb (on 830 mb discs). By the way .. you can get those 830 Mb 99 minute discs at "CompuUSA". Unfortunately they come in 10 packs with jewel cases, for around 15 bucks or even less on sale. I have no need for the cases and would rather buy in bulk a save a few pennies. So far I've gone as far as 800 mb without a problem. Haven't had the need to go further yet.


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## aaron.s

Rich -


It's Aaron - been quiet for a while, but been having a lot of fun making DVDs!


The Pioneer A03 can now be had for UNDER $400 and discs are now down to the $2.95 mark -- so no better time to make the switch! DOUBLE-SIDED DVD-R media is only $5.95 I've read reports that people are pretty happy with the company:

http://www.cd-recordable.com/ 


Check Pricewatch for the latest prices on the DVR-A03 - my check yielded $379!!


I have added to my arsenal of DVD equipment. I now also have an HP DVD+RW drive and also the stand-alone Philips DVDR1000 DVD Recorder in my home theater for "casual" dvd recording - I'm quite happy!


I've graduated to higher-end DVD authoring and am now using Pinnacle Impression DVD Pro to make really nice advanced menus. I've made a number of vacation dvd's as well as ReplayTV and other DVDs.


Aaron


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## joubert

Anyone know of a mpeg viewer that will work with mpegs from the 4K and runs under Linux?


I tried vlc, but I don't get any audio.


--joubert


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## mkruss

Ed Rempalski,

To answer your questions,

1) The extracted video was medium quality.

2) Yes Womble MPG-VCR is a $300 program. The demo on their site is limited to mpeg-1, but if your search the net you will find an older version of the demo that supports mpeg-2. In Womble, you load the Replay mpeg file, then you edit out the commercials and finally use the "record" function to reprocess the video. The "PS" option is the setting in their software record video options that will output a DVD compatible "Program Stream".

3) The new output file loads fine in the Ulead Movie Studio 6.5 with DVD plug-in and also the Ulead DVD MovieFactory. The DVD plug-in and MovieFactory are virtually the same software with MovieFactory having a few more options. Here you create menus and then follow the prompts to record the DVD.

4) I have stayed away from the java video extractor since I really didn't want to load the Sun java engine. I was waiting for the pure Windows GUI software to be released.

5) The time it takes for all this to transpire:

- Run Replaypc to retrieve the guide.dat then Guideparser to

the show data. Review the show file names and write down

the file name (2 minutes)

- Run replaypc to retrieve the 30 min. file (10 minutes)

- Run Womble to edit out the commercials (5 minutes)

- Save (record) the show in Womble (8 minutes)

- Run Ulead DVD MovieFactory & setup a simple menu (2 minutes)

- Record the DVD in MovieFactory using a 1x DVD-RW

(15 minutes)

Total = 42 minutes


I hope this helps,


-- Mike --


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## mlinehan

This weekend I've been USING (as apposed to developing) ReplayPC, and I don't mind saying "Damn, this is COOL!" even if it is a bit of patting oneself on the back.


You guys probably won't believe this but, I don't even own a DVD player yet!


Most people here have been processing the 4K mpg files to VCD, SVCD, or mini-DVD format, but I targeted a DivX AVI instead.


I pulled a 2.8GB mpg (Saturday Nigh Live, 90 min, med qual) from the 4080.


The used Fask XMpeg 4.2a with the DivX 4.12 codecs to transcode the mpg from 4Mbps 720x480 to 780Kbps 352x240 using the 2 pass variable bit rate method.


I'm not sure how long this took since I did it overnight, but Flask was achieving 20fps on the first pass anyways. If the 2nd pass was also at 20fps, the total time to transcode should have been about 90min * (30/20) *2 = about 4.5hours


The resuting file was 596MB, and the degredation from the orignial was barely noticable. DivX 4.12 is a trully amazing codec.


I then pulled the 596MB Divx into Virtual Dub and deleted the comercials droping the file to 65minutes 434MB.


Damn VirtualDub can do this fast when you set it to directly connect the input and output codecs.


I have seen the future, and it is home video editing!


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## Ed Rempalski

mlinehan - You ought to be patting yourself on the back, This is just UberCool!


mkruss - Thanks for the details!


I have ulead video studio 5 with DVD Plugin which is their current version. I went ahead and got their DVD MovieFactory cause it's UI is much simpler to use. I will get Womble after I make sure that it's OK in XPpro (with NTFS). For now I used a simple editor that I downloaded for free from Haupague's WinTV-PVR site. It's called NanoPEG and it does simple cuts.


I took a 30 minute show (6 min download Med Quality).


Cut the commercials (5 Min) now it's 20 minutes and change.


Created the output file (25min on P4 2Ghz XPpro) Womble sounds better here.


Pulled it into DVD MovieFactory and burned a DVD (10 minutes, Pioneer A03).


It plays on my PC! Well... Not so clean... after playing the whole clip I found a problem. The show plays 10:20 till the first commercial cut and dies. (both PowerDVD and Windows Media Player Die). If I fast forward I can FF thru the whole clip and it plays the whole way. If I stop just after the commercial, I can watch the next segment. Sooo my NanoPEG simple cut editor breaks the stream at the cuts without error in it's output run or DVD MovieFactory's burn.


Looks like I can easily take straight shows with my current scheme, but will Womble solve my editing problem (or is it XP's fault?), and if not, would I be able to return Womble.


My old Pioneer DVL-700 DVD-LD Combo Unit choked on it (showered with huge pixel blocks), but I was expecting that. So it's off to the store with a test disk to find a new player for the HT...


You might consider the Java App, loading the Sun Plug-in is a snap, and the Replayer app is very slick (Thanks Honus!!). It displays all shows in all Replays in the house in a blink. Highlight the show you want and get it.


Too Much Fun, Too Little Time.. Burned Out.. Good Night.


What I need right now is a good hot "Cup'o'Chinos".


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## mlinehan

Thanks Ed! 


I noticed that your using the Pioneer DVR-A03 DVD-R/RW drive.


I discovered the A03 last night while looking into DVD-R drives, it shure looks like a bute to me, but what do I know! **NEWBIE**


This drive hit the market at $1K about 6 months ago and is allready down to $400-$450 if you don't mind ordering online.


Can those with DVD-R experience enlighten us with the fruits (or lemons) of you experience?


Ed: are you happy with your A03? If you went out to get a DVD-R drive now, what would you buy today?


Seems to me investing in a DVD-R drive would be a slick way to avoid the whole transcoding problem completly.


mlinehan


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## videogeek

mkruss - can you post the link to the older Womble demo that supports mpeg-2 . I can't find it 


(should not be a problem since it's a demo )


mlinehan - The new G4 Mac's ship with the Pioneer DVR-A03 DVD-R/RW drive installed (Apple calls it the 'SuperDrive). Not only does the thing records and plays DVD R/RW, but also regular CD R/RW (up to 8x speed). I use it on the Mac with Toast software but I am thinking of taking it out of the Mac and mount it in a Firewire case, so I can use it on the PC too.


Simply said - it's very reliable and I would not buy anything else if I needed to make that decission. Best description: Swiss Army Knife for burning


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## mkruss

mlinehan,

I love my A03. The reason that the prices have gone down is that HP (and others) have released their competing DVD+RW drives. The Pioneer A03 is a DVD-RW drive. The difference is on the RW side. The -RW disk will play in most existing stand alone decks. The +RW is a new format that won't play in stand alone players until manufacturers start supporting it. They both record to DVD-R (write once) disks. If your player will play VCD's recorded on CD-RW, it will probably play DVD-RW disks.


I use -RW disks to test my editing on my stand alone player before I commit it to a DVD-R disk. I can then erase the -RW disk and reuse it.


You might check out www.goroyalpc.com. They have the Pioneer A03 boxed at $382 and a Utobia (Pioneer A03 clone) bare drive for $349.


I was at a computer swap in LA this weekend and the media has really gone down in price. Several vendors had DVD-R disks for under $4 and DVD-RW disks for around $6. There is an online vendor www.cd-recordable.com that sells DVD-R disks for $2.99. I have purchased from them, but with shipping, it is just as cheap to buy them at the swap.


-- Mike --


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## mkruss

videogeek,

I have my A03 mounted in an external firewire box on my PC and it works great. The only problem is that Nero my favorite PC burning software doesn't do firewire under Windows XP. It worked fine under ME. Go figure. All the DVD mastering software that I use see it just fine.


As for finding the old version of Womble, sorry dude, I don't have a link.


-- Mike --


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## mkruss

Sorta related to this topic, do any of you know of a freeware utility that will examine an mpeg file and report the picture size and sampling rate of the file?


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## CProgrammer

Thanks, Rich, for the suggestions regarding my problem with the duration on extracted Replay MPEG-2 files. Unfortunately, even after trying them all, when I use the high-quality setting on my 3060, the duration of the extracted clip still gets messed up. I recorded a half-hour show last night that reported a duration of about 2 minutes in Adobe Premiere as well as with the Womble editor. Since I generally don't have these problems with the medium-quality setting, I'll just use that since it's reliable. I did dowload the 11/2001 version of the Womble editor, and also tried extracting the files under Windows 2000 (I have a triple boot setup--Win XP, 2000, and 98SE). I use an NTFS partition when extracting because 2-hour shows recorded at high quality require over 5G of disk space. I haven't noticed any differences between Win XP and Win 2000 when using the Womble editor, but what I typically do is extract portions of a show in MPEG2VCR to separate files, and convert the MPEG-2 files to AVI files in Premiere 6 so that I have more flexibility with editing. I store the edited program either on mini-DV tape or convert it back to MPEG-2 to store on DVD.


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## Ed Rempalski

Mlinehan, I got the Pioneer because it was the only game in town. As stated before me, the DVD-RW vs DVD+RW is the issue. The newer drives by HP, Philips, and Sony are DVD+RW. . Their +RW media is less than -RW media. The claims are that DVD+RW is MORE compatible with more standalone DVD Players. They claim that the Pioneer DVD-RW's had to have new firmware in able to burn in "compatibility mode" to make DVD playable disks.


I like my Pioneer, it seems to work fine, but if I were buying again I would really study the following links and make an informed decision. By what I've read, maybe DVD+RW is going to be the one..

http://www.dvdplusrw.org/video/comparison.html 

http://www.dvdplusrw.org/ 

http://www.vcdhelp.com/ 


Good Luck


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## TechnomageEnder

I love haveing the extract. On a daily basis I copy shows from my replay to my laptop to watch them at work. I can usualy go thru about and hour and a half to two hours in a normal work day.

The Robin Williams Inside the Actors Studio had me laughing so loud my co-workers came into my office to watch it with me.

Techno


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## Ed Rempalski

Way Cool, now how much can we crunch a file to download it into my iPAQ to take on the road? I've seen some full length films crunched to like 50meg or so from filmspeed.com but their site is down.


These guys have trailers and such;

http://www.pocketrocketfx.com/ 


But what would it take to convert a Replay Extract into a PocketPC 2002 compatible format, playable with the pocket Windows Media Player 8?


It'd be great to pop what ever would fit on a 128MB SD Card and go.


More tinkering ahead!


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## Ed Rempalski

I couldn't resist, The PocketPC Works Great!!! and the encoder's free


Went to Microsoft and got the Windows Media Encoder v7.1 here

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/win...m7/encoder.asp 



Then got the iPAQ encoder profile here (HP's and Casio's are here too)

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/win...ket/create.asp 


Installed the encoder to its default directory.


Installed the iPAQ profile (ipaq.prx) into the same directory as the default profiles (eg. C:\\Program Files\\Windows Media Components\\Encoder\\Profiles


Windows Media Encoder is a very nice GUI encoder. I used it's wizard, pointed it to a 30minute show with commercials (938MB).


Selected the iPAQ profile, it encoded while showing the video in a window (no audio). It indicated that it would take 21 min and it took 21 min.


The result was a 49meg .WMV file.


I coppied that into a compact flash card in about 2 min.


I popped the card into my iPAQ 3870 and opened Media Player and the show played just fine. It looks supriseingly good!!!


Edit the commercials and you could get 1.5 hours of shows on a 128MB Flash Card.


This stuff just gets better every day!



There is a command line encoder with the newest VBR technology plus batch file processing capabiliy for you bit weenies. It's available here. I haven't messed with it.

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/win...8/encoding.asp 



Last but not least. If you do the math, you could pop a 1 gig IBM Micro Drive into the iPAQ and carry just over 10 hours of video in the palm of your hand!


----------



## Rich A

I noticed the mentions of Womble and XP here.


First let me start off by saying that I "have" been using Win2K for all my NLE work. Recently got Win XP Pro. When using the ReplayPC to extract the mpegs with WinXP I'm havng a lot of problems. The time is much slower than in Win2K. Also instead of a steady count on the Kb's received counter, it pauses every few seconds for about 1/2 second. Then the mpeg is bad with many blocks and stutters.


Next, when using Womble in WinXP Pro, I find it screws up the final saved clips and makes them un-acceptable to my DVD authoring program.


Then for some strange reason my authoring program will no longer work in Windows 2K. Arrrghhh.


So I have to use the ReplayPC in Windows 2K. Use the Womble in Windows XP (where it works fine) then use the SpruceUp in WinXP . Very strange stuff.


Question: is anybody using Womble with success in Windows XP?


The Womble people themselves say it's not supported.


(yes .. I tried running Womble in XP under "Win2K compatibilty mode") That won't work either.


----------



## aaron.s

mkruss and all,


I bought the Pioneer DVR-A03 back in the spring (for $1000 no less) and have had a lot of fun creating DVD's of not only ReplayTV material, but home movies from DV tape as well. It's a great unit and makes DVD-R discs that play in many players and DVD-RW discs that suprisingly play in a decent amount of players as well.


To date, I have found that all players that are able to read DVD-RW discs have been able to read DVD+RW discs as well. The issue is one of "reflectivity" and "compatibility". DVD-RW and DVD+RW use phase change technology, resulting in a disc which is less reflective than a DVD-R disc and thus playable in less players.


I have since bought an HP DVD+RW drive as well. This is to compliment the Philips DVDR-1000 stand-alone DVD+R/RW recorder I have in my home theater. Now I can take discs from the stand-alone and edit them on the PC and rewrite them. I find now that I do my "tests" on DVD+RW because the write speed is much quicker (2.4x vs. 1x on the pioneer). When happy with the result, I burn the final copy onto DVD-R for the broadest compatability. I usually make copies of home movies and send them to family members.


Both DVD+RW PC drives as well as my DVDR-1000 stand-alone are firmware upgradable to the new DVD+R discs that will be available shortly. These discs should prove more compatible (along the lines of DVD-R) because of better reflectivity - and actually (might) give DVD-R a run for it's money, especially if DVD+R discs become as cheap as DVD-R discs.


DVD+RW has one GREAT advantage over DVD-RW, more importantly for stand-alone recorders... DVD+RW discs can have files (and individual video selections) erased from the disc WITHOUT erasing the entire disc. This is a GREAT advantage for stand-alone recorders - since you don't have to wipe all your shows off the disc. Because of this, and the fact that DVD+RW stand-alone recorders use variable bitrate recording for all recording modes (1-4 hours) discs recorded at all speeds are playable in most DVD players.


Pioneer's DVR-7000 stand-alone recorder can only create "compatible" discs in 1 and 2 hour "compatible" mode which uses constant bitrate encoding. Using DVD-RW discs, individual programs cannot be deleted from a disc and be compatible with stand-alone players. This alone I believe will make DVD+R/RW the format of choice for stand-alone recorders.


In the PC realm, it's a different story. You can create video content at whatever bitrate you want and burn a DVD-RW OR DVD+RW disc that is playable in any player that reads rewriteable discs.


I like both formats. Both make discs I (and my family members) can play in their machines. I bought the Philips DVDR-1000 stand-alone recorder for the many casual TV programs I like to archive. I am glad I made that choice and stuck with DVD+R/RW vs. buying the Pioneer (DVD-R/RW) or Panasonic (DVD-RAM/-R) stand-alone recorder (don't get me started on that one!).


Not that Philips has a sub $1000 DVD+R/RW home recoder coming out, I suspect the many more people will become interested in replacing their VCR with this wonderful technology.


Regards to all,

Aaron


----------



## nkopas

I've chosen the VCD format for archiving my ReplayTV content. Most of what I record is hour or half hour shows, so it works well for me. Here's the process I used for archiving some episodes of "Enterprise":


My system is a PentiumIII 800MHz running WindowsME. All of my ReplayTV content is recorded at medium quality.


1. I extract the show in raw fromat using ReplayPC.


2. I compress the video to MPEG1 with TMPGenc 2.02. Using the included VCD template and the low quality setting. It takes around 3 Hours to compress 1 Hour of content. The one hour show which started out at 1800MBs is now a lean 600MBs.


3. Using Womble MPEG1VCR I edit out the commericial content and record the content to a VCD file. This takes about 5 minutes.


4. I burn the resulting MPEG to VCD using Nero. With all the standard settings. I takes about 5 minutes to validate the MPEG before you can burn the disc.


That's pretty much it, sometimes a file on the replay has corrupt audio and I have to do some dubbing magic to get everything to work, but usually I won't bother unless I really want to keep the show. I've tried using VCD Creator to burn the MPEGs, but I could never get the discs to play. Nero works all the time.


----------



## breaux124

Quote:

_Originally posted by nkopas_
*

2. I compress the video to MPEG1 with TMPGenc 2.02. Using the included VCD template and the low quality setting. It takes around 3 Hours to compress 1 Hour of content. The one hour show which started out at 1800MBs is now a lean 600MBs.


3. Using Womble MPEG1VCR I edit out the commericial content and record the content to a VCD file. This takes about 5 minutes.

*
Wouldn't it save you time if you cut the commercials with MPEG2VCR and then do the encoding? I realize that program is more expensive, but it should be worth while.


----------



## Jeff D

Cool news on the latest developments!!! It seems like a year ago I had got SVCD's burned for the first time. When Rich, Aaron and others burned DVDs I was ready to buy a burner, but $800 kept me away. Now, no swapping drives, and editing is just as simple, I'm drooling!


I had a question about the new streams when burning a dvd... You don't need to convert the audio to 48K anymore? Did replay go to a standard bitrate for the audio? Is the Lygos codec still being used by Replay?


I'm getting really too anxious to get a replay4000 and a DVD burner... Too bad my woman is now wearing those and other toys on her finger. =( Is this what is ment by sacrifices?


----------



## Jeff D

TechnomageEnder, The Robin Williams and Mike Myers Inside the Actors Studio are two of my favorites. The are still sitting on a 105GB setup of drives in my garage while I figure out how to edit them and burn them to DVD.


The replay spontainously deleted all the files including those ItAS episodes. I couldn't have replay overwrite those files before archiving them. And I really want the 105GB back!


----------



## mlinehan

Quote:

_Originally posted by Jeff D_
*I had a question about the new streams when burning a dvd... You don't need to convert the audio to 48K anymore? Did replay go to a standard bitrate for the audio? Is the Lygos codec still being used by Replay?
*
Unlike the 2K and 3K units, the 4K audio is 48KHz sampeling


----------



## Rich A

For the guy who was looking for an Mpeg tool to get the parameters of it ..


Try the Teco BitRateViewer. The free version is plenty good enough and will show you Bit Rate, Qualty, GOPS, and all the information as to the frame size, nominal bit rate, type etc. You can get it at www.tecoltd.com The "registered" version is not that expensive, (as I remember around 25 dollars US) It adds some ability to cut mpegs and also modify them somewhat.


----------



## MasterFU

Check out Vegas Video 3.0 from Sonic Foundry.
http://www.sonicfoundry.com/products...ct.asp?PID=612 


Its my favorite for editing, and I can open my Replay .mpgs without any problem.


It has the best interface I have ever used.



-MasterFU


----------



## Jeff D

I guess that makes sense since it uses there is the option for Optical Audio, 48k is kinda a standard for that. Others are supported, just not the norm... 48K, That's WAY cool!!!

Quote:

_Originally posted by mlinehan_
*


Unlike the 2K and 3K units, the 4K audio is 48KHz sampeling*


----------



## NoFreakinWay

OK everyone, I've been trying to get these damn mpgs onto a DVD that is playable on a DVD player. I am confused and not having any luck. I have the mpg file, medium quality, it plays fine with media player and powerDVD, I have pinnacle impression and MyDVD to use to author the DVD. MyDVD will not let me add the mpg, impression doesnt recognize it either, they both appear to want two seperate audio and video streams. I also need to edit out the beginning and ending garbage. So what the heck do I do to trim the beginning and ending of the mpg and get the mpg into DVD content???


----------



## Jeff D

NFW you using 4000 streams? If not the audio is in the wrong format.


Beginning and end garbage. You'll need an editor which won't reencode the data. Womble MPEG2VCR works for that. There are also tools for demuxing the audio video streams to seperate files.


For just the demux you can use TMPGEnc. Search on the web for it. When running under the file menu there is an option for mpeg tools, somewhere in there is a demux file. Give source, audio and video output files and tell it to go.


----------



## breaux124

Quote:

_Originally posted by Jeff D_
*NFW you using 4000 streams? If not the audio is in the wrong format.


Beginning and end garbage. You'll need an editor which won't reencode the data. Womble MPEG2VCR works for that. There are also tools for demuxing the audio video streams to seperate files.


For just the demux you can use TMPGEnc. Search on the web for it. When running under the file menu there is an option for mpeg tools, somewhere in there is a demux file. Give source, audio and video output files and tell it to go.*


Womble's MPEG2VCR will also mux, demux, and encode. Just get MPEG2VCR and you'll be able to do everything you need to.


----------



## NoFreakinWay

Jeff,


Yes they are 4k mpgs.

So I HAVE TO demux them into seperate streams then let the DVD authoring software remix them to form the VOB file?? What a pain. Renaiming the MPG to VOB will let me play it in PowerDVD but that doesnt help much..


BTW: TMPGenc will not open them for me...


----------



## nkopas

Quote:

_Originally posted by breaux124_
*


Wouldn't it save you time if you cut the commercials with MPEG2VCR and then do the encoding? I realize that program is more expensive, but it should be worth while.*
I ususally do encoding just before I go to work or just before I go to bed, so I wouldn't even notice. Plus since I bought my ReplayTV I can't afford MPEG2VCR.


----------



## pwright

Actually that info on the HP DVD100i DVD+RW isn't quite accurate.


At this time it is only DVD+RW. Doesn't do DVD-R and probably won't ever. HP is supposed to be releasing a firmware update for it that will give it DVD+R capabilities. Compatibility seems to be kind of hit or miss. With discs I have made so far compatibility is about 60% with mostly older DVD players not recognizing the discs.


DVD+RW should be a more compatible format than -RW as it is physically and logically the same as DVD video discs. You can get more propraganda here:

http://www.dvdplusrw.org/


----------



## Ed Rempalski

I e-mailed Womble about their support of WinXPpro before buying. They replied with a 15 day trial key, but no yes or no answer. I tried extracting a 30 min show, cut out commercials (very nice and responsive viewer by the way). I was able to cut the commercials in a few minutes. The record took about 1 minute. The burn to DVD-RW was with Ulead DVD Movie Factory and went very smooth (about 30 min).


I burned both the raw image from Replayer.jar and the edited version onto the same DVD-RW. Both versions played fine on my DVD player. There were a few skips in the video, but the skip occured at the same point on both versions so it was a skip in the Replay's recording.


I also took the edited version and ran it thru Windows Media Encoder and transcoded it onto my iPAQ, it played fine there as well.


All in all I'm happy with Womble on my XPpro machine.


Oh, I did have one show (Daily Show 1-12-2002) that seemed to have something slightly wrong with the very beginning. It could be played in windows media player if you moved the slider just past the beginning. This file would Kill Womble every time, it would also kill windows media encoder. Womble would pause while opening the file, then just crash. I re-downloaded the file from the Replay, same problems.


----------



## Rich A

FWIW I've been a long time Womble user and am using the latest version with WinXP Pro without trouble.


However, there were a couple interesting weird things occuring in my XP system. When I was off loading the replay mpegs with ReplayPC it seemed to be taking a lot longer than my Win2K system. I noticed the KB's counter stuttering and stopping every now and then. I have an ABIT K7TA main board with an on board RAID controller. Some of my Replay Mpegs had various problems. I found that if I disabled my RAID controller and used one of the primary drive controller HDs the download speed increased (?) and the problems disappeared.


I also could not get my SpruceUp DVD authoring program to run. UNTIL I disabled the RAID controller, installed SpruceUp and then re-enabled the RAID.


This is the "HighPoint" ATA100 raid. I've been all over the various sites, forums and such and have the latest flashes bios for both the raid firmware and the Main board, yet this raid is giving me a lot of problems. I had an IWILL mobo, also with an on board raid and that didn't give me half the problems.


If you are having problems with corrupted Mpegs or very slow off-loads, and you have an on-board raid controller, try disabling the RAID and see what happens. Anybody experience this ?


----------



## Dallben

Quote:

_Originally posted by Rich A_
*I have an ABIT K7TA main board with an on board RAID controller.


If you are having problems with corrupted Mpegs or very slow off-loads, and you have an on-board raid controller, try disabling the RAID and see what happens. Anybody experience this ?*
I've got the same board (you did mean the KT7A-Raid, right?  )


I'm using the drives on the raid controller for just about everything, so far Womble (which I'm not TOO familiar with) appears to be working just dandy. Other than having to find the right codec, that is.


Try installing the latest bios update from abit -- http://www.abit-usa.com That might fix the problem, as the bios for the highpoint controller has been updated several times since the original release. Just be wary if you actually have any raid arrays, they sometimes die when you do the update... There are more details on their site, though.


----------



## Rich A

Quote:

_Originally posted by Dallben_
*


I've got the same board (you did mean the KT7A-Raid, right?  )


I'm using the drives on the raid controller for just about everything, so far Womble (which I'm not TOO familiar with) appears to be working just dandy. Other than having to find the right codec, that is.


Try installing the latest bios update from abit -- http://www.abit-usa.com That might fix the problem, as the bios for the highpoint controller has been updated several times since the original release. Just be wary if you actually have any raid arrays, they sometimes die when you do the update... There are more details on their site, though.*



Yup, I have the Raid version of the board. And board revision # is 1.03 which is the one you need (so they tell me) to work properly with the new Athlon XP processors. And I've downloaded and installed both the Raid and main board BIOS's as per the latest.


What kind of performance figures do you get for sequential sustained writes? With my unit the actual performance is terrible. I think there may be something peculiar about my Windows XP Pro install that is just not working right with this raid controller. Previous raid controllers I've owned have benchmarked at greater than 50 Mb/s. This one has a hard time getting to 20. I'll have to check under Windows 2K to see if the performance comes up some.


So my questions to you are: What kind of performance are you getting (sequential sustained average not burst) and are you running FAT 32 or NTFS ??


----------



## clicket

I think mlineman was really onto something...
Quote:

So I hacked up a quick www server in my ReplayPC application and fed the 4080 a "Device_Descr.xml" that describes my PC as a 4080 called "ReplayPC".
What about a _few_ steps further and serving content back to the Replay? ...Say DIVX AVIs of archived DVDs or Replay content, interpreted by through server software as MPEG2 that's friendly to the Replay?


FFMpeg ( http://ffmpeg.sourceforge.net ) or the VideoLAN Project ( http://www.videolan.org ) seem to be on the right track.. I don't have currently a Replay, but if this concept is proven, I'll get one in a couple of months.


I'm very excited about the prospect of this working.. Then I could take the PC out of my entertainment center that I'm currently using to play DVDs and AVIs.


----------



## Jeff D

Now, I don't remember my steps in converting files... can someone please tell me what I'm doing wrong?


I may be off topic, I'm using 3K extracted stream files...


I open an extracted file with womble and then resave the file converting the audio to 48.0Khz. When I try to open the file in SpruceUp, I get an error about Invalid GOP, invalid temporal something or other.


I've reciently changed machines and reinstalled everything.


Previously I had a clip that was extracted that I was able to import into spruce with the correct audio. From there I was able to create a DVD. Something is different now and I can't figure out what.


Has anyone seen a similar problem? How about what did I do something wrong in preping a file for import into spruce?


----------



## breaux124

Quote:

_Originally posted by Jeff D_
*Now, I don't remember my steps in converting files... can someone please tell me what I'm doing wrong?


I may be off topic, I'm using 3K extracted stream files...


I open an extracted file with womble and then resave the file converting the audio to 48.0Khz. When I try to open the file in SpruceUp, I get an error about Invalid GOP, invalid temporal something or other.


I've reciently changed machines and reinstalled everything.


Previously I had a clip that was extracted that I was able to import into spruce with the correct audio. From there I was able to create a DVD. Something is different now and I can't figure out what.


Has anyone seen a similar problem? How about what did I do something wrong in preping a file for import into spruce?*
Which version of Womble do you have? If you don't have the latest, I'm pretty sure you have to demux the audio and video and then convert the audio.


Can't you put the two seperate streams into Spruce Up?


----------



## Jeff D

The womble I have is the latest, 3.10 or 3.11 not sure.


I couldn't see how to import two demuxed streams into spruce up. Been a while since I did this last.


Strange part is the skydive movie I used before I can't use now. It's as if something changed. Wait... maybe that was using an older womble....


----------



## Rich A

Look in the top title bar in the Womble GUI. It should have a date there. The latest is vers. 3.11 and the date is November 2001. There ARE older 3.11 versions. You need the newest November version to be able to save the edited mpeg with the audio changed as well at the same time. If you have an older version, then you have to de-multiplex into separate elementary video and audio and then use the Womble audio editor to change the audio stream by itself to 48 kHz.


SpruceUp is very unforgiving if you have something like a messed up GOP sequence etc. It works better when you import the elementary streams instead of a multiplexed program stream. To do this you simply need to import only the video asset. BUT the matching audio stream MUST have the same name. (with different extensions of course) The Spruceup program will bring in the video and then pair it up with the audio stream it finds at the same location with the same name. In other words, you would have something like this ..


Movie.mpv (video stream)

Movie.mpa (audio stream)


Just import the "Movie.mpv" asset and Spruceup will compile using the Movie.mpa automatically. I've found that sometimes this works better than trying to import the full multiplexed program stream.


Now if it's dying on you when doing a full program stream, it may be because of the older version of Womble. I found going from the 3.11 (august?) to the 3.11 November to be an improvement in several areas.


Also if all else fails try this. If it bombs out at say the 45 percent mark .. do a little figuring to find out where in the clip that is. For example if you have a 100 minute clip, and it dies at 45 percent, then go back to Womble and take a look at around the 45 minute mark. Most of the time, you'll find it is a "join" point. Maybe where you removed a commercial. Sometimes Womble has trouble with "not perfect" mpeg and doesn't make a "clean" join. If this happens you might be able to save it by just inserting an "effect" at that point. (usually okay cuz it's between in and outs during the commercial) Or you can split the clip at that point and add a transition between them when you join them. I use the "fade .. or is it merge?" Well anyway the thing is that by adding a "transition" at the problem point, you will cause Wombe to re-encode that area of the mpeg ..and most likely fix it.


Doesn't work all the time, but it's saved my bacon when trying to save a 2 hour movie.


Last tip: If you get all the way to the end (99 percent) and you get an error about the audio not being correct, sometimes this is caused because the last frame or two may be missing the audio content. That can happen on occassion and will usually end up with the compile failing at the very end. If this happens, stick it back into Womble and cut off the last several frames.


Hope that helps ..


----------



## Rich A

I've examined all of the mpeg options coming out of the ReplayTV. I sometimes find things like broken GOP sequences or other weird things. Usually these do not affect playback in the RPTV, and sometimes not even when viewing them with a PC based Mpeg-2 player.


However, these slight imperfections raise their ugly frames when said frames are being used in a DVD compiling (when authoring a DVD) What your eyes, and even an mpeg player just "skip over", are huge canyons of problems to a DVD authoring program trying to compile that mpeg.


I've done enough of these to say that it's more common a problem that you'd think. If you are using a "frame accurate" mpeg editor (like Womble) the thing you have to remember is that Womble doesn't normally re-encode the mpeg. It only re-encodes those few frames around your joins and cuts and the sections you add FX effects. That is one reason the Womble is so fast. But what is good for speed, brings up another problem. Because the Mpeg is NOT re-encoded, you are (for the most part) using the raw Mpeg from the RPTV. And if there is a GOP or two that is slightly out of sorts, it's "not" going to be automatically fixed by the editor. Not the Womble anyway. You can force the Womble to re-encode the whole video by changing anything in the Video tab's properties. But be preparded to wait for hours.


There ARE some software based encoders that can rebuild errant GOPS or adjust muxing etc. during a Multiplexing operation. TMPGenc is one of them. You can de-multiplex your program stream and then using one of the DVD profiles in TMPGenc Multiplex the streams back together. about 80 percent of the time this will fix it. The only thing "adjusted" are the intrinsic parameters like pack size and GOPs etc and really nothing envolving the actual quality of the mpeg. Multiplexing operations are usually pretty fast over-all. FWIW I think if you do a "lot" of ReplayTV extraction, you will find that many of the Mpegs have these slight problems. I'd like to hear from others who may have run across this as well. (I've been doing "extracts" from the older 2 and 3000 series for a long time and now more recently the 4000 series. I find the same problems with all versions of the ReplayTV Mpegs.


----------



## Jamy

What needed to be done to get the mpegs off a replay to open in TMPGEnc? When I open it I receive an invalid format message.


I have a SHowstopper 30 hour.


Thanks


Jamy


----------



## FlipFlop

The http://www.elecard.com $20 MPEG2 player has a codec that will work with TMPGEnc. On vcdhelp.com there is also information about another (free) codec, but I haven't had much success with that one.


----------



## Jamy

Ok, I downloaded the trial mpeg2 codec from elecard, and now TMPGenc will open the replay extracts. My problem now is that after conversion to SVCD my file is still 800Meg. The material I am trying to put to SVCD is 45 minutes of the Witchbalde TV show recorded at medium quality. This should be able to fit on one SVCD.


Anyone have any suggestions on how to make it fit?


Thanks


Jamy


----------



## Jamy

Ok. I was able to make the program fit on one SVCD. I put it in my DVD player and noticed noise in the sound, that is there the whole time.


Does anyone have any suggestions as to software to clean up the audio?



TIA


Jamy


----------



## jleavens

Anyone know where I can get a copy of TMPGEnc 2.02?


I've been trying to download it from their site for two weeks now, any it always gives me an error and says the site is too busy...


----------



## pic_micro

Hi,


I'm having audio sync problems on vcds created from replaytv mps. I don't know what my problem is. The audio sync is more notizable on the last minutes on my mpgs about minute 60.


I have the current configuration:


1) ReplayTv 2000

2) Win 2k Prof Service Pack 2

3) Extract_rtv version 10

I used this to get the mpgs.

4) Womble ver 3.11 (03/2001)

To cut commercials and demux audio and video.

5) TMPenc ver 2.2


----------



## pic_micro

Hi All,


I'm having audio sync problems on vcds created from replaytv mps. I don't know what my problem is. The audio sync problem is more noticeable on the last minutes on my mpgs about which is after minute 60.


I have the current configuration:


1) ReplayTv 2000

2) Win 2k Prof Service Pack 2

3) Extract_rtv version 10

I use this to get the mpgs.

4) Womble version 3.11 (03/2001)

I use this to cut commercials and demux audio and video. I demux the a/v because TMPEcn wouldn't open the mpg.

5) TMPenc version 2.2

I use this to convert to vcd profile VCD (NTSC) with the audio and video streams demuxed.

6) Elecard player version 1.35.

Do you happend to have a white little squere on the right upper corner? If I buy the player, does that squere go away?


Result of the mixture: Vcd with audio out of sync, specially on those which length is more that an hour of video.


If some of you have created vcds in sync from replaytv mpgs. Would you mind sharing what software/version was used?


Thank You


----------



## Rich A

I notice both you guys with the audio sync problem are using the Womble version dated 3/01. There is another newer one dated 11/01.


The versions prior to Nov. 01 had a problem with ATI video capture cards and their mpeg. Going in the mpeg was fine. Coming out .. the mpeg was out of sync. The November version fixes that problem.


Point is it may not only be an ATI problem and may also be some cause for alarm with the RPTV mpeg. I've mentioned this several times before...get over to the Womble web site and download the latest version.


To GET the latest version just go to the "purchase" page and download the file without filing in any purchase information. You will get the version 3.11 (but with a NOVEMBER 01 date) When running the install, it will find your registered older version and update it. Give it a try. It's worked for everyone who had the ATI problem.


----------



## scochran666

Has anyone run into the problem of not being able to edit programs that were pre-padded to start recording early? They extract perfectly from my Showstopper, with the expected file sizes. However, when I open them (Womble, TMPEGenc, bbMPEG) it only recognizes the program up to where the normal record time would start. In Womble I can use the slider and move to the end, then move backwards, but it's all funky and not at all accurate.


I'm guessing that the Replay inserts an "end of stream" marker or something at the "real" program start time, but I'm not MPEG savvy enough to know what's really happening. MPEG Corrector doesn't do any good, and actually seems to mangle the program even worse.


Is there any utility that will allow me to correct this, or even see what is realling going on in the file? Or some special method to get the files edited?


Thanks in advance!


----------



## Pico

I am trying to use SpruceUP to create a DVD Video, but I am getting errors.


Since it seems so many people use SpruceUP I thought maybe I could get some help.


When adding a de-mux'd video into spruce up (with the audio named exactly the same other than the extentsion .mpa) the program will error out with a "Parsing Error".


Then if I add the full muxed mpg into SpruceUP, it gets to 100% done adding the mpg, then it gives me "Error in System Header".


What do these errors mean?


I have demuxed with Womble 3.11 and TMPGenc and get the exact same results. I get the same results with other files as well.


When I edited out Commercials in Womble instead of saving each segment as seperate files and later joining, I just "CUT" out the commerical breaks, then when done, I selected the entire show and "recorded" it to a new file. Is this a proper way to edit?


Thanks for your help


----------



## adstein

Not sure why you believe that the DVD+RW has conpatability issues. It is designed to the DVD spec and thus plays in all standalone DVD players. It is the DVD-RW standard that is not supported by older stand-alone DVD players.


I tried both the A03 and the HP DVD100i and found the DVD+RW to work in every player but the A03 did not.


-alex

Quote:

_Originally posted by mkruss_
*mlinehan,

I love my A03. The reason that the prices have gone down is that HP (and others) have released their competing DVD+RW drives. The Pioneer A03 is a DVD-RW drive. The difference is on the RW side. The -RW disk will play in most existing stand alone decks. The +RW is a new format that won't play in stand alone players until manufacturers start supporting it. They both record to DVD-R (write once) disks. If your player will play VCD's recorded on CD-RW, it will probably play DVD-RW disks.


I use -RW disks to test my editing on my stand alone player before I commit it to a DVD-R disk. I can then erase the -RW disk and reuse it.


You might check out www.goroyalpc.com. They have the Pioneer A03 boxed at $382 and a Utobia (Pioneer A03 clone) bare drive for $349.


I was at a computer swap in LA this weekend and the media has really gone down in price. Several vendors had DVD-R disks for under $4 and DVD-RW disks for around $6. There is an online vendor www.cd-recordable.com that sells DVD-R disks for $2.99. I have purchased from them, but with shipping, it is just as cheap to buy them at the swap.


-- Mike --*


----------



## scochran666

Pico, I've had similar problems with errors, invalid GOP's and just about every other error message that can pop up. There was a tip earlier saying to insert a "special effect" at each edit point in Womble, and it really does work most of the time.


Instead of saving each section, just use the copy function to put it in the clipboard. Then you can drag them down to a new edit session one at a time, putting a special effect (I use a .5 second Blend) at each join, with a beggining fade-in and ending fade-out for good measure. About 75% of the time it works, but other times Womble still doesn't generate a good file and I have to go back and do it again with slightly different edit points.


Another issue when doing this is audio sync. I found it best to do all of the edits and generate the final program at the native encoding rate (32K for most of mine). Then, demux the program and use Womble's audio editor to up-convert the audio. From there, just import the separate streams into SpruceUp.


Now if I could only get these pre-padded programs to work - about 80% of the shows I want to preserve are currently un-editable.


----------



## breaux124

Quote:

_Originally posted by adstein_
*Not sure why you believe that the DVD+RW has conpatability issues. It is designed to the DVD spec and thus plays in all standalone DVD players. It is the DVD-RW standard that is not supported by older stand-alone DVD players.


I tried both the A03 and the HP DVD100i and found the DVD+RW to work in every player but the A03 did not.


-alex

*
I have to disagree. I work for a DVD software/chip manufacturer and we have all the different recorders.


We have the original 1st gen Authoring recorder, a Pioneer DVR-S201. We have the A03, the HP DVD100i, and the Sony DRU110A.


DVD-R's from the S201 will play in every DVD player that we've tested. Same for DVD-R's from the A03 (but not DVD-RW's). As for the sony and HP, they played on most players, but not all.


Also, DVD+RW is not an approved technology by the dvd forum.
http://www.dvdforum.org/forum.shtml 


But DVD+RW is backed by some of the biggest companies in the game (Dell, sony, HP, Ricoh - only a few). I think once the price of media for DVD+RW drives comes down and DVD+R's are made available that they will be the accepted technology.


----------



## aslagle

Quote:

_Originally posted by scochran666_
*There was a tip earlier saying to insert a "special effect" at each edit point in Womble, and it really does work most of the time.*
I've had nightmares trying to get some old rtv_extracts from my 3030 to be 'recognized' by DVD authoring software.


I've never heard this tip before, but I'll try anything!


----------



## Pico

After adding the fading effect to each join, I am now able to create a DVD Video.


Now the problem is it won't play on any of my DVD Players! But of couse it plays fine via PowerDVD on my PC.


I burned onto DVD-RW for testing, not wanting to make 4.00 coasters...


Tomorrows project is burning on DVD-R.


I have a Sony DVP-S330 and a Raite 715 DVD Player. According to www.vcdhelp.com the Sony supports DVD-R and DVD-RW.


Just wondering if anyone else has had problems playing there Replay DVDs on their DVD players and if anyone has one of these DVD players and thier expirence with DVD-R and DVD-RW.


----------



## jleavens

I've just plain given up trying to burn a VCD from a Replay MPEG (gotten from a 4000 at medium quality through one of the client tools available).


I use TMPG to demux the signals and that seems to work, giving me the m2v and mp2 files. But then if I try and re-mux the files, the audio file is usually alerted as an invalid sound file. And if I do manage to get files that TMPG will accept, there's always some buffer underrun error that it mentions. And no matter what I do, my burner software (Roxio's EasyCD 5.0) won't accept the files.


I wish there was a clear cut way to take care of all this stuff, but it's obvious that it's just not clear cut.


----------



## FlipFlop

I have had success (using MPEGs from 30xx) using either TMPGEnc or FlasKMPEG to convert the files to MPEG1 format, and then creating and burning the VCDs using VCDEasy ( http://www.vcdhelp.com/vcdeasy ). I also had the Elecard mpeg2 player/codec installed, which I think was required for these programs to handle MPEG2 input.


For me the trick was to use VCDEasy to both create the VCD image file, and to burn it to the CD.


Note that VCDs require MPEG1 format and 44.1kHz audio, so you need to go through the conversion process, you can't just demux and expect the files to work on a VCD.


----------



## Rich A

Hi all,

I really think any "re-encoding" to say VCD or SVCD is very counter productive. If you are going to spend all that time and effert re-building the ReplayTV mpgs you might as well get yourself a 50 dollar TV card and set up your pc to do the mpg capture real time. I've been in this capture game for a long time.


The extracted Replay Mpegs do have a bunch of problems. The least of which is the Sub-4000 units that have only 32 kHz audio.


By the way .. to "fix" the audio with Womble all you need is the Womble version dated November 2001. You can open up the audio dialog and change it there and then "save" your edits the normal way. No need to de-multiplex. It will re-encode your audio while saving the clip and the time is only a couple more minutes. (I typically do around 45 minute shows)


The Replay Mpegs were never intended to be used for "authoring" purposes. Only for play-back and viewing "as is". Of course this dosen't mean you can't try.


If this will help:


Most success parsing the entire mpeg through some kind of editor or multiplexing tool that has a real DVD profile. I use an "old" original version of TMPGenc. Under it's "mpeg tools" section there is a program called "VBV Optimizer". This is (I believe) a one step demux and remux utility. Just load the mpeg into it and the finished mpeg "mostly .. but not always" will be fixed. (make sure you select the TMPGenc Mpeg-2 Program stream)


After that parse, I bring it into womble and do my editing. Then in Womble I de-multiplex to elementary streams and use those as DVD asset material.


If the clip you are "cutting" has some kind of problem (broken GOP or what-ever) then the Womble sometimes has trouble joining at that point. If you were feeding the full multiplexed program stream to your DVD authoring program, during the import the program will stop. Look at the percentage marker and get an estimation of about where in the clip it bombed out. About 75 percent of the time you find it is where Womble joined your cuts. Remember, just doing a "save" with womble doesn't't change the mpeg. But Womble handles straight cuts and pastes differently than a cut and join with an "effect" inserted. So if you have that problem you can insert something like a "fade" or "merge" as the other poster suggested and Womble will be forced to actually RE-Encode those few frames. It doesn't add much time to the save as you are only encoding those few frames in and around the cuts and pastes.


That old version of TMPGenc is on my web site ... www.pcphotovideo.com in the download area. It's one of the very first betas and has some English translation problems. I use it because the VBV-Optimizer works and is a one step process. Later versions of TMPGenc removed that utility and because of that you need to do a De-mux and then Re-mux.


Even with all that work .. (which really only takes about 15 total minutes with a fast CPU) you sometimes cannot fix all the problems.


FWIW, I've found the medium quality to have less problems than the Low or High.


But to take hours? to re-encode the Replay Mpeg to some other format (like VCD or SVCD) is really the wrong way to go about this. Like I said, you can get TV cards for 50 bucks or so, or even a higher end video/capture card for around 200 bucks and use that to record directly to VCD. SVCD will require some additional post capture "fixing" but for the most part the mpegs will work "out of the box". Without the ambiguity of the ReplayTV mpeg.


----------



## pic_micro

Rich A,


I understand what you are saying about the mpgs from the replaytv but I suspect that my problem is software related.

I also found audio sync problems with other cards which I solved with the correct drivers/patches etc.

I've also heard that people has problems with audio sync even with cards like WintvPVR and specially dazzle and most of those problems are software related and some hardware configurations.


Well... I upgraded womble and now I have the November version and I also upgraded Direct X and my problems got worst after installing Direct X with the latest version from microsoft.

I know you have more experience on this so my question is what versions are using to get the right results?

OS:???

Service Pack:???

Direct X:??

Womble: 3.11 Nov

TEmpg: ????

Extract_rvt:???


I know this would be kind of difficult but do you remember in what order you installed your software?


Thank You


----------



## mahern

(SORRY FOR THE CAPS)


I AM PROBABLY MISSING SOMETHING SIMPLE

IN XMPEG I CANT FIND A SETTING FOR CONVERTING MORE THAN THREE THOUSAND FRAMES


DOES ANYONE KNOW HOW TO CONVERT A WHOLE FILE?


----------



## Rich A

No problem .. I'll give you what I can. I have at present three "systems" and everything has been done on all three (Win ME, Win2K Pro, and Win XP Pro) The most trouble free and stable system seems to be the Win2K pro.


OS: Windows 2000 Pro

Service Pack:Service Pack 2

Direct X: 8.1 ( 4.08.01.0881 )

Womble: 3.11 Nov

TEmpg: (Old version 12beta .. 0.11.20.97 or later version 2.5)


Extract_rvt: For RPT 4000 mpegs I'm using ReplayPC.exe vers. .03 for Windows. When I was using the old "remove drive" method the latest Extract_RTV I was using was vers. 8


I've got a "removable boot drive" in my NLE machine and can swap out various whole operating systems while retaining the identical hardware configuration. However, I have been know to change things repeatedly while "messing around". Given that, please keep in mind the following is not from any kind of "notes". (I should be so organized .) (grin) From memory ..


Install Win2K (with 3rd party RAID opt)

Direc t X

Serv Pak 2

Sound drivers (Herculess Fortissimo II)

ATI video drivers

ATI Mulitimedia Suite (it's a capture crd)

Ligos Mpeg-2 player codec vs 3.5.0.57

Womble

TMPGenc

DISABLE Raid controller

Install SpruceUP

ENABLE Raid controller


Somewhere along the line I ended up with Windows Media Player 6.4.09.1121.


The Ligos Mpeg-2 codec attatches itself to the default Windows Media player and allows me to playback any kind of Mpeg-2 (DVD, SVCD etc) via the WMP.


I also have playback capabilities with the ATI Multimedia Suite.


The reason for the disabling of the Raid controller is because SpruceUp would not run after having been installed if the RAID was enabled. However, doing the SpruceUP install with the RAID not activated during that install worked fine.

Also the op system and RAID are both NTFS. There is also a 2nd removable drive bay that I sometimes stick another drive into for capturing / Testing and that can be either NTFS or FAT32.


FWIW .. The ATI multimedia Center software I'm using is versio 7.5 from a late release model ATI All In Wonder Radeon. (I don't have a Radeon card though, only an older ATI 128 type)


----------



## pic_micro

Rich,

Thx for the info.


On the other hand, I was able to create a perfect sync VCD and SVCD using the same test replay mpg. The only change I made to my system was to add on of the elecard (alfa 1.40) DirectX filters called mpgdec.ax. The final mpeg is in perfect sync but there is a pop sound every two seconds  Now I need to get the correct filter for DirectA. The other different thing I did was not to edit the mpg comming to from the replaytv because I think most of the commercial software doesn't recognize the special streams that replay is putting there (including womble).


I found out that womble is doing some kind of changes to the mpg even if you don't edit it, just as simple as load it and save it Womble is deleting in some way some of the streams that are present on the original mpg files. If you want to check this open an original replay mpg on TMPGenc->Tools->De-Multiplex and you will see the extra streams besides the audio/video, then open the same mpg on womble, don't edit it and save it with a different name. Open the new mpg on TMPGenc->Tools->De-Multiplex and the special streams are gone. Well.. This is the reason to make me think that was the cause of my out of sync on my VCD,SVCD so I decided to enconde first then cut it but now I have the problem with the popping sound...


----------



## breaux124

I've had success with VCD creation two ways


Extract the replay mpeg, edit with womble, and then encode with FlashMPEG 0.6 and the bbMpeg encoder.


Also, you can encode the entire file and then edit in the end with IfilmEdit or even use Womble.


I've had no audio sync issues. Maybe you should try FlaskMPEG instead of TMPGenc? I've always used FlaskMPEG for VCD or Divx and it's worked every time.


Also which streams are you using? Replay 4000's or earlier? I'm using a showstopper, so I have the older type of files.


----------



## mrwilson

I finally made my first DVD, with menus, from some mpegs ripped from my 4k. I edited out the commercials in womble. No audio sync problems. My biggest problem was with XP and files over 2gig on an NTFS partition. If I try and use the file or even just single click (highlight) it in explorer, the disk will chug for a while and then the desktop (explorer) crashes and reloads. I moved to an ME machine and all is well. I can't figure out the XP issue and it is bugging me.


----------



## LintBalll

Quote:

_Originally posted by mrwilson_
*I finally made my first DVD, with menus, from some mpegs ripped from my 4k. I edited out the commercials in womble. No audio sync problems. My biggest problem was with XP and files over 2gig on an NTFS partition. If I try and use the file or even just single click (highlight) it in explorer, the disk will chug for a while and then the desktop (explorer) crashes and reloads. I moved to an ME machine and all is well. I can't figure out the XP issue and it is bugging me.*
Odd. I have no problem manipulating files larger than 4gb on my XP Pro NTFS machine. My files are NOT from Replay, but are software encoded...I'm not sure if that would matter as long as they're DVD-spec. But I have read about someone having this same crashing problem you described when "touching" large mpg2 files....here it is...

LINK


----------



## Rich A

This is for Pic_Micro ...


Been there, done that. Re: the third stream in an mpeg.


This was something I've been going around with in the Capture area for over a year now. I probably could have saved you some typing (Grin)


Here's some history about that "private" stream you are finding. Several different encoding engines are "Padding" their streams during encoding with a "padding" stream. This is (my guess) a way of insuring the audio and video remain in sync. Specifically this problem was found with the later versions of the ATI Video capture software. Versions after 6.x encluded this "padding" stream which will also show up as a "Private" stream with some demultiplexing programs. The problem at hand was (again my guess) that some software mpeg editors did not know how to handle this stream. The result was any editing of the original mpeg would end up with the newly multipliexed mpeg being generated without the padding. This caused the PRE-edit mpeg (WITH the padding stream intact) to play perfectly. But the POST-edit (WITHOUT the padding stream) would be badly out of sync.


Now in the ATI case, every encoded mpeg HAD the stream .. yet the amount of padding seemed to be different depending on the computer's environment. Some could edit with Womble and the resulting mpeg would only be affected slightly. Some had huge audio/video offsets. And yet some had no problem at all. My guess was that the womble was not able to handle that third stream properly and IF it was doing a lot of padding to keep the sync, then any modification or removal of it made a big difference. But if (even though it were there) it was being used with very little or even no actual padding ... then the resulting difference was minimal.


Note .. That was with the PRE-November issue of Womble version 3.11. Then in November of 2001, Womble released another version 3.11 and the problem was eliminated for most people.


It's been awhile since I've done any more work in that area, but I seem to recall doing some tests that showed the PRE edit ATI mpeg had three streams labeled Video, Audio, and Private. After editing the full multiplexed stream the two main streams reamained the same, but the "private" stream was now reported as "Unknown" and was changed to a fixed length. Also pre-edit and post edit audio streams were of different size as well.


I've never taken a close look at the ReplayTV mpegs in that way, but I will and report back what I find. I believe you may be seeing the same thing that the other forms of capture engines had. This wasn't specific to ATI but to many other types as well. Probably the same thing in the ReplayTV mpegs??


----------



## jtl

Quote:

_Originally posted by Rich A_
*I've never taken a close look at the ReplayTV mpegs in that way, but I will and report back what I find. I believe you may be seeing the same thing that the other forms of capture engines had. This wasn't specific to ATI but to many other types as well. Probably the same thing in the ReplayTV mpegs??*
I've not seen any streams besides 0xe0 (first video stream) and 0xc0 (first audio stream) in any of the R4k mpeg streams I've looked at.


----------



## Rich A

Yup,


Last night I off-loaded a few of the ReplayTV mpegs and I also did not find anything other than the normal elementary video and audio streams. So I guess my thoughts about the "padding" are not applicable here.


----------



## lcpittman

I've downloaded a couple mpgs from the RTV 4040 using replayPC and I cannot get anything to play at all. I have been trying to use Windows Media Player and it gives me an error "unsupported codec" and I tried another player as well. I have Win XP and I thought I had all the lates codecs.


BTW, what codecs do I need?


Anybody know why these files are not playing?


Thanks!


----------



## jmmsumru

I am trying to create a DVD using an extracted MPEG from Replay 3K. I originally took the raw stream, cut out the commercials in Womble (3.11 Nov 2001 version), and then converted the audio to 48K while simultaneously saving the commercial-edited MPEG. The final file seemed fine and even played in Microsoftâ€™s Media Player (Windows XP Pro); however, when I tried to create the DVD (using Sonics DVDit 2.5.2 PE), I received a GOP error stating something about similar images at XXXX time. Through reading this thread I see this is a common problem. Iâ€™ve since tried to copy and join the sections of the MPEG using â€œtransition effectsâ€ during the join. Iâ€™ve specifically used the merge effect (0.5 seconds) during joins; however, when I do this the audio goes out of sync. Prior to trying this, I did a short montage of favorite scenes (approx. 35 seconds) from the original MPEG, joining each 5-second copied clip with the merge transition and similarly the audio went out of sync. How can I join copied clips using the merge transition without having an audio sync problem? I pretty sure Iâ€™ve tried this with both a 32K and 48K version of the original MPEG. Finally, I do notice that when I join some clips that the â€œjoin pointâ€ doesnâ€™t match the transition point (i.e. the time reference between these two items are off by 0.2 seconds). At that point, I manually make the two points the same; however, Iâ€™ve tried to merge both ways and still get the audio sync problem. Thanks in advance.


-jmmsumru


----------



## breaux124

Quote:

_Originally posted by lcpittman_
*I've downloaded a couple mpgs from the RTV 4040 using replayPC and I cannot get anything to play at all. I have been trying to use Windows Media Player and it gives me an error "unsupported codec" and I tried another player as well. I have Win XP and I thought I had all the lates codecs.


BTW, what codecs do I need?


Anybody know why these files are not playing?


Thanks!*
You need an MPEG2 codec. All software DVD players provide this codec. but it's not provide with the OS.


I believe that there is a free MPEG2 codec available - Elecard (or something like that) Read back through this thread and you should find it.


----------



## lcpittman

Quote:

_Originally posted by breaux124_
*


You need an MPEG2 codec. All software DVD players provide this codec. but it's not provide with the OS.
*
Cool, I got it and it is working. Thanks for your help!


----------



## Rich A

For "jmmsumru",


Sounds strange to me. While I have had the broken GOP and other varied problems when trying to use the ReplayTV mpeg for DVD sourcing, I've never encountered any audio sync problems.


Did this sync problem show up after the edit while viewing in the PC environment or was it after burning the disc ?


Another question I have is how are you doing the edits in Womble? Sounds like you are "copying" the wanted cuts to the clipboard and then adding them together in the work area and adding FX at that point during each join. If sthe o, that's the way I do it too and again have not had any kind of problem.


Last question, are you doing this in a FAT32 environment or NTFS? I've had most succcess while using Windows 2K Pro and NTFS. I've had some odd problems trying to use Womble in a Windows XP environment though. Went back to Win2K for my editing and authoring. If you are using Womble in an XP system, that "might" be a problem. At least it was for me.


----------



## jmmsumru

First, thanks Rich A for helping me look into this problem, Iâ€™ll answer your questions.


While viewing the raw extract, I have no audio sync problems. Itâ€™s only when I try to merge (join clips from the clipboard using the merge transition) clips within Womble that I see the problem. The audio sync appears within Womble when previewing the merged clip. I havenâ€™t tried to save a â€œmergedâ€ clip to see if Media Player illustrates the same sync problem, maybe I should try that. And no, I have not yet tried to burn this to DVD (out of fear the sync problem will carryover).


I am working in a Windows XP environment and only one of the two drives in my system (the one with the video clips) is NTFS while my â€œmainâ€ drive with the OS and applications is FAT32. I have Windows 2000 but would hate to have to go back. Do you know where Womble actually saves their clipboard files and can we alter this save point? Thanks again Rich A!


-jmmsumru


----------



## Rich A

I've never really looked into the various internal things going on within Womble.



Here's some problems that I have had happen to me in the past. Maybe you can get some ideas from them.


Had various audio sync problems when moving an Mpeg from one disc to another. One NTFS and the other FAT32.


Had intermittant problems with Womble when trying to use it in WinXP. Finally ended up going back to Win2K for all my NLE needs. I don't remember if I tried using Womble in XP with XP's compatibilty mode. You can run some "picky" applications that way and sometimes that will smooth things out. What you do is to have WinXP run the application in another system. You can choose, Win2K, 98 and I think even windows 95. Once that *.exe is set, then every time you run that program WinXP will run it (and only that program) in it's own version of the other operating system. If you don't know how to do that I can give you a short how to if needed.


----------



## calvin940

ok, so I have a P4 1800, 384MB Rambus. My machine is no slouch, however, it takes crap loads of time to mux and de-mux. Is there some hardware cards that I can purchase to make this stuff go faster? I plan to do a lot of burning to DVDR authoring with my own menus, vids, etc and am getting disenchanted with the time it is taking to work with these files.


Any suggestions?


Calvin


----------



## mrwilson

Calvin, I've got a P4 1.7 with 640meg of RAMBUS using multiple 10k rpm 18gig UltraWide SCSI drives and it STILL takes a long time. About 10+ minutes for each 20-25 minutes of video.


----------



## calvin940

Quote:

_Originally posted by mrwilson_
*Calvin, I've got a P4 1.7 with 640meg of RAMBUS using multiple 10k rpm 18gig UltraWide SCSI drives and it STILL takes a long time. About 10+ minutes for each 20-25 minutes of video.*
I am having slower time frames than you... about 75 minutes to MUX about 100mins. I don't have dual scsi drives on this box... only ultra ATA drives and bus, so clearly my drive speed is inferior, but even at half the time (which let's say is a worst case for you), that's still about 50 mins for 100mins of video. That's horrible. i am thinking about getting a dual Athlon 1800 XP for this stuff, but want to make sure I don't have other options or hardware to consider. I can upgrade my drives, but I can assume that I would get up to your performance, which is still unnacceptable to me.


Calvin


----------



## breaux124

One question: If you intend to burn to DVD-R then I don't think you'd have to re-mux the streams. There are plenty of dvd authoring programs that except the two elementry streams.


As for Demuxing the streams, what program are you using? Demuxing the streams should not be too long of a process.


----------



## calvin940

Quote:

_Originally posted by breaux124_
*One question: If you intend to burn to DVD-R then I don't think you'd have to re-mux the streams. There are plenty of dvd authoring programs that except the two elementry streams.


As for Demuxing the streams, what program are you using? Demuxing the streams should not be too long of a process.*
You can import the streams separately, but when the dvd authorigin program prepares the VOB, it re-muxes them (if I understand the process correctly) - clearly when my machine is making the VOBs, it takes whole craploads of time on my machine (I was assuming that it re-muxes them when it makes the VOBs).


I used Ulead to de-mux (or Womble). Cannot remember now.


Calvin


----------



## mrwilson

I'm not de-muxing -> muxing. Sorry I didn't say that. I'm only using Womble to edit out commercials. I'm not sure why it takes so long to patches the pieces back together. Its not transcoding the sound or anything. In my case its totally an I/O issue. I've also done this on an ME P3 800 with two ata100 60gig drives. It is not much slower than the P4 with scsi.


----------



## Rich A

I think the "dual" Athlon is nice, but don't think it will help much unless the application you are using specifically has dual thread capabilities. Using dual CPU's only helps when the operating system and/or the application is specifically written for it.


However, I think both of you guys have rather long times. De-multiplexing and multiplexing times are (I think) going to be more varied as per the "size" of the video in question and not the minutes. Typically I use the low quality and one hour is just a tad under 1 gb. This takes me normally less than ten minutes. I'll time it for sure later and report back. I'm pretty sure I did a whole 2 hour movie in low quality which was about 2.1 GB and it didn't take much more than 10 or 15 minutes. I was using Womble. And my system is a dedicated NLE Win2k machine running a Raid 0 multi-disc array and an Athlon 1800+ CPU.


Some tips:


Mostly this is disc intensive. Try to have your saved output on a different physical drive from the temp or source drive.


If you DO go for dual CPUs, give a look at TMPGenc. It has specific settings for use of dual CPUs. In most cases, I think it will automatically turn on dual processing if it finds you have dual CPUs. In that case it would make a pretty big difference.


By the way. I've been using Womble for a pretty long time. I have made tons of "mini-dvds". Mostly these are low quality one hour shows. Typically it takes me about 20 minutes total, starting with the raw Mpeg to a finished 43 minute burned mini-dvd ready to stick into the dvd player for viewing. Normally a full edit is under ten minutes. (this is of course if the raw mpeg doens't have any problems) If I had to spend any more time than that, I wouldn't bother.


----------



## mrwilson

Good point Rich, I didn't mention that all my files are in HQ mode. So each half hour segment is 1.1-1.3gig. It takes about 10 for me to 'record'.


----------



## calvin940

I am working with a 100 min video that is about 2.9 Gigs.


I realize that the software needs to take advantage of the multiple processors, but I also had assumed that since aud/vi processing is so intensive, the folks that developed the software would have put support in for that (like TMPGenc as you had mentioned).


Guess I'll start spanning my stuff out and get a few faster, smaller disks to spread out my work (I have an extra SCSI card lying around as well, so I can even put them on a different bus).


Maybe that'll help change things.


When I edit the commercials out of the video, I save to a new file because I always like to have backups. That probably does me in as well (assuming that it takes much longer to create a new 2.9 gig file than to save an edit back to the original file - that's true isn't it?)


Calvin


----------



## scochran666

Well, I'm still having tons of problems with audio sync, but right now my biggest problem is working with padded programs, where they are programmed to start recording early. No editor I have tried will handle these files properly. They all (at best) stop at the point where the program "really" starts according to the program guide.


Hmmm, that might not be clear. I'm using a Panasonic Showstopper. I have a program that is set to start recording 2 minutes early. When I open the extracted file in an editor, I can only see those first 2 minutes. It looks like the Replay is putting an end of stream or end of program mark in there at what it considers to be the "real" beginning of the show. Of course, to add insult to injury, most players cruise right past the problem without a hiccup.


Is there any way around this? Is there any tool that will show me exactly what is going on in these MPEGs? I have tried de/re-muxing, and also doing the de/re-mux in different programs (including TMPGenc, Womble and uLead Video Studio). Nothing I have tried even begins to solve the problem.


I asked this earlier in the thread and never got a reply. ANY help would be appreciated. About 80% of the shows that I want to save have this problem. Thanks!


----------



## Rich A

For MrWilson and Calvin940.


A couple things I've done that seem to greatly increase speed during various editing sessions have been as follows:


Try to find out where or if the editor or utility you're using is keeping it's "temp" file. Try to keep that away from your system drive if possible. Many times the system drive is the default for it's Windows swap file. This file can grow and shrink as needed depending on how much RAM is needed by the program in question. One of the things I've done to optimize my system was to buy a main board that ran a 266 bus and also allowed me to install 1.5 GB of high density PC 133 Memory. With 1.5 GB of RAM, I was able to turn off (set my Windows Swap file to zero). I didn't really need to slow things down by having needed ram swapped to the system hard drive. This helped a lot (for some programs) by keeping all that extra memory use in memory and not being swapped to disk. I would not however recommend this. The gain is minimal with the two programs in question (Womble / TMPGenc)


I have all my drives at U-100 and 7200 rpm. The main system drive is all by itself as a master on the first IDE channel. Then I have a removable bay all by itself on the 2nd IDE controller. There I usually either have the source ReplayTV drive (when extracting the old Replay 2/3000 series mpeg. Or when doing editing, I have a clean 60 GB U-100 7200 drive which is set up as all applications' temp drive/folder. This drive is always started empty, and defragged. (note .. also empty your Windows recycle/trash bin) If you simply erase the temp drive you may still have files causing any writing to have to jump around them. Delete, and then defrag. Yes, even though the drive is really empty, defrag can still help. And if the drive is clean it will only take a few seconds. Remember, the program is "moving" and creating Gigabytes of files around all on the disc. A separate, empty and defragged disc just for the output file will help greatly.


Last is the 4 drive Raid array. That is where the original file resides that I'm editing.


Try to get at least the program's temp drive to be one that is by itself.

How important is it to keep these drives and files separated? Look at these tests I've done.


Program TMPGENC (vs 2.5) Simple Demux. File 1 GB ReplayTV.


With box for (do not use cache file) checked .. (enabled)


Using only the high speed RAID (source and final output the same) Total time = 3 minutes 24 seconds.


Using RAID for source and output to separate drive on main Board IDE 2nd channel. = 2.0 minutes.


Using RAID for source and output to separate drive on main board IDE 2nd channel BUT with Tmpgenc's (do not use cache file UN-checked) = 1 minute 40 seconds.


For comparsion I did the last test using Womble to de-multiplex and it finished in 1 minute 20 seconds.


If you are interested, doing a "save" of an edited 1 GB file with Womble using the RAID for both source and final destination was 1 minute 20 seconds also. When using two separate drives the Womble took 43 seconds to "save" a 1 gb file.


I can't stress enough the importance of splitting up the source and final destination drives to speed things up. Oh and my separate destination drive in this case happen to be a U-100 but only 5400 RPM.


Using two drives, both on the same IDE channel won't show that much of a difference. They have to be on different IDE channels to really get things moving. FWIW, my RAID array benchmarks at just under 60 Mb/s sustained sequential write. Hope that gives you some insight as to how important the "hard drives" are as to various multiplexing and editing programs.

Post script .. by using the slower 5400 rpm drive as the source and having the de-muxing files saved to the RAID, I got the demux time with Womble for the same 1 GB file down to 42 seconds.


----------



## Rich A

For scochran666,


I saw your original post .. frankly I didn't have any answers. It sounds strange. I'm going to be doing an edit of a program that I padded for 5 minutes early start and 10 minutes past the end.


I will let you know if I can duplicate your problem. Some things for you to check that "might" help?


Make sure when off-loading the ReplayTV mpeg that the Replay is not currently in use .. (doing a record or playback)


If at all possible, use an NTFS file system.


----------



## mrwilson

I've got 3 UW Scsi drives. My system drive, My RTV 'storage' drive, and the drive I 'record' my womble files to. The last two are 10k RPM UW2 drives. It still takes 15 minutes or so. I'm not de-muxing, that seems fairly quick. I'm cutting commercials and 'recording' the new file. Not sure what that entails. I am using an Adaptec 2940UW pro. I hate it, its slower than my old Buslogic 958 card, too bad they make those anymore.


----------



## Rich A

For scochran666,


Well I checked the "padded" ReplayTV mpeg I made. Had no problems.


I recorded a 1/2 hour program at Medium quality. Padded the beginning at 5 minutes and the ending at 10 minutes.


Off loaded the mpeg. Total size was 45 minutes as it should have been. Ran it through Womble, cut paste etc and found no problems.


What program are you using to extract the ReplayTV files? I'm using ReplayPC.exe. Also, everything is being done in an NTFS file system.


Maybe you might try re-installing the Womble ??


----------



## mrwilson

for the record, I'm using Replayer.jar


----------



## jgourd

All my ReplayTV mpgs have one of both the following problems:


Invalid Audio Streams


Invalid length


For the invalid length (1 hour show appearing to my mpeg play as 2 miutes, etc.) I have been able to use the Elcard decoder with TMPGEnc Merge/Cut tool to create a file that now appears to have the correct length.


For the Invalid audio stream I usually have to create a Vegas Video 3 project with the MPG file in it and re-render just the sound track as a DVD audio stream file.


The MPGs with invalid audio play just fine in most of my player software I am wondering if there is an "magic" all in one MPG file fixer app that simply repairs the file without transcoding it in any way in one easy step.


----------



## scochran666

Rich, thanks for testing it out, but I'm using a Showstopper, not a 4000. I'm working on an XP system, and the drives are NTFS. Can anyone else with a Showstopper confirm that this problem occurs for them as well?


----------



## Rainman

Iâ€™m having a problem burning even my raw, unedited mpeg files (which have actually been converted to 48K with Womble) onto DVD. Iâ€™m extracting High quality MPEGs directly from my RePlay 3K, converting the audio in Womble, and testing the burn process. I am using DVDit 2.5.2 on a Windows XP system and it always seem to get a GOP error (Too many pictures in GOP) near the beginning of the file. Iâ€™ve tried more than one file and I always seem to have the same problem. What quality setting are most of you using? What DVD creation programs are you using? I know itâ€™s not DVDit thatâ€™s causing the problem since Iâ€™ve taking one of the MPEGs and re-encoded it with TMPGE and itâ€™s worked fine. I hate to have to re-encode all my files, plus the quality seems to decrease and the audioâ€™s not as crisp. Any ideas or suggestions? Thanks!


-jmmsumru


----------



## Rich A

For scochran666,


I have three ReplayTVs. A 2000, a 3000 and a 4080. I was one of the first to putz with extracting Replay Mpeg from my original 10 GB unit (the old one with the fire wire ports that went no-where) heh heh.


The 2/3000 Replay unit's I'm pretty sure are similar to the ShowStopper.


I would use the Extract_RTV program. I've never tried that Java applet, but the Extract_RTV from a DOS window works perfectly with both my older ReplayTVs.


And for what it's worth .. I had various problems when using Windows XP and switching to Win2K worked much better.


Of course YMMV .. But I'd try Extract_RTV and Win 2K if at all possible.


----------



## scochran666

Rich, is there any way you could perform the "padded program" test on one of your older (non-4000) replay units? I'm thinking that the MPEG files are a bit different between the two generations. Maybe they eliminated this behavior with the 4000s.


Since I'm using a Showstopper, Extract_rtv is the only way I know of to get the programs off, so that's what I use. Yes, it is functionally identical to the 2000/3000 Replays.


I have a Win2K machine that I will use to experiment with this, but right now it has no drivespace available, so it will take a while to get everything organized.


Thanks!


----------



## MANowell

I'm using Womble MPEGVCR v3.11, from what I can tell it DOES reencode the data. Working with a 1 hour high quality file I trim the commercials then it takes several hours to record to the output file on a 1.5 GHZ machine. Is this typical?

Quote:

_Originally posted by Jeff D_
*Beginning and end garbage. You'll need an editor which won't reencode the data. Womble MPEG2VCR works for that. There are also tools for demuxing the audio video streams to seperate files.
*


----------



## MANowell

I'm new to video editing.


My goal is to pull high-quality MPEG files from my ReplayTV 4080 (or any other source), edit commercials from the files, and record onto DVDs. For the purpose of this question, I'm only interested in editing.


I'm running an AMD Athalon XP 1700+ chip with 512 MB RAM. Hard disk is ATA-100 7200 RPM. I have dual monitors, primary on an ATI All-in-Wonder Radeon, the other a 3dfx Voodoo 3. Oh, Windows XP Pro with all patches, as well.


I've been using Womble Nov-01 v 3.11. I open a file to be edited, a one-hour show padded one minute on each end, for 62 minutes. This is usually a little more than 2 gigabytes in size.


I chose Womble because I like the simple editing controls. Trimming and cleaning the junk out of the episode generally take 3-5 minutes and results in a 44 min file.


At this point, I click the record button in the edit/playback window, give an output file name (generally on the same drive and directory), and go away for FOUR to SIX HOURS while it completes.


From looking at the other messages, I'm seeing times of just a few MINUTES for a session.


The files I get are coming out fine, no glitches. It has never seemed rational to me that the session should take that long when content is only being removed. I know that MPEG is a stream-based format, but, still..... The WHOLE THING?


I've had poor results getting support from the publisher, as well. Emails go unanswered for days, the replies are usually very sketchy at best. Poor docs, too, IMHO.


Anyway. -- Am I doing something wrong, or does this all sound about right?


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## breaux124

When editing with Womble unless you change any of the properties it shouldn't have to re-encode the file. And it should only take a few minutes to record the new file.


If you change any of the video or audio properties then it has to re-encode the entire file, which takes a very long time.


It seems that you must be changing some property that requires the video to need re-encoding.


I can edit out the commercials from a 1 hour medium quality video and it only takes a few minutes (about 5min) to record the new video.


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## mrwilson

What settings are you guys using for 3.11? You change anything under Tools, Options?


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## Synapse

$250... you can buy all sorts of fun schmack for that much cash! No flippin way am I gonna give it to the Womble people. The 3/01 version is pirated all over the place, but I havn't seen the 11/01 version. I only wanted it because I thought it may be better with these Replay mpegs, but now I think it only adds a little minor functionality and won't help anyway.


About Womble taking a long time, breaux has it right. You must select "program stream" and it should only take a few minutes to extract the good stuff from the stream.


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## breaux124

Quote:

_Originally posted by mrwilson_
*You guys getting a special deal on Womble? I'd love to have the new version but its $250!!*
I'm not supporting software piracy, just informing


If you go to womble's website and go to the purchase page, you can download the newest install. But you'll need a serial number to activate the program. If you look hard, you should be able to find one online somewhere.


[email protected]


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## mrwilson

There is definately something different about 3.11 over 3.00. It takes about 10-15 minutes to do a 1.3gig 6mbs file in 3.00 but 3.11 only got to 2% after 10 minutes. I've tried all different settings, even leaving them alone. In 3.00 I have all filters checked and in 3.11 I've tried all combos and even none. No effect. I did notice that 3.00 thinks the file is 6mbs CBR whereas 3.11 thinks its 6mbs VBR. Changing it to CBR has no effect. Something weird is going on. At least you can have both versions installed at the same time.


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## Rich A

For MrWilson,


I no longer use the "Extract_RTV" program since getting my ReplayTV 4000. Been doing all my "downloads" directly with that 4K unit. However I "was" doing all my extracts with both the 2K and 3K RPTVs for I guess almost a year without problems. Er, I mean "strange" problems. I've always had the "bad GOP', and other things about 50 percent of the time but have usually been able to "fix" it.


However, for YOU "MrWilson" .. any friend of "Dennis" is a friend of mine. So I'll dig up my old removable 2k unit (not being used at the moment) and do a padded record for ya. Might take a couple days before I can get it all put back together.


Of course I'm assuming "Mr Wilson" is Dennis the Menace's neighbor, no? heh heh ...


For Nanowell,


I've been a long time user of MPEGVCR and MPEG2VCR. Yes, as per one of the other posts noted, you can do a lot with 250 bucks. BUT, if you intend to do any serious MPEG editing then the cost is well worth it.


It WILL re-encode the saved output IF you have changed any of the Mpeg parameters. NOTE: it ALSO re-encodes any FX effects you've added, like a fade or merge or wipe between cuts. However this encode for those effects only entails a few frames in and around the add effect. You'll notice when it is "saving" how it will pause for a few seconds at each of these changes. My added effects at an average of say 5 points only increases the "save" time about one or two minutes.


If you've been around as long as I have and had checked out "all" the true frame accurate mpeg editors, you'll see that the Womble program is by far and away the best bang for your buck. Others that do what the Womble can do cost considerable more.


250 bucks is a relative figure and you have to justify it against how much you are going to use it.


Here's a quick 1-2-3 on the best way to use it without re-encoding.


Open the mpeg. It will be added to the work area. Click on the "in and out" points that you want to "copy" to the clipboard, one by one. Use the left/up arrow for the in point and the right/up arrow for the out point. After those points are set, click on the "COPY" icon. This will put that section into the "clip list".


Now move your pointers to the next area to "copy". Keep doing this and you'll usually find a one hour TV show will have five or six clips saved. And generally the total play time of all those clips should be about 43 minutes.


Now after having put all your "wanted" clips onto the clipboard, close the main mpeg window in the work area. (you won't need it any longer)


Now drag the first clip to the work area. It will come up as did the original Mpeg movie .. but only with the new clip's length.


Mark the end of the clip (important to do this)


Now drag the next clip onto that existing clip in the work area. A 2nd mpeg window will open showing the combined two clips. At this point you can add a transistion effect or not. Again, make sure the beginning and end point of the combined clips are marked. (Important to have the end mark as each time you add a new clip from the clip list it will automatically be placed where ever you had made the mark out or end mark)


Just keep dragging and dropping the next "saved clip" from the clip list to the working area mpeg. When you are done, mark the in and out and you should see an mpeg about 43 minutes long (if doing a normal USA TV one hour show)


Now hit the RECORD button. DO NOT open the video or audio properties. Well you "can" open them .. to check them out, but be very careful not to change anything. After hitting the RECORD button, it should take anything from a few minutes to maybe 15 (if you are running something like a 233 Mhz CPU)


NOTE: .. if you HAVE the latest November version of Womble, and you are working with ReplayTV series 2 or 3000 mpeg extracts, THEN you CAN open up the "audio" only parameters before the final save, and change the 32 kHz audio to 48 kHz. This only works with the latest version of Womble. Otherwise with the older versions it will attempt a full re-encode. The lastest version WILL allow you to make that change (and only an audio change) without having to re-encode the video as well. This WILL increase the saving time, but only by a few minutes.


Lastly, a tip for you guys using the older version. (as long as it's registered) Downloading the latest version from the Womble "purchase site" should UPDATE your existing version. I'm pretty sure you don't need to re-register or get a new SN. (those of you using "borrowed" SNs etc. should still be able to upgrade) (wink) I do NOT condone piracy but I figure maybe if you get it all working correctly that somewhere down the line you might invest in it? heh heh. I did.


The latest version is sorta "hidden". It's not notated or documented on the Womble site. It's simply there for downloading on the "purchase page". If you are intending to buy it, then fill out the form and download. If you alread have an older (working) version, do not fill out anything on the page and just download it. When you click on the downloaded file to install it, it should find your older version and update it.


Hope this all helps ..


----------



## mrwilson

Thanks Rich A. I should clarify that I am using an RTV4k but using Replayer.jar to download mpegs. 3.00 is fast, 3.11 is doing something I can't figure out, it takes forever.


I'm editing a different way. I'm not copying/pasting, I'm marking the start and end of the commercials and cutting them out. Always worked for me and is quicker too.


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## mrwilson

Got it to not re-encode one 2gig ep but the lip synch is WAY off. Whats up with that?


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## Ed Rempalski

Rich,


Do you see any downside to the way Mr Wilson edits? (marking and cutting commercials). I did it the same way and I have had success and failures, probably just bad GOPs?



Also do you have any idea on why a movie (120min) where I just trimmed the ends off, would play fine in womble, play fine in win media player, but show as 28 minutes in ulead DVD movie factory?


I tried both Replayer and SwapDV downloads and got the exact results. If I look in womble at that point, there is no visible defect. I haven't had any luck with long shows (>1 hour).


----------



## mrwilson

Ed, I'm in the same boat, NO luck with any 2 hour shows! I even tried editing with Ulead and I still get that damn lip sync problem.


----------



## Rich A

Quote:

_Originally posted by mrwilson_
*Thanks Rich A. I should clarify that I am using an RTV4k but using Replayer.jar to download mpegs. 3.00 is fast, 3.11 is doing something I can't figure out, it takes forever.


I'm editing a different way. I'm not copying/pasting, I'm marking the start and end of the commercials and cutting them out. Always worked for me and is quicker too.*
Oh oh .. (he says excitedly) heh heh I THINK I've found your problem. Before you try your next Womble record do this:


In Womble title bar, open "TOOLS" ... Then select "OPTIONS" Then the "Video Encoder" tab. Make sure you have "No full sequence scanning before encoding" CHECKED (enabled) In other words DON'T do a full scan. I think it defaults to doing a full sequence scan which would make the recording process somewhat longer.


See if that doesn't speed things up. I'm sorry I didn't remember that, as I originally always had mine checked and never gave it another thought for the year or so I've been using it. As to what it affects, I'm not sure. (other than it speeding things up considerably) You know I'll have to try it WITH the full sequence scanning. It could be that although it may take longer, it may be automatically fixing those intermittant broken GOPs and stuff that I get with about 50 percent of the Replay Mpegs. I'll do a test on my system to see how much more time it takes. That "could" be why some guys trash Womble as re-encoding every time they just save. You have to have that check box enabled. Of course the down side might be that by disabling that feature (while making it faster) you might loose the ability to get "non-busted" GOPs etc. with your final save. Or in other words, if you have a perfect mpeg with no problems it'll save it fast and no NEED to do any repair. But if you have any problems then if you DON'T do the sequence scan you'll get a fast record, but no fixes will be made. Geeshhhh, I wish I thought of that long ago near the beginning of this thread. Let us know if it helps ..


----------



## mrwilson

"No full sequence scanning before encoding" Checked is the default. Already had it.


----------



## mrwilson

Just noticed something weird. I was editing an ep of Alias, 1hr. HQ is 1.7gig. After I cut out the commercials and 'recorded' it in Womble it came out as 2.1gig. I changed nothing for encoding and it took about 12minutes to write. Whats up with that? Never seen that with any of the 30 minute shows I edit.


----------



## richyrich

I have used ReplayPC to extract mpeg files from my RTV with great success. They play back fine in Windows Media Player.


When I try to load them in Adobe Premeire (I have a Pinnacle DV500) I get motion compression errors (lots of little square dots) whenever there is a scene transistion.


I used TMPGEnc to convert to AVI using Pinnacle's codec. The result was a file 4-5 times the original size with no audio.


I tried converting RTV MPEGS using TMPGEnc and can get rid of the motion errors by dropping all B frames, setting the field order to bottom first, and changing the bitrate to 6000bps or variable, but then I get audio dropouts.


Guess I could split audio out and use the original with the converted video then sync them. Seems like a lot of extra work.


I am guessing at what the correct MPEG settings are. Anybody know for sure?


Anybody else experiencing this? Any ideas on how to get around converting the file or spliing converted video with a separate audio track?


----------



## jbarnett

I am new to both ReplayTV and discussion groups...sorry if this question has been asked and answered, but I was unable to find it. Just got my 4080 and have the mixed blessing/curse of being a Macintosh person. Is there a way to move the Replay MPEG files onto a Mac?


----------



## jtl

Quote:

_Originally posted by jbarnett_
*s there a way to move the Replay MPEG files onto a Mac?*
Mac OS X, yes -- ReplayPC works just fine there. see http://replaypc.sourceforge.net/ or search here for ReplayPC. Mac OS 9 or earlier, I don't think so -- you could be the one to do it! All the info you need is in the replaypc source code.


----------



## jbarnett

Thank you, jtl


----------



## Rich A

Hi all,

I started this thread and back then I was just starting to extract the mpegs from my series 4000. Previously I had been using removable hard drives from a 3000 series with the Extract_RTV program.


Recently I've been having more and more trouble trying to get the off loaded Mpegs to work. The major problem seems to be batches of artifacting (numerous blocks) that appear over several frames. I've always had "some" trouble with the Replay Mpegs .. as I have been using the low quality to make 352x480 "mini-dvds". I'd say in the past that about 30 percent had various problems, and in all but a very few I was always able to fix it, by either re-encoding or cutting out a few frames.


But now with the 4080 unit I'm having a LOT more instances. More like 80 percent have numerous problems. Too many spread out over a one hour program to start editing each one by one.


Are any of you guys also using the low quality mpegs? And how about those of you who are using medium or high? Can you tell me what kind of failure percentage you are getting?


Note .. these all play back okay, except that if watching carefully you can see the occassional artifact. But when using the mpeg for DVD sourcing, those broken frames cause the authoring program to choke.


Then today I even had one of the low res. captures come up with a whole ton of error AND the audio was back at 32 Khz !! It seems that sometimes I get 48, and sometimes it's 32 ??


I could be wrong but it seems these problems are more common with the 4K unit than the old 3K unit.


I've tried both ReplayPC and SwapDVD and both PC corrrect and raw ReplayTV mpegs. Same problem. This doesn't show up at all while watching the playback in the ReplayTV environment. Seems like only the extracted mpegs are being affected. But I could be wrong about that.


Lastly could someone please give me the version number of the most recent software upgrade? I'm showing a version 520411140 dated January 20, 2002.


----------



## Ed Rempalski

Rich, That's the most recent Replay Software.


I've extracted about 20 shows mostly 30min shows and a few 2 hour movies. The short shows have been better (maybe 70% success), but the long ones are more like 70-80% failure.


Not so hot, but why?


----------



## Rich A

About the same here. Tonight I discovered a new problem. My Replay Shows that were recorded over the past few days are all suffering from severve audio sync problems. Note .. NOT any extracted ones. I'm talking about normal ReplayTV playback to my TV of recorded shows. So far I've tried to watch three and the audio is at least 1 to 2 seconds off. I believe that software version which you confirmed is the new one, was just downloaded within the last few days also. I hope this is not a bug in the new software. Now I guess I'll HAVE to off load those mpegs so I can stick them in my PC and offset the audio correctly. Geeshhh.


----------



## Ed Rempalski

I would reboot the Replay as well just to clean it up. I had 2 go thru the update, one of them dropped off of the network. I rebooted both and they seem fine now.


----------



## Rich A

Thanks Ed,


I rebooted the ReplayTV and although it didn't fix the already recorded out of sync mpegs, it seems like the few new recordings made since the reboot are now okay.


Back to the "glitched" mpegs problem. I recently started examining the off-loaded mpegs very carefully. Found two problems that cause havoc with DVD authoring programs.


First problem is the forementioned "blocks". In some frames quite a large area is messed up. It would be hard to see these during playback, as many times it's only one or two frames. But I have seen several frames in a row and found that when playing back that portion of the mpeg on the Replay in Slo-Mo .. the blocks clearly show up. Also when they are present in the extracted mpeg .. most of the time the DVD authoring program will choke right at that spot.


Second problem is that while the GOPs are mostly all at a fixed number of pictures there are many instances where the GOP sequence is shorter. These don't create a problem though. There is the "nominal" GOP that may be something like 15 pictures. You'll many instances where any particular GOP might be only 9 or less. Again .. this doesn't cause a problem. BUT .. once in while I'll find one GOP sequence much bigger than the nominal GOPs. More like 20-30 or more in one sequence. This really brings the DVD authoring software to it's knees.


In other words you can have GOPs in size like ...


15, 15, 12, 15, 9, 15, 15, 8, 10, 15, 15, 29, 15, 10, 8, 15, 15 etc.


It will accept the smaller GOPs but go bonkers at the one with 29 pictures.


FWIW, I've had situations where feeding the full multiplexed Mpeg program stream to the DVD software would not work, but simply De-Multiplexing that Program Stream into separate Video and Audio elementary streams WOULD work. I guess the DVD software does it's own multiplexing and therefore (maybe) some of the lesser problems are corrected.


I'm using SpruceUP dvd authoring software, (which is no longer available unfortunately) I wonder which other DVD authoring software everyone is using and if they are having similar problems.


I'm pretty sure this problem has become worse since I've gone to the series 4000 extraction. Now the question that comes to mind is if it's glitching the mpegs during the transfer via the LAN or is the Mpeg glitched at the Replay's encoding time? I'd love to crack open my RPTV 4080 and try the Extract_RTV with a removed drive. Just to see if that improves things. But I haven't even paid for this unit yet and don't want to break the seal. (was one of the lucky first who got to use it a few months before buying) I think it's due at the end of March.


A good test for anyone who "has" opened the box, would be to try an off-load via the LAN and find one that you know won't get accepted ... then remove the drive and use Extract_RTV to off load the same mpeg directly using the computer's I/O. Then compare the two. I'd do it now, but like I said, I'm reluctant to void my warranty ... at least until I pay for the doggone thing. (grin).


----------



## cvanbeek

Quote:

_Originally posted by scochran666_
*Hmmm, that might not be clear. I'm using a Panasonic Showstopper. I have a program that is set to start recording 2 minutes early. When I open the extracted file in an editor, I can only see those first 2 minutes. It looks like the Replay is putting an end of stream or end of program mark in there at what it considers to be the "real" beginning of the show. Of course, to add insult to injury, most players cruise right past the problem without a hiccup.*
I was working on a crude mpeg2 parser to display the header information. I came across an mpeg file with similar problems. The Replay box would report 36 minutes in the program guide, but play the whole hour long show. mpeg2vcr would show only 58 seconds. I think the cause was the video signal breaking up and the Replay box losing sync in a number of places.


Anyway, in my file there were no end stream marks in the middle, but the timecode field in the GOP header resets a number of times. It counted from 0 to roughly 15 minutes, then started over again at 0. It count up and reset a couple more times, with the last timecode in the file being 58 seconds. I bet mpeg2vcr uses the last timecode to determine the play length for the clip. Funny how it allows me to look at the first 58 seconds of the file and not the last 58 seconds, which corresponds to the timecode I believe it is using.


I don't know if there are any tools to fix the timecodes to test my theory. If I have some time, I might give it a try for fun.


----------



## scochran666

Quote:

_Originally posted by cvanbeek_
*


I was working on a crude mpeg2 parser to display the header information. I came across an mpeg file with similar problems. The Replay box would report 36 minutes in the program guide, but play the whole hour long show. mpeg2vcr would show only 58 seconds. I think the cause was the video signal breaking up and the Replay box losing sync in a number of places.


Anyway, in my file there were no end stream marks in the middle, but the timecode field in the GOP header resets a number of times. It counted from 0 to roughly 15 minutes, then started over again at 0. It count up and reset a couple more times, with the last timecode in the file being 58 seconds. I bet mpeg2vcr uses the last timecode to determine the play length for the clip. Funny how it allows me to look at the first 58 seconds of the file and not the last 58 seconds, which corresponds to the timecode I believe it is using.


I don't know if there are any tools to fix the timecodes to test my theory. If I have some time, I might give it a try for fun. *
Well, that would certainly explain some of the problems I have had trying to edit these things. Even some very straightforward shows start getting really funky when they are more than an hour long.


I did eventually get around the problem. The solution was to use TMPGenc's merge/cut function and slice the first couple of seconds off the recording. With no other changes, it would write out a version that could be edited. Now I'm guessing that it regenerates the time code when I do that, but I don't know for certain.


Are you aware of any Windows based parsers/base format viewers? I assume not since you were writing your own, but asking never hurt. Thanks for the info!


----------



## LintBalll

I'm getting a little concerned by this thread. Easy extraction of DVD-ready MPEG2 files is the main reason I ordered a 4k.


Is anyone having success with HIGH quality files, editing with Womble, authoring with Ulead DMF?? This is my *planned* procedure.


I don't like this talk of corrupt streams and artifacts....


----------



## mrwilson

I'm having all these strange problems too. Last night Ulead didn't like two of my edited 80s Show eps but it did like the raw replay mpegs. I burned a DVD-R with those on there but they wouldn't play on PowerDVD or a stand alone player. PDvd DID play these files before I authored them, though. My womble Edited eps played fine. I'm gonna try M2-Edit, its clunky but worked for another problem ep I had. I may give your TMPENC thing a try too.


----------



## scochran666

LintBall, before you get too spooked, please note that I am using a Showstopper, not a 4000. I have no experience with the MPEGs off of a 4000, but what I have read here indicates that the situation is at least slightly improved over the 3000/Showstopper series.


----------



## cvanbeek

Quote:

_Originally posted by scochran666_
*

Are you aware of any Windows based parsers/base format viewers? I assume not since you were writing your own, but asking never hurt. Thanks for the info!*
I did a little looking for a program, but didn't find much. I wanted to understand why certain frames looked de-interlaced wrong. Using mpeg2vcr to single frame step, it *appeared* like there was a periodic sequence of 3 progressive frames and then 2 frames with "de-interlacing artifacts". This only occurred in high motion areas, but were pretty visible during playback of cartoons.


I wrote a Perl script under Linux to "dump" the headers. It appears (if my script is correct) that all frames in the mpeg file are progressive. There are no separate top and bottom fields encoded in the mpeg file to de-interlace! That might explain why I was having trouble removing these artifacts using a de-interlace filter. I checked all three modes (extended, medium & high) and got the same results. These files were from a Showstopper model.


----------



## scochran666

Quote:

_Originally posted by cvanbeek_
*

I wrote a Perl script under Linux to "dump" the headers. It appears (if my script is correct) that all frames in the mpeg file are progressive. There are no separate top and bottom fields encoded in the mpeg file to de-interlace! That might explain why I was having trouble removing these artifacts using a de-interlace filter. I checked all three modes (extended, medium & high) and got the same results. These files were from a Showstopper model.*
Where did you get the file structure reference? I am on the verge of writing my own "MPEG Explorer", and would like to get a head start on good format information, instead of spending the next 2 days searching the net and weeding through a couple of hundred conflicting structures. Thanks!


----------



## Synapse

Well, I am having all these kinds of problems also... but I have only just started recording a few shows at -1 before they begin. Perhaps that is what screws up the file header. It could also be some other attribute of the recording preferences. In any event, I would bet it's easily solvable. Perhaps it's the large file sizes... but that makes no sense.


Have any of you tried Linux or BeOs lately? Perhaps dual booting into some other os would be beneficial when working with these files? I though BeOs was supposed to be great at video?


I wonder how all this editing gets done on a Mac... like that new baby?


----------



## scochran666

Synapse, the problem isn't that Windows is bad at editing video, it's that the Replay units play fast and loose with the MPEG specs. Frankly, the only reason we have been able to do as much as we have is that there is such a variety of MPEG editors/converters available for Windows based PCs. Note that everyone is saying things like "I de-muxed it in TMPGenc, edited out the commercials in Womble, then created the DVD in Spruce", or something to that effect.


It takes any number of tools, in various combinations, to work with these files - if they followed the spec, then this thread wouldn't exist.


Since you are padding your shows, try trimming a couple of seconds off the front using TMPGenc's Merge & Cut utility. That made a world of difference for most of my padded shows. Good luck!


----------



## scochran666

One last tip. When you use TMPGenc to trim the file, trim a little off of both ends. It ends up being more reliable than just cutting some off the front or the back.


----------



## Rich A

Interesting .. For anyone who wants to simply look at the GOP structure and see if it's open, closed, broken, or need to see how many pictures, there's a program called "BitRateView".


It also will give you a graphical view of both the bit rate and "Q" level. Plus all lot of info about VBR or CBR, contrained flags, etc.


The free version is quite useful and you can download it from the company's web site: www.tecoltd.com 


There is no nag or cripple. However the paid version adds the ability to edit certain parameters of an elementary video stream and a few other things. I bought the paid version but you can get all the information you need without it. (it was relatively inexpensive anyway, around 29 $ US if I remember.)


It's been an invaluable tool for me when working with Mpegs.


Also FWIW, in all my captures (RPTV 2000, 3000 and 4000 series) I don't believe I EVER had any kind of "time" issue. All utilities always reported what playing time it was supposed to be. Womble always showed a 60 minute record as being 60 minutes plus or minus a minue or less. This was no matter which quality was use, low, medium or high. I must be doing something wrong 


I will admit though that most of my work is with low qualities. And I'm positive about the time there as EVERY one hour TV show I edit comes out to be 43 minutes and as such fits on one CDR. The time/disc space is critical for me so I'm always watching it. And it's never been an issue.


----------



## Synapse

I wonder if these "time" problems could be related to teh codec, and perhaps fixed by using some other codec? What codec are you running, Rich?


----------



## mrwilson

I've these time issues every once in a while on rips from my 4k. I only work with HQ mpegs. For example, B5LR is about 2 hours HQ, 4.7gig, and most editors think its only 11 minutes long.


----------



## Rich A

Quote:

_Originally posted by Synapse_
*I wonder if these "time" problems could be related to teh codec, and perhaps fixed by using some other codec? What codec are you running, Rich?*
Maybe in some cases but I doubt the codec is applicable in the Womble scenario. I'm pretty sure you don't even need an Mpeg codec to edit with Womble as it uses it's own Mpeg engine when viewing and editing. (I'm taking an educated guess there)


However FWIW, I am currently using the Ligos Mpeg player which installs a good mpeg-2 codec and hooks itself to the Windows Media Player which will allow that application to then playback all Mpeg-1 and Mpeg-2. You can download a trial at at the Ligos web site and I think it was something like 25 bucks to purchase.


----------



## Ed Rempalski

When I have failures with long shows (1.5 to 2 hrs) they seem to edit fine in womble (I usually trim both ends). The failure mode is usually the show indicating some small length (11min, 28 min etc.) when trying to burn in ulead Movie Factory. I have looked, but don't see any artifact at the break point.


----------



## mrwilson

Anyone having trouble pulling shows after the upgrade? My 4k now reboots about half way into Downloading a 1 hour HQ show(s) or just all network traffic for the DL stops. Any ideas?


----------



## breaux124

Quote:

_Originally posted by Rich A_
*

However FWIW, I am currently using the Ligos Mpeg player which installs a good mpeg-2 codec and hooks itself to the Windows Media Player which will allow that application to then playback all Mpeg-1 and Mpeg-2.
*
Actually all DVD player software will allow playback of MPEG-2 video through media player or any application that supports it.


I used to work for Ravisent Technologies (Cinemaster) and we could use any competitor codec with our application and vise-versa. Actually anyone with WindowsME, there is a dvdplayer application provide by microsoft and it's very impressive. (But you must have an MPEG-2 codec installed to use it)


----------



## Rich A

Hi all,



Getting back to the original post's subject. I'd really like to hear from more of you who are using Replay Mpegs. Preferably from those who are doing it on a regular basis .. a few times a week at least.


It seems like my ReplayTV mpegs (when off loaded from the 4K) are getting worse. Over the weekend I tried 5 different shows, (4 medium and one low) and all had so many problems I could not use them.


Doesn't seem to make a difference which 3rd party program I use to get them off the Replay.


Could there be a problem transferring the Mpeg via the LAN connection in any way? The Mpegs as viewed on the ReplayTV look perfect. In fact I slowed the ReplayTV viewing to slo-mo and carefully examined the few seconds at the point where there was a messed up frame in my downloaded mpeg. Can't find anything wrong with the display "prior" to download.


The biggest problem seems to be "blocks" of certain portions of one or more frames in a row. I've seen this often in other programs when attempting to do something like change the frame size when transcoding. Or when using an encoder that has trouble with high motion areas.


I've tried both "adjusted" mpeg transfers and "raw" mpeg transfers. Makes no difference. At this point, the problem seems to be throughout the entire hour of mpeg .. sometimes in a dozen or more places. While I've had problems like this with the older 2/3000 units and "extract_rtv", back then is was only occassional, like maybe 1 or 2 out of 10 extracts. And usually it was just one or two spots in one or two frames where it could be cut and fixed easily. Now it's all over the place and sometimes covering 3 to 5 continuous frames.


This was the reason I started this thread. Need to hear from anyone who is or isn't having these problems, specifically with the ReplayTV 4000 series and any of the current Mpeg off loading software.


----------



## mrwilson

You're right, it is getting worse! We need someone to come up with a program to 'fix up' these crappy MPEGs!


----------



## NoFreakinWay

I am also having a lot of problems with the mpegs. Has anyone tried extracting them directly from the hard drive?? Maybe we could determine if it is a problem with the HTTPFS system or (forgive me jotter) a bug in swapDV? They'ld probably have to extract several and test them to get an accurate account. Maybe Extract and downlaod with swapDV and see if the files are identical..


----------



## Rich A

Some additional information.


For those of you who may be new at this we used to "extract" the RPTV mpegs from the older 2 and 3000 series ReplayTVs by physically removing the drive and using as another drive in a Windows 2K (or Linux) based PC. Then we used the Extract_RTV program to directly copy the mpeg from the actual ReplayTV drive to another drive in the PC system. This was fully within the I/O system of the PC.


After thinking about it for a while I'm pretty sure the old "extracting" method did NOT have this "artifacting" (blocks) problem. Usually it was just a broken GOP or something. I'm now pretty sure 90 percent of my current problems trying to pull the RPTV mpegs off VIA the LAN are mostly actual glitched frames.


Something to think about is that we are now actually "downloading" these large Mpegs rather than "copying" them from one drive to another. Would that be a correct assumption on my part?


I'm kind of thinking along the lines of some kind of problem with a LAN type transfer vs internal computer I/O. Anybody follow me?


I guess the REAL test would be to take the same show and first "off load" it with either ReplayPC or SwapDVD. Then remove the RPTV 4000 hard drive and do an actual "extract" using Extract_RTV. Then compare them them at the "glitch" points found.


I'm reluctant to break the seal on my 4000. But will do so if no one else can step forward to make this test ...


----------



## Rich A

In the previous post I said, " Then we used the Extract_RTV program to directly copy the mpeg from the actual .... "


I think "copy" may not be the correct word to use. This was not a simple "copy" from one drive to another. That's what the "Extract_RTV" program did. It enabled us to "extract" it from the RPTV disc to the PC disc.


----------



## jtl

Quote:

_Originally posted by Rich A_
*I'm kind of thinking along the lines of some kind of problem with a LAN type transfer vs internal computer I/O. Anybody follow me?


I guess the REAL test would be to take the same show and first "off load" it with either ReplayPC or SwapDVD. Then remove the RPTV 4000 hard drive and do an actual "extract" using Extract_RTV. Then compare them them at the "glitch" points found.*
I've just now verified that an 11 meg file retrieved with my 'httpfs' client matches the one copied off a few weeks ago with extract_rtv; I've previously verified that my httpfs client retrieves MPEGs identical to the ones ReplayPC 0.3 retrieves. That's not perfect, but it gives reasonable confidence that ReplayPC 0.3 works properly.


Have you verified that ReplayPC and SwapDV retrieve identical files?


----------



## mrwilson

I'm having the same problems whether I use replayer.jar or swapdv. These are files that have been on the rtv for some time so wouldn't be an encoder issue from the software upgrade.


----------



## mrwilson

Ok, I postedon doom9.org looking for some mpeg tools. This is what I found:

http://www.offeryn.de/dv.htm 


An mpeg analyzer and another to 'fix up' pva type files. If you read the page it basically talks about Haupaugge type cards and how their file format is basically the same format as the encoder chip's buffer, so it isn't 100% mpeg compliant, I wonder is this is what ReplayTV is doing. Anyway, give them a shot. I'm gonna play with them when I get home from work.


----------



## Rich A

For "jtl" ..


I don't really think it's an "application" problem. I was thinking more in lines of the transfer process.


I would feel better if your comparison was with a couple of file at least a gigabyte. As I've said, this seems to happen about 80 percent of the time. So it could be possible that a small 11 MB file might be one of those 2 out of 10 good ones.


I'm checking tonight with off loads of the same file with both ReplayPC and SwapDV. But I'm pretty sure the problem I'm having is not specific to either application.


What I would like to do is to pull the hard drive out of my RPTV 4K and then use the Extract_RTV to off-load the mpeg, giving me three copies .. Extract, ReplayPC, and SwapDV. This will take some time.


And thanks Mr. Wilson for that link to the mpeg utilities. I'm on my way there to check it out.


----------



## jtl

Quote:

_Originally posted by Rich A_
*I would feel better if your comparison was with a couple of file at least a gigabyte. As I've said, this seems to happen about 80 percent of the time. So it could be possible that a small 11 MB file might be one of those 2 out of 10 good ones.*
yeah, me too, but the 11mb file is the largest one in the system partition, the only one I extracted last time I had the drive pulled...and nobody else has yet piped up with anything better.


----------



## NoFreakinWay

Wish I would have thought of that! :-}


Anyway, has anyone removed there hard drive from a 4K? There have been a lot of people talking about upgrading, maybe someone could extract one when they upgrade and give us a report? I don't believe its in the software either, possibly in the HTTPFS file exchange code. What ever the problem is it doesn't appear to affect the replays ability to play the mpeg.


NFW


----------



## Synapse

I had only installed the Ligos codec via their LSX Mpeg Suite in order to get TMPGEnc to work. It refuses to work with any of my mpegs without it. I have an ATI Radeon 7200, and they DVD player that comes in Multi Media Center 7.5 (MMC75) is what I have been using without problems. However, I don't think I can get any other codec to do the trick... perhaps it's a problem with the ATI's current drivers. I am running the latest version that ATI recommends. I'll do some more experimentation and report back.


----------



## mkruss

Here's an update to mrwilson link to the fixup utility. I downloaded PVASTRUMENTO and had it check out a 4 gig Replay 4k file I was having trouble with when editing in Womble. In the output from Womble, the audio would be a bit out of sync. Here is what the log said when I had it reprocess the original Replay file:


***

*** PVAStrumento 2.0.16

*** running at 02-25-2002 22:04

***

Stream info for

D:\

eplay\\shows\\Mark Twain-1.mpg


VIDEO: Resolution 720 x 480

Aspect ratio is 4:3

Frame rate 29.97 fps

Nominal bitrate 6000000 bps

first PTS: 00:00:00.252


AUDIO: MPEG-1, Layer 2

48.0 kHz, Stereo

Bitrate 224 kbps

Frame Length 24.0 ms (672 bytes)

first PTS: 00:00:00.200


Audio starts 52 ms early

(->video delay on muxing)


==MAKING MPEG2 PS==

MPG: F:\\MPG Fixup\\Mark Twain-1 fixed.mpg

FIXING startup delay.

FIXING stream synch.

ADJUSTING GOP timecodes.


Syncing start: Cutting audio.

ALERT> video frame missing at 00:00:00.000

ALERT> Temporal structure wrong in GOP - dropping

Done.


Video bitrate: max 9687 , avg 4198 kbps

Setting first sequence header to avg. bitrate


Video: 230733 pics 02:08:18.798

Audio: 320783 frames 02:08:18.792

-------------------------------------------


You will notice that it reports that the audio starts 52 ms early and that there is a frame missing at 00:00.


The long and the short of it is that IT FIXED the mpg file! I used the reprocessed output to edit in Womble and it outputed with perfect sync.


It took PVASTRUMENTO about 20 mins. to process the 4 gig file and then Womble 20 mins. to process the edited file. This sure beats using TMGEnc's 7 hour re-encoding of an edited file this size.


----------



## mrwilson

Did you have it changed it to VBR in PVAS?


I tried it on a 1.2 gig 80s show ep and it made it worse.


I'll try a 4 gig file that I've had a while.


----------



## mkruss

Quote:

_Originally posted by mrwilson_
*Did you have it changed it to VBR in PVAS?


I tried it on a 1.2 gig 80s show ep and it made it worse.


I'll try a 4 gig file that I've had a while.*
I used the default settings to get my results. I just used the "Make PS" button. I did review the settings and didn't see anything that I thought needed changes.


I will also test some smaller files to see if I get different results. BTW, my test file was recorded at the high setting.


----------



## mrwilson

Thanks, mine was at HQ also. I still couldn't get Ulead DVD Movie Factory to load it for authoring though.


----------



## mkruss

Strange, I did test mine with MoveFactory and it accepted it.


----------



## mkruss

mrwilson, I just got home and tried processing a 30 min (900 mb) show with PVASTRAMENTO and it bombed like you said. This one was recorded at medium quality. I will play more with it later tonight.


----------



## Rich A

Just a note .. I saw a reference to "changing to VBR mode". All the RPTV mpegs ARE video variable bit rate.


I gotta try that fix utility. Sounds like it may also be a fix for "other" similar problems that PC video captures often have. Thanks guys.


----------



## Rich A

Quote:

_Originally posted by jtl_
*I've just now verified that an 11 meg file retrieved with my 'httpfs' client matches the one copied off a few weeks ago with extract_rtv; I've previously verified that my httpfs client retrieves MPEGs identical to the ones ReplayPC 0.3 retrieves. That's not perfect, but it gives reasonable confidence that ReplayPC 0.3 works properly.


Have you verified that ReplayPC and SwapDV retrieve identical files?*
I finally had a chance to do some more testing. First, I believe there are "two" different problems.


One .. is the "structure" of the mpeg being screwed up. Things that cause error messages about "temporal differences in GOP" and such when used as sourcing for DVD or other authoring.


Two .. a "new" problem I've encountered with the actual video being messed up.


Last night I download three one hour movies. I did each twice. Once with SwapDV and again with ReplayPC.


Both had the normal internal mpeg problems about GOPs and sequences, etc. But only the SwapDV had the messed up video. I then played back the moives to several points where the SwapDV copy showed glitches in the video playback (blocks etc) And at the same time played back the movie directly from the ReplayTV. I slowed the ReplayTV down with slo mo, and watched carefully. The glitched video frames were only on the SwapDV copy and not on the ReplayTV itself. Nor on the ReplayPC copies. Hmmm, maybe I'll stick a few Jpeg frame captures showing the differences on my web site. At least then everyone will know what I mean by artifacting and blocks.


Don't go bonkers now .. we really need to hear from others who would also have a "critical" eye towards this. This "might" be something system specific to my own system. We need more input from others.


----------



## jtl

Quote:

_Originally posted by Rich A_
*Both had the normal internal mpeg problems about GOPs and sequences, etc. But only the SwapDV had the messed up video.*
Do you have md5sum or something similar, to get high-quality checksums of the files? If not, could you at least check if the SwapDV and ReplayPC versions are the same size?


Too bad there's not SwapDV source code to look over...


----------



## Rich A

Well, I've been playing with that Mpeg utility "PVAStrumento" and so far it's fixed every mpeg compatibilty issue on three files. (nothing to do with quality of the video)


What a fantastic utility. It's like the "Holy Grail" of mpeg utilities. Fixes all kinds of things.


I already blew away those samples I did. But I'll be happy to off load a couple more and give you their file sizes.


----------



## Synapse

I just ran this PVAStrumento 2.0.16 on a problem mpeg, and it started to process the stream, then immediately crashed in my msvcrt.dll... would that be an ATI Radeon device driver, or a directx file? I guess I need to swing over to the ms knowledgebase. I may need to try a new flavor of video drivers. I am running the latest ATI recommended ones. I really need to buy a DVD-R burner. $299 plus $3 a blank... worth every penny.


----------



## jtl

Quote:

_Originally posted by Synapse_
*I just ran this PVAStrumento 2.0.16 on a problem mpeg, and it started to process the stream, then immediately crashed in my msvcrt.dll... would that be an ATI Radeon device driver, or a directx file? I guess I need to swing over to the ms knowledgebase. I may need to try a new flavor of video drivers. I am running the latest ATI recommended ones. I really need to buy a DVD-R burner. $299 plus $3 a blank... worth every penny.*
msvcrt = MS Visual C RunTime, nothing to do with video drivers or direct x.


----------



## Rich A

Quote:

_Originally posted by jtl_
*Do you have md5sum or something similar, to get high-quality checksums of the files? If not, could you at least check if the SwapDV and ReplayPC versions are the same size?


Too bad there's not SwapDV source code to look over...*
Well this last test was enlightening. I may have thrown out a "red herring" so to speak.


I off loaded one of the three files known to have problems a 2nd time. I knew right were the biggest artifacting was and figured it would be a good test.


One download with ReplayPC. The same file downloaded again with SwapDV.


Both files identical in all ways. Both exactly 1,875,673.088 bytes. I ran them through a couple of mpeg utilities so I could examine them frame by frame. This time there were NO blocks in EITHER file. What ?? I compared the actual GOPS at random parts of the movie and exact same frames. The files are identical.


Okay, like I said before .. don't go crazy over this. I had a feeling it was NOT an application issue. Here's what my best guess is. The first time I did this I started the download and left the machine unattended. Didn't come back for an hour or so. I'm thinking that perhaps during the SwapDV extract, either the LAN became busy, or the ReplayTV started a recording. I'm going to do another test tomorrow and try on purpose to run both programs while the ReplayTV is in a high quality recording mode.


I'm thinking these video frame quality qlitches are being caused by either an overloaded replay engine or something screwing up on the LAN. I know for sure there was NOTHING going on this time as I sat by the machines watching. More later.


----------



## jtl

Quote:

_Originally posted by Rich A_
*I had a feeling it was NOT an application issue. Here's what my best guess is. The first time I did this I started the download and left the machine unattended. Didn't come back for an hour or so. I'm thinking that perhaps during the SwapDV extract, either the LAN became busy, or the ReplayTV started a recording. I'm going to do another test tomorrow and try on purpose to run both programs while the ReplayTV is in a high quality recording mode.


I'm thinking these video frame quality qlitches are being caused by either an overloaded replay engine or something screwing up on the LAN. I know for sure there was NOTHING going on this time as I sat by the machines watching. More later.*
Nothing like that should cause artifacts, though -- that would mean a corrupted file download, which means an application bug on one side or the other.


----------



## NoFreakinWay

Quote:

_Originally posted by Rich A_
*Well, I've been playing with that Mpeg utility "PVAStrumento" and so far it's fixed every mpeg compatibility issue on three files. (nothing to do with quality of the video)


What a fantastic utility. It's like the "Holy Grail" of mpeg utilities. Fixes all kinds of things.


I already blew away those samples I did. But I'll be happy to off load a couple more and give you their file sizes.*
Rich,


I used the same utility and it caused problems with the output mpeg. Med quality 30min. I got jerking on the video after the utility was run. What codec are you using? I'm thinking maybe that has to do with it. The mpeg played OK before running PVAStrumento. Its pretty confusing stuff.... I am using the Elecard codec in Media player..


----------



## Synapse

Now why would it crash my Visual C Runtime enviornment? I am running XP with the latest updates. Does anyone know exactly where I might download an update or reinstall of just the runtime? I seem to get close to it on microsoft's site, but the final link is dead.


----------



## Rich A

Quote:

_Originally posted by NoFreakinWay_
*


Rich,


I used the same utility and it caused problems with the output mpeg. Med quality 30min. I got jerking on the video after the utility was run. What codec are you using? I'm thinking maybe that has to do with it. The mpeg played OK before running PVAStrumento. Its pretty confusing stuff.... I am using the Elecard codec in Media player..*
Hi "NFW" ...


My NLE machine has the Ligos driver in it. I also have Ligos LSX encoder and it has a companion "player" you can get separately (I think it's like 25 bucks or something) FWIW I also have a system with only one of those ATI All in Wonder video/capture cards in it. It comes with it's own multimedia center application which happens to enclude their own DVD player. That system also works fine. (no Ligos there) Installing the DVD player application gave me Mpeg-2 capability.


I've never really had any kind of problem with playback of the ReplayTV mpegs. Mostly problems during the authoring with the authoring program giving me errors like "temporal problesm" and broken GOPs etc. That utility you guys clued me in about has so far fixed "those" problems with every ReplayTV Mpeg I've tried so far. (about 5 all medium) Tonight I'll have to test some of the low quality as well.


I "thought" that Mpeg Utility (sorry I'm at work and forgot the name) would fix SVCD frame captures made by my ATI All In Wonder captures. It has a pack size block option which was one of the problems with the ATI mpeg. But it didn't work. There must be some other intrinsic parameter within the ATI Mpeg that still needs "adjustment". Parsing it through TMPGenc (de/remux) with the SVCD profile is still needed to fix the ATI files.


However the mpeg utility does seem to fix up all those RPTV files just fine. (so far) ..


----------



## Rich A

In all reality, I would like to point out that you really don't need any codec to take a ReplayTV mpeg from extraction to a burned DVD (or mini-dvd) You only need the codec if you intend to watch it on your computer.


For example, I have one test system that consists of nothing but Windows SE and Womble and SpruceUp.


You don't need "any" kind of codec to use Womble. It has it's OWN playback engine. I've loaded all kinds of mpeg on this "codec-less" machine as was able to edit them and play them in Womble.


Then of course there is the DVD authoring software, "SpruceUp". It too comes with it's own player. No "codecs" required.


I only point this out, because I see a lot of posts where the thinking is that some codec works better than another in various editors. Any editor worth it's salt doesn't need it.

Just to verify what I said, I formatted a disc with Windows ME and loaded ONE program .. Womble. It edited and played back every Mpeg I gave it.


Of course I could not play it within the Windows enviroment itself. But had no trouble editing and burning a Mini-DVD with "no" mpeg-2 codec installed.


If you are trying to (for example) fix some problem you are having with Womble, IMHO you are wasting your time fooling with codecs. Maybe also for other utilities as well. I've always thought the only need for an mpeg-2 codec was if you wanted to play it directly in windows with a software player or Windows media player.


----------



## bobw

Quote:

_Originally posted by Rich A_
*Well, I've been playing with that Mpeg utility "PVAStrumento" and so far it's fixed every mpeg compatibilty issue on three files. (nothing to do with quality of the video)


What a fantastic utility. It's like the "Holy Grail" of mpeg utilities. Fixes all kinds of things.


I already blew away those samples I did. But I'll be happy to off load a couple more and give you their file sizes.*
I have a Panasonic SS, and tried to use this utility along with tmpgenc. The utility does clean things up substantially and makes unusable mpegs usable. However, I've noticed that it introduced sporaric async problems between the audio and video.


What settings did you use? I've been trying to fiddle with its settings, and still can't resolve the dreaded "lip sync" disease.


/Bob


----------



## Synapse

Rich, I did some teting myself, after you clued me in about codecs and Womble. However, what codec I have installed on my machine does affect TMPGEnc. It refuses to work with any files for me unless I first install the ATI codec, and then the Ligos one. Only after that will it work on the few non-problematic files. Strange. Anyway, I am finally running the 12/01 (311) verison of Womble, and I loaded up M2 Edit Pro yesterday, M2 has worked with every problem file I have thrown at it so far! My intention is to not use TMPG at all if I can help it, anyway.


----------



## Synapse

I just grabbed the last Enterprise episode recorded in medium quality with Replayer.jar, edited it up with Womble 12/01, and burnt it with Nero. It plays fine on the PC, but my Daewoo 5700 player has problems with it. These may just be with the bitrate swings, but may not.


So, I then grabbed the same file with SwapDV using PC Mpeg tweaking. I ran this one through PVAStrumento, but when editing this new stream in Womble, my audio gets out of synch?! Strange.


Right now I am taking that first file, from replayer.jar and edited with womble, and running each of those streams through pvas. I am hoping these new files make an svcd that the Daewoo plays well.


I will report on my progress... has anyone else made any nice svcds lately?


----------



## Synapse

Odd... these new files, taken with replayer.jar, edited with womble, then processed with pvas, play fine in XP, but are out of audio/video sync on the Daewoo 5700 player. Audio and video remain in-sync with the non-pvas files on the 5700, but they are both totally messed up when played back on it; the video has lots of artifacts, and the audio sometimes goes away entirely. Next I will get the file from the replay with SwapDV using PC file tweaking, edit it in Womble, and then burn it.


It looks like this PVAS makes files that actually are out of synch on my 5700 player, but good on the pc. More experimentation. That's what I always tell the ladies.


----------



## Synapse

Ut oh... the 5700 didn't like that CDR either. So I didn't waste any time on the bitrate issue, I checked a disk I made a week or so ago. I had captured Enterprise "Shadows of P'Jem" in High Quality, edited it with Womble 3/01, and burnt it in Nero. It plays fine in the 5700... the first segments peak bitrate is 8125kbps, 3317adv, and 6000nominal (of course, being a hi qlty replay file). The new file peaks at 5808, with a 2421adv and 4000nominal. It's not the bitrate or bitrate swings.


So, perhaps the new Womble 3/12 is the cause? More likely it's that one of the recent reply software updates deserve the blame. Ut oh, that would be bad.


----------



## Synapse

My PC's configuration must have gotten screwed up. I havn't explored it much, but after removing the new version of Womble and reinstalling the old 3/01 flavor, I was able to edit the file I had xfred with SwapDV and make a nice little XSVCD in Nero that played just fine on my Daewoo 5700. Strange, the last two CDR's I was forced to overburn, this one I wasn't. I checked the file sizes and I shouldn't have had to overburn the others, they were all 635Meg or there abouts. I must be stoned, or something.


----------



## breaux124

Quote:

_Originally posted by Synapse_
*Rich, I did some teting myself, after you clued me in about codecs and Womble. However, what codec I have installed on my machine does affect TMPGEnc. It refuses to work with any files for me unless I first install the ATI codec, and then the Ligos one. Only after that will it work on the few non-problematic files. Strange.*
TMPGEnc does not have it's own playback engine, so it needs additional codecs to work. So in this case yes the codecs can effect things. You can use many different codecs through TMPGEnc.


Whereas Womble uses it's own independent playback engine, so whatever codecs are on your system have no effect to Womble.


----------



## Rich A

In reference to TMPGenc and needing codecs, yes that is true. My example was specifically calling for Womble and SpruceUp and nothing else. Just to show how in one instance any Mpeg-2 codec is not needed.


Along those lines I *did* say something about some editors requiring a codec.


A fact of digital life. (for the most part) "True" NLE mpeg editors or authoring software that have their own "encoding" capabilities are strong on the editing and weak on encoding.


"True" encoders that have some editing capabilities are strong on encoding and weak on editing.


Womble is primarily an "editor" with a so-so encoder.

TMPGenc is primarily an encoder, with a so-so editor.


Each has their own primary function and works best in that primary function.


Also for Synapse. A bit of information I hope will be useful.


I only use the "raw" unmodified Mpegs from the ReplayTV. I use ReplayPC or SwapDV for the extraction. Either works fine.


I'm using the latest (12/01) Womble. In another digital video forum I hang around, we discuss Womble quite a bit. Many guys have reported they were using the 03/01 version without trouble and when they switched to 11/01 they had problems. Then when they switched to 12/01 those problems went away again.


From all that ... one "might" conclude that 3/01 was okay. Then with the 11/01 update they introduced some new problems which were fixed with the 12/01 update.


Also .. that utility (with the funny name mentioned earlier) is buggy. When I downloaded it and looked at the "features" I was all excited. However, as some others have reported, many of those features don't work correctly and it "can" introduce more errors in the finished mpeg. Most agree that it has huge potential but after giving it a very thorough trial, I'd have to agree that it's creating problems (maybe more than it's fixing).


Lastly .. I am just totally confused about the problem of glitched Mpegs from the Replay. I "have" been having a lot of trouble with this up until a couple days ago. Now, it's working perfectly again. No more blocks in the video. In fact, I've been just editing out the commercials and burning them directly as a Mini-dvd. I've tried everything to make it screw up as it was for the past several weeks. But every test is fine. (I burned 3 low quality and 2 medium quality mini-D's last night) There is NO problem with either the ReplayPC or the SwapDV as far as I can tell.


I even tried waiting until the ReplayTV was in the midst of capturing a medium quality show, and off-loaded some existing one hour medium shows at the same time. No problem.


At THIS point in time I'd have to honestly say I'm having NO problems with ReplayTV mpegs. However I fear that may change down the road.


What I've found to date:


The ReplayTV mpegs as they exist on the ReplayTV are perfect.


The problem with glitched video (when it happens) happens no matter which "extracting" program I use and is not being caused BY either program.


The problem with glitched video (when it happens) seems to be random and then when it is happening, happens for any video being off-loaded. This goes on for an unkown period of time and then mysteriously "fixes itself" at a later date.


----------



## JJON2121

I have not seen anything said about just capturing to a pc through any video capture card or device. Although it is in realtime, it is much easier to capture and edit programs.


I use my dazzle and capture lots of music in shows (such as Boston Public and Ally McBeal) as well as favorite scenes. I can easily edit the files and store them on a large drive. I only use MPEG1 at 300,000 bitrate. Of course, MPEG2 will give you a bigger image on the computer with the same quality, but the file is much larger.


I like to play them back on my TV with my laptop video out with the media player in full screen mode (I also have a matrox dual head g400 card that can play media files in full screen automatically).


The MPEG1 picture is pretty good on the TV (far better than full screen on the computer) and most tv-out cards or devices allow you to adjust the picture to some extent.


I go into my RTV line1 (SAT is in line2) and can then record or just watch the video I am playing using my RTV remote.


You can string groups of shows together and put them back onto your replay for viewing anytime you want. When I switch to line1 on the RTV, whatever I am playing on the computer will go right into the buffer.


----------



## Synapse

I just grabbed a Voyager episode recorded in high quality off of KJZZ that was only 802meg after editing out the commercials with Womble 3/01. Strange, because I have another Voyager episode recorded in high qulaity from WPWR that is 2gigs before I edit it up! There is no way it's going to get down to a resonable size. I just made an XSVCD out of that first episode. It's plays well in the Daewoo 5700. So, no transcoding required yet again from the Replay to CDR, and in high quality mode at that. I did have to use one of my 99min CDRs, and overburn in Nero on my Plextor 2410a... but it worked! I may hold a bit on the DVD-R, till I earn some more $!


----------



## Ed Rempalski

I've tried this several times tonight. I took a downloaded 137min movie and trimmed the ends in womble. The resultant file plays fine on the PC. I tried PVAS with several gyrations on the repair settings. All results failed to work on the file when pulling it into Ulead Movie Factory. On the PC the "fixed files" also seemed to have a constant "Surge" or "Dip" in the playback speed at about 1 sec intervals, just looks kinda funky.


I have never gotten any show over 1 hour to work within UMF. When large files are pulled into Movie Factory, it reports the file as something like 9-17 minutes long. So I then used womble to break the file up into five 20 minute segments. I then added them all into Movie Factory as seperate chapters. This results in a working DVD. The burn took about an hour for some reason (DVD-RW on Pioneer A03). At this point I think I'll check in with Ulead Tech to see if there are size limits for contiguous files.


If it takes more time to download and download, edit, and burn to DVD than it does to just record in real time onto a stand-alone DVD+RW recorder (just dump to DVD like we did with VCRs), I may just go that route for a while...


----------



## Synapse

Tonight I grabbed a 1hr Voyager episode recorded in High Quality which was 1.4gig. I used Womble v3.11 (3/01) to make six mpegs totalling 813meg. Can you believe that? 1.4g down to 8m? Anyway, these files made a high quality XSVCD on 99min CDR media. I figured the peaks and swings in the datastream would render it unplayable in the Daewoo 5700, but it played just fine, and looked great! There were a few times it hiccuped, but when it did it was corrected immediately and didn't really distract from the show. I bet that would be eliminated entirely if I recorded in medium quality.


What I have learned is that the exact same show from two different feeds can have up to a 30% differential in size! The smaller files actually look at bit more "lossy", but they still look good and burn well on oversized CDR media. That is kinda nice. I still need that DVD-R so I can get some of the movies off of that box. I need the space!


----------



## mrwilson

Synapse, a noisy picture will compress less and have more artifacts.


----------



## BaysideBas

Not to overstate the obvious, but for proper playback on a PC you need a fast drive, 7200RPM or better, and make sure that the movie isn't fragmented. I had movies that would just not play in Movie Factory which, when I copied the file to a pristine 7200RPM drive zipped right along.


----------



## Gnarf

I took a 30 min episode of The Simpsons at Medium quality and edited out the commercials using Womble (12/01). This brought it down to 20 minutes. I then used TMPGEnc to get it to SVCD format. I burned it using Nero's Super Video CD template.


I put it in my DVD and it was very choppy.


Then I pressed the >> button on my DVD remote and it was PERFECT. The picture and sound were perfect while in >> mode.


Can anyone tell my why? and how can I fix this prior to burning? I'm new at the multimedia stuff, but I'm assuming it has something to do with the bitrate or the fps?


Can someone shed some light?


----------



## Synapse

mrwilson: first, you were great in "Cast Away". So, even though both feeds were from Dishnet, I guess the first one (that was over 2gig) was a bit noisy. The picture looked dark and had some wavyness going on... the second one looks much better, and like I said was only 1.4gig or so. I guess Dishnet just picked up a noisy feed for that other channel.


----------



## Ed Rempalski

For the Record. Ulead Movie Factory can NOT handle files over 4gig. I confirmed with Tech Support. I'm running XPpro NTFS with Womble and have no problem creating 4+ gig Mpegs. Movie Factory is a rev behind the times.


If you import any file over 4gig (1 hour+ in length) it will display a run length of 5-15 minutes. If you break the show into smaller files you can import them all into Movie Factory and life is good.


The only hitch is that the multiple pieces then have to be re-rendered by movie factory. A 1:20 show took about 1 1/2 hours to render and burn to DVD-RW.


Anyone know of another simple authoring prog that can handle one big file?


----------



## Synapse

Is there a way to prevent the new 12/01 version of Womble from opening each new clip after creation? I had been using the 3/01 version, and just went back to it partly because of this behavior. I thought I might try the newer version again.


Tonight I made another XSVCD from the Replay. I used SwapDV to extract the file, with PC Mpeg Tweaking enabled. Then created six chapters from it with Womble 3/01. Burnt it onto a 99min CDR via Nero... it plays wonderfully in the Daewoo 5700. I don't really intend to keep anything but new Enterprise episodes at this point, but I enjoy perfecting the process.


----------



## bobw

I've got a showstopper, and I've been trying out Womble for the last few days. I came across a problem with the standard quality (352x480) recordings when trying to burn XSVCDS


Basically, I used womble to edit out the commercials, then to I cut segments out and saved them to reasonable chunks (

I think I'm doing things correctly. I've tried saving it using Womble in both "program stream" and "program stream SVCD mode". I've tried burning it with Nero, SVCD mode, "non-compliant" mode.


If I re-encode the file using tmpgenc, then it works fine; I just don't want to spend all that processing time to re-encode. Ideas?


----------



## Synapse

bobw: I have noticed this myself... sometimes when Nero imports a file it thinks it is anywhere from 5% to 100% larger then it really is. Strange, I am not sure what causes it, or how to fix it.


----------



## MANowell

I'm using (attempting to use!) this package for building DVDs that I'm getting from my ReplayTV 4080 using ReplayPC.


I go to put a 4.1GB mpeg2 file on a 4.7GB DVD. It says not enough room. I downsample it to a 3.7GB mpeg2 file, then DVDIt! says it will fit, but when I go to do a burn, it still won't! It looks like (from checking the temp files) that it's turning my 3.7GB file into a 4.65GB file before it burns it......


Anybody know much about this program? Support seems pretty dismal. How can I tell, in advance, what I can fit on a disc? This "process for three hours and then say nope" method is for the birds!


Thanks!


----------



## Ponziani

Quote:

_Originally posted by MANowell_
*I'm using (attempting to use!) this package for building DVDs that I'm getting from my ReplayTV 4080 using ReplayPC.


I go to put a 4.1GB mpeg2 file on a 4.7GB DVD. It says not enough room. I downsample it to a 3.7GB mpeg2 file, then DVDIt! says it will fit, but when I go to do a burn, it still won't! It looks like (from checking the temp files) that it's turning my 3.7GB file into a 4.65GB file before it burns it......


Thanks!*
One reason is that the default for DVDIt! is to reencode the audio from the 224kb/s MPEG layer II audio to linear PCM, which increases the space for audio beyond that in the original file (by a factor of around 6x!) If you have DVDIt! PE, you can have it encode to Dolby Digital instead.


----------



## Synapse

Well, this may account for the size problems...


I think the Replay mpegs use a packet size of 2048, but SVCDs are Mode2 and expect a packet size of 2324. So, they dont fit... if you burn that image, usually you get all sorts of image problems and popping in the audio. Not good.


To get around this, I used VCDEasy to "image" the svcd first, and then burnt it in CDRWIN. Worked like a charm. However, VCDEasy seems to be a front end for VCDImager which is actually doing this work.


Another way to do this is to use a DVD Authoring package, like ULead DVD Factory. However, if your burning onto CDR, your player most likely doesn't play CDRs with a DVD format. I made one, it plays great on the PC, but my Daewoo 5700 player rejected it.


All we really need to do is get Nero to allow us to burn in Mode1 instead of Mode2, but from within it's SVCD Template... any ideas? Or perhaps there is a better solution?


----------



## Rich A

Yup, Synapse is right on. The "packet" size for VCD and SVCD is different from that of DVD. I don't remember, but am pretty sure his packet size figures are correct. This should be taken into consideration when doing out of spec. stuff like XSVCD. Although the ReplayTV MPEG is proper for DVD directly, I don't know what Nero would do (even with compliancy turned off) and would guess all kinds of "playback" problems could happen when using DVD packet size source on a disc that had SVCD layout.


I'm thinking that if this is what some are doing, perhaps doing a demultiplex and then multiplexing with some multiplex software that has an SVCD profile and can just change the pack size etc. without re-encoding the video/audio would be the best bet for a proper playing XSVCD.


All I've had experience with is using dvd authoring to make actual compliant DVD title sets and then burn those to CDRs. Works great with the low quality RPTV mpegs.


----------



## MANowell

Sorry it took me so long to get back with this, but: Thanks! That made a huge difference in file size. What are the downsides, if any, of doing two-channel Dolby Digital (which seems odd) rather than PCM?

Quote:

_Originally posted by Ponziani_
*


One reason is that the default for DVDIt! is to reencode the audio from the 224kb/s MPEG layer II audio to linear PCM, which increases the space for audio beyond that in the original file (by a factor of around 6x!) If you have DVDIt! PE, you can have it encode to Dolby Digital instead.*


----------



## Zugig

I would like to try out the WOmble MPEG-2 s/w before I plunk down $300, but I can't find the MEPG-2 version of their demo that was discussed earlier. Where can that be found?

Thanks.


----------



## Ed Rempalski

I had contacted the Womble folks directly and they emailed me a key, good for 15 days. I then downloaded the full mpeg2 version. Tried it, liked it and then bought it (I think it's around $250.00 now). It's very fast and easy to use.


----------



## bobw

Quote:

_Originally posted by Rich A_
*Yup, Synapse is right on. The "packet" size for VCD and SVCD is different from that of DVD. snip]/i]


Although the ReplayTV MPEG is proper for DVD directly, I don't know what Nero would do (even with compliancy turned off) and would guess all kinds of "playback" problems could happen when using DVD packet size source on a disc that had SVCD layout.


I'm thinking that if this is what some are doing, perhaps doing a demultiplex and then multiplexing with some multiplex software that has an SVCD profile and can just change the pack size etc. without re-encoding the video/audio would be the best bet for a proper playing XSVCD.
*
_
Thanks for your postings, Rich and Synapse. After playing with it awhile, I found out that you were right. I used Tmpgenc's MPEG Tools to do a simple Multiplex, which seems to repack things to the correct size.


On a down note, I downloaded the latest Nero (5.5.8) and it doesn't provide me with a DVD template to burn things with. I guess since it didn't detect a DVD burner, it didn't provide me with that template, so I guess I will continue to burn XSVCDs.


A question to RichA. I've been trying out Womble, and on the files that work, its great. But it seems like a lot of the extracted files (I have a showstopper) I get a lot of messed up mpegs. Womble shows only a limited size. When I pass it through PVAStrumento, it shows a lot of messed up GOPS, the time code resetting, etc. What method were you using to handle these messed up files? Is there a trick in Womble to grab each little clip, or some tool that really works to massage the mpeg?


Thanks,


/Bob_


----------



## breaux124

Quote:

_Originally posted by bobw_
*



On a down note, I downloaded the latest Nero (5.5.8) and it doesn't provide me with a DVD template to burn things with. I guess since it didn't detect a DVD burner, it didn't provide me with that template, so I guess I will continue to burn XSVCDs.

*
I have Nero 5.5.7.2 and you can get the DVD template.


Goto File-> Preferences -> Expert Features

Check the last box (show all compilation types)


Then you should be able to select DVD from the drop down menu


----------



## calvin940

Can anyone recommend an encoder card that will reduce my re-encoding time when working with MPEGs? I find my machine takes a long time to re-encode them when the bitrates of the extracted mpegs are too high for DVD. I burn my shows onto DVDRs but some of my high quality MPEGs for some shows have peak bitrates which exceed the DVD spec and hence programs refuse to use them and I need to re-encode them.


Any suggestions would be appreciated.


Calvin


----------



## Wasatch Rider

I don't suppose I could get someone to post a raw Replay video clip, about a minute, long in both standard and medium quality, so that I can download it. I'm having trouble finding a free bit of software that will trim commercials or just saw of pieces of my files.


----------



## Rich A

Quote:

_Originally posted by bobw_
*

A question to RichA. I've been trying out Womble, and on the files that work, its great. But it seems like a lot of the extracted files (I have a showstopper) I get a lot of messed up mpegs. Womble shows only a limited size. When I pass it through PVAStrumento, it shows a lot of messed up GOPS, the time code resetting, etc. What method were you using to handle these messed up files? Is there a trick in Womble to grab each little clip, or some tool that really works to massage the mpeg?


Thanks,


/Bob*
Ah there's a neat little utility someone made that may solve your problem. It's called "Timefix". You can search the threads there to find info or you can download a copy off my web site. Go to the downloads page. After unzip the file you'll see the EXE and also the source code. Open the source code in notepad or some other ASCII reader and you'll find a few paragraphs there about how to use it. www.pcphotovideo.com 


Let us know if it helps. It won't fix broken GOPs etc. but it will fix a pesky problem with the time flags in the mpegs that cause some editors to go bonkers.


----------



## pico64

Quote:

_Originally posted by Gnarf_
*I took a 30 min episode of The Simpsons at Medium quality and edited out the commercials using Womble (12/01). This brought it down to 20 minutes. I then used TMPGEnc to get it to SVCD format. I burned it using Nero's Super Video CD template.


I put it in my DVD and it was very choppy.


Then I pressed the >> button on my DVD remote and it was PERFECT. The picture and sound were perfect while in >> mode.


Can anyone tell my why? and how can I fix this prior to burning? I'm new at the multimedia stuff, but I'm assuming it has something to do with the bitrate or the fps?


Can someone shed some light?*
The >> button might have turned on/off PBC (Play Back Control).


IF this is the case, there is nothing you can do prior to burning to "FIX" the problem.


PBC simply tells your DVD player to read the disc in a different manner.


----------



## pico64

I was wondering if anyone has seen an extracted mpg where the audio starts out perfectly sync'd, then as the show goes on the audio gets off sync more and more. By the end of an hour show the audio is off by about 1 second.


I have just started having this problem on recently extracted mpgs on my SS 2000.


Just wondering if anyone has a clue as to what is causing this?


Thanks,


Pico64


----------



## Synapse

The audio sync problem is tmpg's fault I think, it may have to do with the packet sizes on the disk. I have done several different things to fix problems like this. First, can you avoid tmpg altogether? That would be best... perhaps if you create an svcd image in vcdeasy out of standard quality replay captures, and then jsut burn that image with nero. A non-transcoded standard capture can often beat med or hi captures that have been through the tmpg degredation process! Second, your DVD player may have some hacked firmware that will allow it to play mepgs just dropped right to the disk in data format, my Daewoo 5700 did. Last, your player may play mini-dvd's... then you could use any number of DVD authoring programs to make your discs!


----------



## pico64

Quote:

_Originally posted by pico64_
*I was wondering if anyone has seen an extracted mpg where the audio starts out perfectly sync'd, then as the show goes on the audio gets off sync more and more. By the end of an hour show the audio is off by about 1 second.


I have just started having this problem on recently extracted mpgs on my SS 2000.


Just wondering if anyone has a clue as to what is causing this?


Thanks,


Pico64*
I actually have this problem with the raw mpgs extracted from my Replay. I haven't done anything to the mpgs yet and they have this problem.


They played fine when I watched them, but after the extract process they are fubar'd. I am guessing that the audio being off was caused by replay extract program?


Could it really be anything else?


Thanks again.


----------



## pio!pio!

I just started reading this forum, and it's really turning me onto buying a ReplayTV 4000 series.


I have some simple questions though that I'm sure you guys can handle.


Is the outputted mpeg2 video interlaced?

Is the outputted audio ac3? or some type of mpeg2 audio.


The reason I'm asking the 2nd question is because someone said they just put the outputted mpeg2 stream onto a cd or dvd and popped it into the dvd player and it worked, but dvds use mpeg2 video and ac3 audio.......


----------



## mrwilson

I'd assume its interlaced. Its MPEG audio.'


DVD players can handle all kinds of audio, DD is just the 'standard'. They can do PCM, Mpeg, DTS, and DD.


----------



## Synapse

All are mpeg2; hi and medium quality files are 720x480 CQ_VBR encoding. That would be Constant Quality Variable Bitrate, hi's nominal bitrate is 6mbps, where med's is 4mbps. Standard is that "odd" D1 mpeg2 format, at 352x480 encoded CQ_VBR at 1820kbps nominal. They are all interlaced, top field first! All the audio is encoded at 48hz 224kbps mp3 stereo, even in standard mode. And it's ALL GOOD BABY!


----------



## pio!pio!

mp3 definately? SWEET, that'll make audio encoding a lot easier

Quote:

_Originally posted by Synapse_
*All are mpeg2; hi and medium quality files are 720x480 CQ_VBR encoding. That would be Constant Quality Variable Bitrate, hi's nominal bitrate is 6mbps, where med's is 4mbps. Standard is that "odd" D1 mpeg2 format, at 352x480 encoded CQ_VBR at 1820kbps nominal. They are all interlaced, top field first! All the audio is encoded at 48hz 224kbps mp3 stereo, even in standard mode. And it's ALL GOOD BABY! *


----------



## jtl

The audio isn't "mp3" (MPEG 1 Layer III or MPEG 2 Layer III) -- it's MPEG 1 Layer II. The hardware audio decoder (evidentally) doesn't support layer III. Sometimes it's 128kbps, sometimes 224; Lee Thompson has been investigating why the variation, but I don't think he's come to any good conclusions yet.


----------



## Synapse

jtl is right, sorry about that! however, they are all 224kbps... at least the last 100 I checked.


----------



## Rich A

Quote:

_Originally posted by Synapse_
*All are mpeg2; hi and medium quality files are 720x480 CQ_VBR encoding. That would be Constant Quality Variable Bitrate, hi's nominal bitrate is 6mbps, where med's is 4mbps. Standard is that "odd" D1 mpeg2 format, at 352x480 encoded CQ_VBR at 1820kbps nominal. They are all interlaced, top field first! All the audio is encoded at 48hz 224kbps mp3 stereo, even in standard mode. And it's ALL GOOD BABY! *
Almost perfect Synapse. Actually it's called 1/2 D1 D1 is 720x480 .. 1/2 D1 is 352x480. Both are valid DVD frame sizes. And yes .. it IS all good baby! That 1/2 D1 used as source for DVD on CDR (mini-DVDs) ends up at around 600 Mb or less. That is after editing out the typical TV commercial content. It fits the typical one hour TV show on a single 650 Mb CDR with room to spare. Quality is really pretty decent too. A bit better than VCD and very close to a good quality SVCD.


Life is good no ??


----------



## mrwilson

I really wish SB would switch to the mpeg encoder in the Panasonic DMR-E20 dvd recorder. Then maybe we'd get a nice Super HQ mode around 8mbs or so.


----------



## pio!pio!

Speculation, when are PVR's gonna start using the MPEG4 codec? They could fit a lot more video in a lot less space.


That way the unit could cost less cuz the hdd will be smaller, thus convincing more people to buy.


----------



## jorgy

I know the original question was from January, but I didn't see a followup to the question:


"What kind of mpeg player can I run under linux to view replay 4K extracted videos?"


I too tried vlc, and didn't have any luck. Ogle, and xine didn't work so good either, but mplayer worked just fine, and I didn't have to install any codecs either!


Eric


----------



## Rich A

Hi all,


Way back at the beginning of this thread I was referring to making "mini-dvd's" which are simply DVD title sets burned to a CD instead of a DVD.


I've been most pleased with the ReplayTV low quality mpegs for this. After editing out the commercials in a typical one hour TV show, the mpeg can then be burned to standard 650 MB CDRs.


My workflow has been to off-load the RPTV mpegs. Parse them through the new Womble audio / header fix utility (about 90 seconds) then edit and finally author as a DVD title set and burn to CDR. The result is an SVCD quality mini-dvd that is very viewable.


I recently picked up a DVD burner. (a Panasonic DF-321) This burner conforms to the DVD-R specs and also has a second laser to allow it to burn and read DVD-RAM. I figured this was best of all worlds.


I also recently found that DVD-R media is dropping rapidly in price. (I just purchased 100 4.7 GB DVD-R discs for $125.00 US ) At 1.25 per disc it was now even cheaper over all than burning to CDRs. I found that at the highest quality RPTV setting, I could fit two full edited one hour TV shows to a single DVD-R. OR .. SIX one hour episodes (actually 43 minutes each) onto one disc. And those six are at 1/2 D1 replaytv low quality, which is about as good as most SVCDs I've seen. ( of course YMMV ) My low quality RPTVs are better than most. Could be because my source is a VERY clean fibre optic cable analog video. At any rate .. $ 0.23 cents per episode on an authored DVD is pretty outstanding. I've tried these discs so far on several stand alone DVD players. I'll post a list of what reads them when I finish checking.


Please note .. many of the guys using these cheap DVD-Rs with their own DVD burners are having trouble. I don't know why. So far I've done about a dozen and have not had one coaster or any other problem with playback. Guess I'm lucky ??


----------



## pico64

Hey Rich,


Just wondering where did you find blank DVD-R's for $1.25?


I need to order some and the cheapest I can find is $1.48.


Thanks,


Bill


----------



## Rich A

Hi Bill,


I believe their normal price (per disc) is 1.98. But this past weekend they had a "special deal" for 100 4.7 GB single sided DVD-R for 125 bucks postage paid. I ordered late Sunday night from their web site, and received the discs Tuesday. (I'm in the same state)


The place is CDRecordable.com. Based in CT. I must WARN you though a lot of others have tried them and had problems. I have not. I'd suggest getting a couple samples before you spend any money on them.


Supposedly about 2 months ago they did have a problem with their discs and that since has been corrected.


They have all kinds of "bulk" discounts and even double sided DVD-Rs. I "think" I remember that their normal price per 100 was something like 1.60 or 1.50 ?? The 1.25 special may show up again. Check out their web site. Good luck.


Oh .. also .. if your burner does 2x burning, even though these DVD-Rs are rated at 2X I think you might want to burn at 1X. My burner is only capable of 1X and as I said, I've had no problems. However those guys having the problem just might be trying to burn at 2x. I'm suggesting that even though these bulk discs are rated at 2X, you'd probably have more success at 1X


----------



## Synapse

FYI: That deal is back right now, as a "late night special" if anyone wants to hook up!


----------



## vaylen

I just got a Sony DRU-120A DVD+RW burner and have been putting it through its paces. It burns DVD+RW's fine and DVD+R's fine too. But I've been having one big problem:


I have dozens of Seinfeld episodes pulled over from my ReplayTV 4040 that are in 1/2 D1 format (standard quality 352x480 resolution). Once these files are de-commercialized by Womble MPEG2VCR they are only about 300 megs or so. I should be able to fit 15 or so of them on a 4.7 gigabyte DVD. But when I load them into NeoDVDplus, only 3 of them fit before I run out of room. When I burn one of these discs the DVD does indeed have most of its room burned (you can see it) and they play great on my DVD player and my XBOX (both +RW and +R). But ONLY 66 minutes per DVD?!?


What gives? Is it just my DVD authoring software that sucks? How do I fit the maximum number of episodes on a disc and still have it play in a DVD player (I can currently copy them over as files, but DVD players won't see them then).


Any help appreciated!


----------



## foundation

I think it might be decompressing the audio. Note you only get 4.4GB not 4.7GB (not that, that makes the difference)


----------



## Rich A

I'm using the Panasonic DVD-R burner myself. And I'm doing exactly the same as you, BUT I'm using RPTV low quality one hour shows. An hour of commercial-free TV is about 43.5 minutes. I've been doing all the old original Star Trek series.


If I remove the common 90 second or so introduction (the actor credits etc.) as well as the commercials I can fit seven episodes to one 4.7 GB DVD-R. As the other poster said, you really have a little less than the full 4.7 GB available. I change nothing in Womble (no re-encoding) and the audio and video is exactly the same after saving it post edit. When you "save" your finished edited 1/2 hour TV show in Womble, does it take more than 60 or 90 seconds? If so, you might be accidently RE-Encoding the saved mpeg. For example on my Athlon 1800 + NLE computer it generally takes only about 90 seconds to save a fully edited 45 minute clip.


Check the size of the mpegs. If they are indeed what they should be, then I'd say it's your DVD authoring program that's causing the problem somehow. (although I can't image how or why)


I use an old copy of SpruceUp for my authoring (which is no longer available)


I found that the extra couple minutes cause by the redundant show's introduction was "just' enough to only allow me to fit 6 episodes on a disc. So I removed it and made it a play item all of it's own. That little bit extra allowed me to fit all seven episodes with a nice menu option.


Oh I just thought of something else. Many times the ReplayTV mpegs have broken GOP time codes and something they call PTS errors. These don't usually affect playback in the ReplayTV environment but cause havoc with some mpeg editors. It "MIGHT" be that your DVD authoring software is having trouble with the broken time codes which cause various utilities to see incorrect play times. In the very latest Womble, (version 1.12 released last month) they have a utiltiy in the MPEG TOOLs section called " Fix GOP time code and audio PTS errors" It will fix the broken RPTV files. Run your un-edited mpeg through that utiltiy before you do any editing. Just a shot in the dark .. but I've seen stranger things. Note .. this new utility was also in the earlier versions of Womble (3.11) BUT it would only work reliably with mpeg files smaller than 2 GB. The 3.12 version works with all file sizes. I use it for both my low and High Replay recordings.


Also FWIW, I now use the high setting for all my "must save" shows. Doing so allows me to put two full one hour (45 minutes each) episodes onto one DVD-R. I'm buying the cheap 4.7 GB DVD-Rs in bulk at 1.25 each. That makes for about 65 cents per episode at near DVD quality.


I have not had a single problem with any of my DVD burns and they all play in most DVD burners. However, I've been told by many others that they have not had the same luck and get a lot of coasters made. Don't know why I'm getting 100 percent good copies and other are not, execpt that my burner is only a 1X speed and most of the guys having trouble are using 2X burners. Could be that even though these cheap DVD-R's I'm using are rated at 2X, they really work best at 1X .. or those 2x burners are not working as well at the higher speed. I believe the difference between a 1X and 2X DVD burner is about the same as a 16X and 32X CDR burner. Quite a difference.


----------



## vaylen

That's interesting. I'd be interested in what other DVD authoring software people have used. Especially if they have tried neoDVDplus. I may decide to go with another package (sucks since I just paid $50 for this one if it doesn't work out).


thanks.


----------



## Les_D

Your software is "expanding" your audio into a PCM track.


you'll neet something like DVDit PE that will encode the Audio into AC3.


Euro DVD players will play MPEG Audio, maby there is a Hack for one of the cheap players to play the MPEG audio...


----------



## Rich A

Normally the Womble editor will not change anything if you don't tell it to. The audio and video are exactly the same as they were prior to editing.


Now the DVD authoring software may be changing it, but in my experiance I've never seen that happen. (I've only tried a few different authoring programs like SpruceUP, ULead's DVD Factory and DVDit.


Try this. Instead of importing your "program" stream into the DVD authoring program, import separate elementary streams. To do this, when finished with your editing in Womble, use Womble to de-multiplex your edited program stream into elementary video and audio streams. Most DVD authoring software will not only accept them but will also work better.


When you split the program stream be sure to give each the SAME name but with different extensions. For example the Video Stream would be named "MyMovie.MPV" and the Audio Stream "MyMovie.MPA". Then just import the video asset into your authoring software. The authoring software should take it unmodified and then automatically look for the same name with an Mpeg audio extention ( *.mpa) It just may be that when you are importing the full program stream, your authoring software is for what-ever reason re-encoding the audio .. ???


I have found in some cases that where an authoring program might actually choke and bomb out on a program stream asset, if you take that same full program stream and de-multiplex into elementary video and audio streams, then it will take it without a problem. I always use the elementary streams (video and audio) as it only takes a few seconds to do the de-multiplex in Womble and always works best.


One last thing. If you are using any Mpegs from the earlier RPTV boxes (before the 4000 series) then you HAVE to re-encode the audio as it's only at 32 kHz. You'll need 48 kHz for DVD authoring. I'm pretty sure you said you were using a 4000 unit though. And the 4K RPTVs use 48 kHz for all their audio.


----------



## t_tringle

Valen,


Les is probably right about the audio, but the other thing might be that the DVD authoring program you are using might be re-encoding the video. Since most DVD authoring programs have very specific requirements, Most even more than the DVD spec itself, alot of them then re-encode to make the video and audio exactly the way they want. However this usually ends up making the picture look worse, and the files much larger than they need to be. Most of these DVD programs were designed with Joe Blow and his DV video camera in mind you need to remember.


I have found that by sheer luck, the best program to use so far as I am concerned is a cheapo program that I would never have bought if Someone from this forum hadn't mentioned it. It's Uleads DVD Movie Factory, and for 49 bucks it's a steal for Replay owners.


However you need to understand that was Rich A said is right, and most Replay video you pull of will have some problems with , GOP (group of Picture) settings, and timecode problems. HOwever I have found a couple of programs that can help with this. Some people swear by the new version of womble's repair utility which amounts to the same thing, however I found that doesn't always work. The program I have found that works much better is called PVASTRUMENTO, and can be found at www.offeryn.com. It's an awesome program, and freely provided, he only asks that you mail him a postcard from your home town, which I plan to soon.


the other program is called Timefix.exe, and it fixes timecodes in mpg files, only annoying thing about this program is it will break the file into to. However once that is done, you can use tmpeg's mpeg tools to join it back together without a problem.


PVASTRUMENTO has a couple of settings, that you probably won't ever have to change, but I have found that the unconstrained setting works best, even though he has a setting for DVD which is supposed to prepare the video files for use with DVD authoring programs.


Your best order of business is to use timefix to fix the timecodes, then use PVASTRUMENTO with the unconstrained settings and then womble it if you want to remove commercials. I have found this to be the best solution. And since Ulead doesn't re-encode the video, it's only takes about a half hour to prepare 2 hours of video for transfer. YMMV of course.


I recently transferred Band Of Brothers parts 1 and 2, and it looked as good as it did from the Replay, and I'm a stickler for picture quality. This was recorded at high quality by the way. Which is how I record all of the files I deal with, one of the benefits of having a dedicated VIdeo editing machine with a half a Terabyte of disk space on it. 


If anybody has any questions I'd be happy to share the info I've gathered and any links.


Oh by the way Rich A, does Womble now work reliably with files over 2GB as far as well as the repair feature. I just read that part of your post so maybe that now works for repairing replay videos correctly. I want to buy womble but I don't want to pay for something that won't work solidly, especially considering how much womble costs.



Thanks


Tim_T


----------



## t_tringle

There was more then one typo in my post, but the one paragraph didn't make much sense, now that i have fixed it you might get it.


the other program is called Timefix.exe, and it fixes timecodes in mpg files, only annoying thing about this program is it will break the file into TWO. However once that is done, you can use tmpeg's mpeg tools to join it back together without a problem.


I found the timefix program on this forum, so if you search for it you might find it, if you can't let me know and I'll send you a link or I can post it here maybe.


Thanks


Tim


----------



## dwater

Quote:

_Originally posted by joubert_
*Anyone know of a mpeg viewer that will work with mpegs from the 4K and runs under Linux?


I tried vlc, but I don't get any audio.


--joubert*
FWIW, vlc works fine on a Mac on mpg's directly d/l from my RTV, so I am suprised it doesn't work on Linux...


Mplayer should work for you though - I've used it on Linux. I couldn't resize the window, but it played well.


Max.


----------



## dwater

Quote:

_Originally posted by videogeek_
*mkruss - can you post the link to the older Womble demo that supports mpeg-2 . I can't find it 


(should not be a problem since it's a demo )


mlinehan - The new G4 Mac's ship with the Pioneer DVR-A03 DVD-R/RW drive installed (Apple calls it the 'SuperDrive). Not only does the thing records and plays DVD R/RW, but also regular CD R/RW (up to 8x speed). I use it on the Mac with Toast software but I am thinking of taking it out of the Mac and mount it in a Firewire case, so I can use it on the PC too.


Simply said - it's very reliable and I would not buy anything else if I needed to make that decission. Best description: Swiss Army Knife for burning *
I see you're a Mac user. I am also. I thought Womble was Windows only - am I wrong?


I have been looking for weeks for a way to convert my RTV mpgs into something iMovie will read, or that Roxio Toast will read so I can burn them into CD-R as SVCD/VCD. Have you had any luck finding anything?


Max.


----------



## eugened

wnen I record 2 hours movie in HQ mode on replay4040, I end up with

around 6 Gb file. I want to archive it on DVDR. I don't want to downgrade my recording option to medium quality, because I want the best quality possible. I think my option here to descrease the file size would be:

Reencode video file with Womble using lover bit rate or variable bit rate (did not tried yet, but afraid will take a lot of time). Then burn using Ulead Movie factory. Anybody has ideas on this subject?

thanks


----------



## Rich A

The latest version of Womble should handle that 6 GB file fine. Usually my high quality captures are one hour shows and that is normally just under 3GB. This weekend I will try to find something I can capture where the file size will be up near the 6 GB file size. Then I will repost here the results.


FWIW, I know the Womble editor is expensive. ($ 250 US) But when you compare it to other full featured frame accurate MPEG editors, it is actually one of the better deals available.


Womble is very keen on protecting their program from pirates and such. However I have heard of where they gave some people a full copy with a 15 or 30 day time limit. If in doubt about perchasing, try asking them for a trial. The trial version they have for download on their web site is for the Mpeg-1 only version. But that Mpeg-1 version has basically the same features as the Mpeg-2.


Note .. I use Womble in Windows ME and Windows 2000 Pro. I had some intermittant minor problems using it in Windows XP Pro.


No I don't work for Womble or get anything from them. I just hope to pass this information along as I am continually seeing the same problems being posted and so many guys jumping through hoops and spending hours doing something that I've been doing in 15 minutes or less for the last year. Of course it goes without saying .. YMMV ..


----------



## t_tringle

Eugened,


That sounds about right, your best bet if you already own both Womble and Ulead DVD Movie Factory is to do exactly what you said. I however have not messed with Womble's encoding features, I mainly looked at it because of the very fact that it would not have to re-encode when you removed commercials. If money is not the issue and your affraid of re-encoding taking too long, and you really want the picture quality to be the best, then you should take a look at Cinemacraft's MPEG2 software encoder. It's the best on the market and maybe the best you can get mpeg2 to look without a hardware encoder. It's very fast, but FYI, any encoding is going to take hours, no matter what. Computers are just not fast enough to to MPEG2 in minutes, at least not if you want it to look any good.


If you have any questions, I'd be happy to answer them. But then again thats why we are here. Right?


Thanks


TimT


----------



## eugened

You right about Womble. I contact them and they gave me 15 days evaluation license. It is really fast compare with all other cheaper MPEG editors (I tried bunch of them) and worth the money. I will try to reencode the movie with womble and compare quality of final DVD with medium quality recording, to figure out if it worth the trouble. Will take a look at Cinemacraft also.

thanks


----------



## israndy

OK, so I am coming into this late, I am afraid. I have read thru and it is difficult as most of you are using 4000 series machines. So for those of us with Showstoppers has ANYONE successfully made a DVD from source material. The missing piece for me seems to be Womble. $300 to see if I like it? My experience with software is sight unseen it usually sucks. Infact I have not yet paid that much for any software. Demo? Nope the demo only does MPEG1, usless for me with the Replay. I am sure that once I got the file in a format that all the ULead packages understands I could figure this out. Thanks for any help, should I start a new thread? This ones gone all over the map.


-Randy


----------



## Rich A

Quote:

_Originally posted by eugened_
*You right about Womble. I contact them and they gave me 15 days evaluation license. It is really fast compare with all other cheaper MPEG editors (I tried bunch of them) and worth the money. I will try to reencode the movie with womble and compare quality of final DVD with medium quality recording, to figure out if it worth the trouble. Will take a look at Cinemacraft also.

thanks*
Wombles strong point is it's editing. As is the case with most "editors" the encoding part is more of an "add-on" feature.


If you want the best speed and quality for "encoding" then get an actual encoder. The Cinemacraft one is very good.


----------



## Rich A

Quote:

_Originally posted by israndy_
*OK, so I am coming into this late, I am afraid. I have read thru and it is difficult as most of you are using 4000 series machines. So for those of us with Showstoppers has ANYONE successfully made a DVD from source material. The missing piece for me seems to be Womble. $300 to see if I like it? My experience with software is sight unseen it usually sucks. Infact I have not yet paid that much for any software. Demo? Nope the demo only does MPEG1, usless for me with the Replay. I am sure that once I got the file in a format that all the ULead packages understands I could figure this out. Thanks for any help, should I start a new thread? This ones gone all over the map.


-Randy*
Before I got my RPTV 4080 I was using both a 2000 and 3000 series and making mini-dvd's etc. About your comments re: getting stuck buying an expensive program, you only need to read one post above yours. As I've mentioned before, you CAN get a full working trial if you ask Womble. The other poster did and seems happy with it.


----------



## israndy

Yes, that was quite embarassing to have it take me to my post and then scroll back to see the discussion I had missed while posting was all on my subject (great minds think alike at the same time). I am new and didn't know you could edit your previous posts or I would have saved myself some embarassment.


-Randy


----------



## dwater

Quote:

_Originally posted by dwater_
*


I see you're a Mac user. I am also. I thought Womble was Windows only - am I wrong?


I have been looking for weeks for a way to convert my RTV mpgs into something iMovie will read, or that Roxio Toast will read so I can burn them into CD-R as SVCD/VCD. Have you had any luck finding anything?


Max.*
I've found some s/w which will convert th mpeg2's into quicktime on Mac OS X :




It looks like it is video only, though the mpeg2decX site has one for audio too, so perhaps that is a clue - ie you have to recombine them at some point.


Also, the converted files seem to run at half speed. Not sure what that is about.


Quicktime will read the resulting file and you can export from quicktime into 'dv' format, which iMovie will read.

iMovie won't export it w/o an audio track, so my next step is to try to use the other tool to get the audio track and import that into iMovie; then hopefully I will be able to export from it and write the result to vcd.


Let me know if you get anywhere with this before me, or if you have any other tips.


Quicktime6 should be able to read mpeg2 file when it releases, so I hop that is useful - the prerelease version doesn't have this capability, unfortunately.


Max.


----------



## madSkeelz

Just an FYI, really. The version of QuickTime 6 that was released with the Jaguar developer preview plays MPEG-2 amazingly well. [This is *not* the same version of QuickTime as the at-large preview release from earlier this week.] I wouldn't be surprised if MPEG-2 playback is dependent on QuartzExtreme, however, I haven't confirmed this.


And, to answer the really important question, no, I don't know if QT6 will let you *edit* MPEG-2 movies. That's on my list of things to poke at, the next time I have my Jaguar box at home with the Replay.


----------



## Pwrbilt

I'm having problems getting NERO or Spruce up to work correctly with my files I'm pulling off my 4040. Could this be an XP problem? If most people aren't running XP how do you get around the FAT 32 file limitations. Thanks for the help

Rob


----------



## foundation

Windows 2000 also supports NTFS


----------



## Cynicor

There's a whole lot of information in this thread, and I'm trying to consolidate it for us casual/novice users. Is this an accurate list of "best practices" for transferring ReplayTV files to DVD?


INSTALL MPEG2 codecs (optional, for online playback)

RETRIEVE the mpeg files off the ReplayTV with SwapDV or Replayer.jar or ReplayPC

TRIM a couple seconds off the front/back with TMPGEnc

DEMUX in TMPGEnc

REPAIR TIME CODES with timefix.exe

CLEAN UP mpeg with PVAStrumento

EDIT OUT COMMERCIALS with Womble

AUTHOR DVD in Spruce or Ulead DVD Movie Factory or NeoDVDPlus or DVDit

BURN with Nero (or one of the authoring tools)


----------



## Rich A

Quote:

_Originally posted by Cynicor_
*There's a whole lot of information in this thread, and I'm trying to consolidate it for us casual/novice users. Is this an accurate list of "best practices" for transferring ReplayTV files to DVD?


INSTALL MPEG2 codecs (optional, for online playback)

RETRIEVE the mpeg files off the ReplayTV with SwapDV or Replayer.jar or ReplayPC

TRIM a couple seconds off the front/back with TMPGEnc

DEMUX in TMPGEnc

REPAIR TIME CODES with timefix.exe

CLEAN UP mpeg with PVAStrumento

EDIT OUT COMMERCIALS with Womble

AUTHOR DVD in Spruce or Ulead DVD Movie Factory or NeoDVDPlus or DVDit

BURN with Nero (or one of the authoring tools)*
If you are going to edit out the commercials with womble then you really don't need to do all those other things. More like this:


1) Install Mpeg2 codecs

2) Retrieve the Mpeg files

3) Bring the mpeg file into Womble Use the Fix Gop and time code utility it has.

4) Edit out commercials (in Womble)

5) De-multiplex to elementary streams (in Womble) .. most dvd authoring works better that way.

6) Author DVD


#'s 3, 4, and 5 can all be done in Womble. It will fix the GOP problem and the broken time codes. I've never needed anything else.


----------



## dwater

Quote:

_Originally posted by Cynicor_
*There's a whole lot of information in this thread, and I'm trying to consolidate it for us casual/novice users. Is this an accurate list of "best practices" for transferring ReplayTV files to DVD?


INSTALL MPEG2 codecs (optional, for online playback)

RETRIEVE the mpeg files off the ReplayTV with SwapDV or Replayer.jar or ReplayPC

TRIM a couple seconds off the front/back with TMPGEnc

DEMUX in TMPGEnc

REPAIR TIME CODES with timefix.exe

CLEAN UP mpeg with PVAStrumento

EDIT OUT COMMERCIALS with Womble

AUTHOR DVD in Spruce or Ulead DVD Movie Factory or NeoDVDPlus or DVDit

BURN with Nero (or one of the authoring tools)*
Only works with Microsoft OSes since TMPGEnc doesn't run on anything else.


Be sure to mention that else you'll have the rest of us all trying to find the Mac/etc version etc.


Better still, post a list for Mac and Linux too. It would make a change for people to not automatically assume we've all fallen into the Microsoft world.


Max.


----------



## JDC

okay I downloaded womble mpeg-vcr(v.3.12) and I load the mpeg and it says it's an mpeg-2 stream and i need to register to get mpeg-2 support. How do i get mpeg-2 support.


----------



## Patrick Bennett

I certainly hope you're not advocating (or pleading for) piracy.


----------



## JDC

Sorry, but i've heard that if you get an older version of womble and can upgrade it for free. So in a sense if that is possble then those people didn't pay for it. I'm a newbie so sorry if i'm a bit ignorant.


----------



## Rich A

For JDC,


If you downloaded from Womble then all you will get is the Mpeg-1 only version. (at least that's the way it used to be) All registered owners of the product can go to the "purchase" page and download MPEG2VCR (which is the Mpeg1 AND Mpeg2 capable editor. When you go to install it, it will update your "registered" older version. If you do not have a valid registered version then it will install the mpeg-1 version with a time limit.


Womble also does things from time to time to keep unregistered older versions from being able to update. Note .. that is "UN" registered. They have a great product and are trying to keep it from those who would steal it.


I've been using Womble for well over a year now and have never had to pay for any of the 4 or 5 new releases during that time.


But I did pay my "dues" .. way back when and that 250 bucks was well worth it for me.


----------



## JDC

Thanks. I was able to make a vcd with tmep, and I'm gonna try it more, so I may just stick with that.


----------



## Cynicor

> Better still, post a list for Mac and Linux too.


Oh right. Do 3x as much work for 10% more users!


Actually, I don't follow the Linux/Mac/BeOS threads because they're of no use to me. If anyone else wants to post their list of alternate OS tools, they can certainly do so. (I just don't know them.)


----------



## Cynicor

Quote:

If you downloaded from Womble then all you will get is the Mpeg-1 only version. (at least that's the way it used to be) All registered owners of the product can go to the "purchase" page and download MPEG2VCR (which is the Mpeg1 AND Mpeg2 capable editor. When you go to install it, it will update your "registered" older version. If you do not have a valid registered version then it will install the mpeg-1 version with a time limit.
The price list ( http://order.kagi.com/cgi-bin/r1.cgi?APF& ) shows that MPEG1VCR is $45, MPEG2VCR is $249, and the upgrade is $199. So is it correct that you save $5 if you buy the older one and the upgrade?


----------



## dwater

Quote:

_Originally posted by Cynicor_

*> Better still, post a list for Mac and Linux too.


Oh right. Do 3x as much work for 10% more users!
*
*
That's the attitude!


You obviously haven't tried to do the work, else you'd know it's way more than 3x the effort.


At least specify that you only know that it works on Windows. Assuming that people only use Windows is insulting.


Whatever...


Max.*


----------



## Rich A

Funny you should point that out. That's EXACTLY (saving 5 bucks) what happened to me. A "long" time ago I was working with only VCD (just Mpeg-1) I putzed with many mpeg-1 editors and found them to be poor at doing frame accurate editing. I bought and paid for IfilmEdit (49 bucks) back then and lived with it's GOP frame based accuracy only.


Then I found Womble's Mpeg-1 version for 45 bucks. (if memory serves). I then used that mpeg-1 only version for about six months until I started working with Mpeg-2 SVCD and DVD files. I did the Womble upgrade for 199 and that's where I stand at rthe moment.


Now that you mention it, I never realized I saved 5 bucks that way 


Gee I've been ahead 5 bucks for almost two years and didn't know it. heh heh.


----------



## CProgrammer

I have been using the Womble Editor for about a year now and would like to make a few comments on using it to make source material for a DVD-authoring program. I have a 3000-series ReplayTV, but I would bet that the MPEG-2 encoding used in the 4000-series is very similar. The Womble Editor's "Fix Timecodes" utility does a great job of changing an unusable ReplayTV file (one with broken timecodes) into one that plays smoothly and is suitable for editing. Taking commercials out of a recorded show is quick and easy. Nevertheless, I have found that I usually have to re-encode my files (which degrades the quality somewhat and takes LOTS of time). The DVD standard apparently allows for a maximum of 18 frames in a GOP header. Analysis of some of my files with TimeFix shows that ReplayTV usually puts about 15 pictures into a GOP, but it may occasionally put a much larger number (I've seen up to 27). DVEdit states in its documentation that it will support a maximum of 18. The authoring program I use, Pinnacle's Impression Pro, stops processing the file when it finds an "unknown error". I suspect this may be related to the GOP picture count. A second issue is that (I discovered this by using PVAstrumento's freeware analysis tool), when Womble re-encodes, it may leave the GOP header "open" (I am currently awaiting a reply from Chang--the head programmer--to see if there's a way to tell the editor to close the headers). From information I have seen on Impression's bulletin board, the headers must be closed. The interesting thing is that they are closed in the original Replay file.


This is not to discourage anyone from buying MPEG2VCR. It is a good product, and its head programmer is very responsive to user feedback. The timecode utility was written for people like us who have had trouble with the native output from the Replay. I just want to warn people that some DVD-authoring programs are less forgiving than others, and it may be necessary to re-encode the file you have edited in Womble to make it suitable for DVD use. We have to bear in mind that the ReplayTV people were not obligated to adhere to the DVD standard, since they were creating MPEG files that were designed for internal use.


----------



## Rich A

I wonder why we are having somewhat oposite results?


Prior to my purchase of a DVD burner, I used to author DVD title sets to CDR media (Mini-DVDs) with 100 percent success. First using the old RPTV 2000 and 3000 series and now with my 4080.


Then about a month ago, I got my DVD burner. I've done about 25 or 30 DVDs and have had 100 percent success. Every single RPTV Mpeg I've extracted has worked flawlessly. Not one problem.


I'm somewhat baffled about your comments re: the larger GOP structure etc. I've never paid any kind of attention to it. Probably because I never had a problem and never "needed" to investigate. You know, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it". 


I'm using the now unsupported and unavaliable SpruceUp DVD authoring software. I have found the following, and maybe you should try this.


Most authoring software will accept elementary streams as opposed to program streams. I always demultiplex my program streams and then import them as video and audio assets to my dvd authoring program. I've NEVER (in the last two or three years I've been doing this) had to re-encode any mpeg. That's a complete waste of time in my book. If I had to re-encode it, I might as well capture it from scratch as an uncompressed AVI in my computer system and then use that high quality video source to encode the mpeg.


I've been capturing and making (S)VCD and DVD long before the ReplayTV came around.


I'm really interested in why you are having to re-encode your mpegs. ??? I've never had to do that .. not with the RPTV mpegs. Right now, since buying my DVD burner, I've done about 30 and they all were done solely with RAW RPTV mpgs, Womble, and SpruceUp. And they all play on just about any DVD stand alone or PC based Player I've tried so far. (I'm using cheap bulk $1.25 4.7 GB DVD media too)


You may have some other "problem" with your RPTV mpegs that are causing your authoring problems. I've just off-loaded four one hour high quality shows this evening. I'm going to examine their GOP structures to see I too have that problem. (which isn't affecting my authoring)


I'll report back here, my findings. Meanwhile, try this. Before you do any editing, run the Womble "Fix GOP" utility. Then do your normal edit. Then de-multiplex with Womble, making sure the elementary streams share a common name and proper extention. Ie MyMovie.MPV for video and MyMovie.MPA for audio. Then try to import the video as an asset for your authoring program. If it's capable (Spruceup is) it should automatically find the companion audio file and auto-import it as well. I think (I hope) that using elementary streams will cause the DVD authoring software to do it's own multiplexing and you might end up with a usable source. Let us know what happens. I'm really curious about this.


Hold on ... I couldn't wait. Just checked a few Mpegs that I was "off-loading" on another machine while writing this. Typically 59 minutes, 45 seconds or so and raw mpeg from the RPTV. 7,476 GOPS. Not ONE over 15. All the samples (High Medium and Low) showed missing sequence headers and some GOPs were broken. Running them through the Womble GOP Fix utility resulted in "no" missing sequence headers and no broken GOPs.


But in all cases (and I scanned all the GOPS in the three off-loaded RPTV mpegs) NONE had a GOP larger than 15 pictures. Now I'm stumped. How is it that your RPTV is showing "Groups of Pictures" larger than 15 ?? And mine (evidently) never does ??


----------



## mrwilson

I don't have 'Fix Gop' utility in Womble 3.0. What version has that?


----------



## heathriel

3.12


----------



## Rich A

Richt click on the Womble executable after installing it to show it's properties.


The latest is File version 3.11.3.1 and the Product version is 3.12.3.1


----------



## CProgrammer

Hi, Rich. Thanks for your reply.


I have been doing everything you recommend when I prepare the Replay videos for use in DVD authoring. Impression Pro MUST have the MPEG files demuxed. It won't accept multiplexed MPEG files as input. I did a test tonight. I have a new version of Timefix (which I may post this weekend) that has a special analysis mode that prints out the frame count (and timecode) without splitting the file up. It also has an option that flags any variation between adjacent timecodes that exceeds 15 frames. I ran an analysis both before and after using the Womble editor's Timecode Fix utility. In both cases (and I verified this by using the MPEGAnalizzatore tool by offeryn), there were a number of GOP headers that had in excess of 18 frames (one even had 30!). The Womble utility had no effect on the picture count per GOP, and I wouldn't expect it to, because the file would have to be re-encoded to correct this. I, too, am curious as to why you are not having this problem. It's possible that the MPEG-encoding algorithm for the 4000-series changed somewhat, and that the new series adheres to the DVD standard. A second possibility is that this may be more of a problem with files recorded at medium as opposed to high quality. Up until a couple of months ago, I was recording most of my shows at high quality, and I believe that the one show that I did not end up having to re-encode was done in high-quality mode.


I agree with you that having to re-encode defeats the purpose of starting with an MPEG-2 file, but I am sure that unless I can figure out what causes some of the timecodes to go out of the acceptable range (


----------



## Rich A

Okay on all ... I may have missed something. Are you using the 3/2K series and not the 4000 series? I'm only using the 4K series RPTV myself and have checked all versions of it's Mpegs (hi, med. and low) and all GOPs are at a max of only 15. Now I haven't honestly used my older 2k or 3k RPTV for off-loading since I got the 4080.


I do see that in (almost) every case of an RPTV 4000 series off-load, the Womble GOP Fix utiltity finds and fixes a ton of PTS errors and/or GOP header timing information. But as far as the actual size of the GOPs they are always never over 15, and that's been checked both before (raw mpeg right out of the RPTV) and after editing.


By the way ... I see a lot of reference to RPTV software version 4.3 ?? What the heck is that? I've never found that anywhere on my RPTV 4K unit. I think mine is 5.xx something ??


----------



## MANowell

I brought down an episode of Futurama from my 4080 using ReplayPC. Womble 3.12 show it as OK. Once I trim the commercials, the audio and video are out of synch, some places quite a bit. I haven't had this happen before. Any pointers?


Thanks!


----------



## scochran666

Well Rich, thanks to your latest piece of advice (import elementary streams, not multiplexed) I have finally broken through the last barrier standing in my way. I've been fighting this process for a long time, and seeing the light at the end of the tunnel is a vast relief. Not to mention the fact that the only reason I bought the DVD Burner and Womble was to create DVD's from Replay captures.


One thing, though. I'm seeing a failure mode in the edit process that I haven't heard of before. First, I'm using captures offloaded from my Showstopper 3000's, and using the latest version of Womble on XP (I know, so I'm building a dedicated 2000 box for this out of spares).


I have been using the following method in Womble:


- Run the "Fix GOP Time Code" process on the MPEG file. This results in between 15000 and 40000 fixes for my 1/2 and 1 hour shows.

- Open the MPEG and copy the desired elements to Womble's clipboard.

- Close the MPEG, then start dragging and dropping the clipboard elements into a new MPEG frame, per the usual procedure.


At this point, I start getting _severe_ audio sync errors. It is as if the section that was "cut out" is still in place, and the audio ends up being minutes out of sync. The individual clips are fine, it only fails when I start merging them. So I have modified the process as follows:


- Drag one video clip into a new MPEG frame. Save it to a temporary file (i.e. "clip1.mpg") _without_ upconverting the audio to 48KHz. Repeat for each video clip.

- Using TMPGEnc's Merge&Cut tool, join all of the saved elements back into a single MPEG file. I have been using the "Correct" button - it doesn't seem to hurt and might be helping.

- De-multiplex the MPEG into the elementary streams using Womble. Make a note of the time difference between the Video and Audio streams - it's almost always present.

- Use Womble to upconvert the audio stream to 48 KHz. Offset the start time by the difference between the Audio and Video stream lengths. For example, if the Video is 783.21 seconds, the Audio might be 783.28. So I set the Audio "Start" value to .07. I have yet to find an Audio stream shorter than the Video stream, and I end up with near perfect audio sync throughout the finished MPEG.


The resulting files import into SpruceUp without any trouble (rare before this) and produced Title Sets that work perfectly (_very_ rare before). It is quite a bit more time consuming that the "ideal" method, but it works, and that's all that really matters to me right now.


If anyone has any clue as to why I'm suddenly seeing this severe Audio sync problem (it wasn't an issue a month or so ago when I was experimenting) I would be happy to hear about it.


I sure hope this helps someone out there - this has been a beast of a process to figure out. Thanks to the great help here, and Womble's inclusion of the "Fix GOP" tool, the effort has finally started paying off for me.


----------



## Cynicor

Quote:

_Originally posted by scochran666_
*I have been using the following method in Womble:


- Run the "Fix GOP Time Code" process on the MPEG file. This results in between 15000 and 40000 fixes for my 1/2 and 1 hour shows.

- Open the MPEG and copy the desired elements to Womble's clipboard.

- Close the MPEG, then start dragging and dropping the clipboard elements into a new MPEG frame, per the usual procedure.


At this point, I start getting _severe_ audio sync errors. It is as if the section that was "cut out" is still in place, and the audio ends up being minutes out of sync. The individual clips are fine, it only fails when I start merging them. So I have modified the process as follows:
*
I get the same problem while editing the spliced clips. When I save them to a file, everything sounds fine - I was assuming it was a Womble editor problem.


My big problem right now is that I was stupid enough to use the MyDVD software that comes with the HP drive. When I use a hi-res ReplayTV MPEG, the program will churn around for, oh, hours reencoding the audio stream. Then when I wake up the next morning to look at my finished DVD, I have a "data rate too high" error awaiting me. Arrrrgh. I have burned DVDs okay with medium-res files.


----------



## Rich A

Quote:

_Originally posted by CProgrammer_
*Hi, Rich. Thanks for your reply.


I have been doing everything you recommend when I prepare the Replay videos for use in DVD authoring. Impression Pro MUST have the MPEG files demuxed. It won't accept multiplexed MPEG files as input. I did a test tonight. I have a new version of Timefix (which I may post this weekend) that has a special analysis mode that prints out the frame count (and timecode) without splitting the file up. It also has an option that flags any variation between adjacent timecodes that exceeds 15 frames. I ran an analysis both before and after using the Womble editor's Timecode Fix utility. In both cases (and I verified this by using the MPEGAnalizzatore tool by offeryn), there were a number of GOP headers that had in excess of 18 frames (one even had 30!). The Womble utility had no effect on the picture count per GOP, and I wouldn't expect it to, because the file would have to be re-encoded to correct this. I, too, am curious as to why you are not having this problem. It's possible that the MPEG-encoding algorithm for the 4000-series changed somewhat, and that the new series adheres to the DVD standard. A second possibility is that this may be more of a problem with files recorded at medium as opposed to high quality. Up until a couple of months ago, I was recording most of my shows at high quality, and I believe that the one show that I did not end up having to re-encode was done in high-quality mode.


I agree with you that having to re-encode defeats the purpose of starting with an MPEG-2 file, but I am sure that unless I can figure out what causes some of the timecodes to go out of the acceptable range (*


----------



## CProgrammer

Quote:

_Originally posted by Rich A_

Good news !! Womble just released yet another update a couple days ago. It's still version 3.12 but now has a date of June 2002.


They've ADDED in the GOP fix utility the option to limit all GOPs to 15 to insure proper working within the DVD specs. How about that ?? Plus you now also have the ability to save the fixed file with another name.


I've said it before and I'll say it again .. That programmer at Womble is worth his weight in gold. heh heh. He must own one of these Replays himself. haaaa.
I am very pleased with the interest that Chang (the head programmer at Womble) has taken in our problems. He mentioned in an email I received from him today that he will be working on a recording mode in the editor that will be DVD-compliant. Over the weekend, I found that I was able to make a successful DVD using an UNEDITED MPEG file I had recorded with my WinTV card. However, when I attempted to edit out the commercials with the Womble editor, my DVD authoring program aborted early on in the process. Through trial and error, I was able to narrow the point at which the file would fail to the first edit point (there was no problem at this point with bad time codes or GOP headers with greater than 18 pictures). So there are still some problems for those of us with finicky authoring programs, but I do think Chang will provide a solution in the very near future, and I am really impressed with the interest he has taken in pleasing his customers!


----------



## ianken

I get mixed results with files extracted from my R4K using the current SwapDV (which now lacks the save and PC mpeg option.)


I have a 30 minute Futurama episode I can drop right in Uleads MOvieFactory. It reports the files has having layer 1 audio and does not display a bitrate.


I have the "Jubilee Concert" from VH1. This one not only fails to play, but crashes Flask and the Ulead app reports it as bogus. It playes fine on the R4K


Both are recorded in the same HQ mode. It's all very annoying.


On top of that the Ulead software bites. It accepts the 44khz audio from the "layer 1" replay MPEG but if I try to feed it the same in a file created with tmpeg it complains with an "invaliud MPEG" error, without of course mentioned what's invalid about it.


I just loaded the Jubilee Concert into Womble. It can edit it but the audio is fuxored and garbled. Blech.


----------



## Rich A

I'd really like to see you guys with the problems find an answer. To be perfectly honest, I haven't had one bit of trouble with any of my RPTV 4K series off-loads for some time now. Going from a raw RPTV Mpeg to a fully edited, ready-to-author DVD mpeg takes me around 10 - 15 minutes.


Maybe we should look at some other areas. I haven't used SwapDV in over a few months now myself. If you are having trouble, why not try the "old fashioned" way and use ReplayPC to extract the guide. Then use GuideParser to print yourself a detailed listing of shows. And then use ReplayPC again to off-load the wanted shows. Yes, I know it's a pain and a lot less "elegant" than SwapDV, but it's worth trying a few times just to see if your problems continue. As I understand it, SwapDV is now a full Java? application. While I highly DOUBT the problem is directly related to SwapDV, it could have something to do with an individual's implementation of the Java runtime and/or the operating system environment itself. Some points to consider.


With my 4K unit I've "never" had a GOP sequence larger than 15.


I only use Win2K with an NTFS file system.


I've never had any audio sync problems or glitches, both before and after Womble editing.


I HAVE had some trouble getting my DVD authoring software (SpruceUp) to accept "Program Streams".

However, those same program streams, when de-multiplexed to separate video and audio elementary streams are then accepted 100 percent of the time.


I have used all versions of the RPTV mpegs ie. low, medium and high. In fact I have about 100 "mini-dvds" (DVD Title Sets burned to 80 minute CDR discs, and all were perfect burns and play back perfectly. Most are RPTV Low quality fitting a single one hour of edited TV show onto one Disc. Others are medium and high burned over several CDR discs. Of course since getting my new DVD burner, I'm now doing everything to DVD. I use the high to burn two TV 45 minute episodes to a single DVD disc or low to burn six TV 45 minute episodes to a single DVD.


I wrote a small VB program that runs both the ReplayPC and Guideparser in a shell. This gives me a nice Windows GUI that lists only the programs available for off-loading. I then just checkbox the ones I want and go away for a while. Point is all my off-loading is being done in a Windows 2K DOS shell environment. And I've never had a single problem.


All my editing and authoring is done on the same hard drive (a raid array) and in NTFS. Believe it or not, I HAVE seen some very odd anomalies when moving an mpeg from one drive to another or from one file system type to another.


I've also had some problems with Windows XP versus Windows 2000. I often check WinXP (did so again last night) and I keep going back to 2K. Please let's not start a 2K / XP debate. I'm only reporting what works for me. (and has for several months without error)


I'm by no means a Visual Basic programmer. In fact this small RPTV GUI I wrote was my 2nd program while trying to learn VB. So it's a "kludge" and was written specifically to work on "my" machine. (everything like paths, RPTV address etc. are hard coded into the source) However, if I find the time I will try to make it more suitable for distribution and post it for download. The SwapDV program is far more than I need. I just need to list what's available for off-loading and then choose from that list and download my selection. .


You can acheive exactly the same thing manually by using ReplayPC and Guideparser. It might be something to try.


Lastly, I cannot stress enough, the need to do this off-loading when the RPTV is "sleeping". I always have it "shut off" (NOT unplugged, just inactive) and make sure no future record or web access is going to happen during the time I estimate it will be off-loading.


I really hope you guys get your system operating like mine. I'm archiving hundreds of favorite shows and quite frankly I spend far more time posting here than I do burning DVDs. 


I am now of the position that either the RPTV encoder itself is "flawed" in some RPTVs, OR something in the source is causing it to generate errors, excessively long GOPs and other things.


Those are my observations. Good luck.


----------



## foundation

Thanks for information Rich, when I get around to burning my extracted shows and optimizing the process, this information for debugging will be very helpful. If you ever get around to un-hardcoding your source, that would be cool if you post it.


----------



## aslagle

Here's what I've found: replay mpegs, when copied over the network from my swapdv server to my machine to do editing, are _extremely_ sensitive to interruptions from other programs running on the machine.


I've copied over shows to edit and found the audio messed up, but the audio on the swapdv server is perfect.


When I turned off _all_ unnecessary other programs and recopy the file, it comes over perfectly.


----------



## CProgrammer

Just a quick note to say that I am a much happier camper. Chang at Womble released a new version of his editor today (MPEG2VCR) -- this one is a minor revision of the release that Rich mentions a few posts above. Whatever incompatibilities I was having between my DVD-authoring program (Impression Pro) and edits made using MPEG2VCR have apparently been dealt with successfully! I was able to take a movie recorded with my Replay 3060, correct its audio errors and redistribute GOP headers that contained more than the DVD spec of 18 pictures maximum per header, trim extra material from the beginning of the file that I did not want, convert the audio from 32K to 48K (something you 4000-series owners don't have to worry above), break the file into two parts (since it was too big to put on one DVD), and demux the two files into separate audio and video streams. And you know what? Impression Pro accepted the files without complaint.


Once again let me praise Womble's interest in their customer base, and also express my sense of astonishment that Chang was able to fix these problems in such a short period of time. And this was all done using Win XP.


----------



## Rich A

For CProgrammer .. "Ain't life great" ?? heh heh. I think the folks at Sonic Blue should "secretly" send Chang an RPTV 4K. Not that SB should encourage this "off-loading" frenzy we've enjoyed, but when you think about it ... ain't NO other Mpeg Editor companies helping we RPTV'ers with our ' special' problems.


My DVD burner just popped out my 27th DVD with a "successful burn" message. That's 54 episodes of Enterprise, Andromeda, and Stargate. 90 minutes per disc (RPTV high), and two episodes per disc. At 1.25 per disc this is getting down near CDR prices and with a kazillion times better quality.


Some of my friends who are still putzing with (S)VCD and other formats are astounded by the quailty of my DVDs and amazed that they all play in their DVD stand alone players.

Are we having fun yet ??


----------



## JDC

so what are the options for those of us who don't have the new womble and can't afford the $250?


Maybe a cheaper editor, or possibly freeware .


if I can't make any progress I may end up buying a decent capture card to make vcd/svcds ( I can't make dvds cause I don't burner, and I don't think I'll be getting one anytime soon). Thanks.


or would anyone be so kind as to point me in the direction of womble 3.11?


----------



## scochran666

Has anyone used the latest Womble to fix GOP sizes (not time codes) in low-quality extracts from a Replay 3xxx/Showstopper? When I try, it reports the GOP size errors, but the option to fix them is disabled. I'm thinking that it doesn't like the 1/2 D1 format, but I just wanted to confirm with someone else before reporting it. Thanks.


----------



## Rich A

I do a fair amount of Low Quality RPTV mpeg work. Mostly for quick archiving of shows.


I did notice that with the way the new utility is set up, you first do a scan. And when it's finished it will "Un-grey" ?? the appropriate fix buttons. I've never had a GOP from my RPTV be greater than 15 so after the scan is finished, it only allows the option for fixing the other GOP problem and PTS errors.


I'm still trying to figure out why I "don't" have the problem. I do about 2 low quality RPTV Mpegs a day. I will keep an eye on them and if I happen to see an excess GOP I'll report back here if it worked or not.


----------



## scochran666

Rich, please remember that you are using a 4000, and I'm using a Showstopper. Obviously, something in the encoder has changed between the two that helps alleviate the oversized GOP issue.


----------



## CProgrammer

I have used the Womble editor to successfully fix GOP sizes since I too have a 3000-series Replay. In the latest version I've downloaded, the only option offered INITIALLY is scanning the file. Once the file is completely scanned, it then offers you the option of correcting time code/audio PTS errors (which requires no re-encoding) or fixing these as well as the GOP sizes (if it finds any problems). The options may also be dimmed out at the end of the scan until you select an output file. I haven't tried this with any low-resolution files, but I don't think that's the issue. By the way, if you own a 3000-series Replay, upgrade your editor again because I reported a problem with audio sync when you convert from 32K to 48K (which is required by my DVD authoring program) that Chang took care of very promptly (a new version appeared yesterday).


----------



## scochran666

Thanks, CProgrammer - I'll make sure I got the latest when I downloaded yesterday. But please check your's on low quality MPEG's - it works fine for me on medium or high, just not low. Low quality programs use a different format (1/2 D1) than the others, so it's very possible that Chang hasn't worked on that part.


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## JDC

ok I was able to convert my audio stream by using BeSweet gui, from doom9.net. Then used tmpg to re-multiplex the audio and video. Now should I just use tmpg to do the encoding and editing.


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## CProgrammer

scochran666 -


I just tried the "GOP Fixer" with a low resolution file, and you are absolutely right. It does look like Chang has deliberately disabled the option. If you haven't already, I'd send him an email ([email protected]) about it.


----------



## JDC

ok I used tmpg to create my svcd, but the resulting audio is a bit off. I know to use timefix but I didn't because when I did it split the file into two. But then I wasn't able to load the second part of the file so I couldn't join them. Anyway, how can I fix the sync issue now? Also I played the file back in WMP and everytime I jumped ahead the sync issue got worse.


Is the only way to possibly prevent this to use timefix? Or am I misunderstanding the use of Timefix?


----------



## jarzynka

I've seen a few posters in this thread mention use of ULead's DVD Workshop, so I thought I'd try their 30 day free trial off the web site. I have a question to those users on how to set the program up as not to re-encode the MPEG2 files from the Replay.


I've looked under Global Settings and Preferences, but every time I burn a disc, it asks me what I want the bit-rate (quality) to be. I would assume that means it's re-encoding the MPEG2 files when it creates the VOB, etc.


If anyone could shed light on this, I'd greatly appreciate it. Thanks!


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## CProgrammer

Quote:

_Originally posted by JDC_


ok I used tmpg to create my svcd, but the resulting audio is a bit off. I know to use timefix but I didn't because when I did it split the file into two. But then I wasn't able to load the second part of the file so I couldn't join them. Anyway, how can I fix the sync issue now? Also I played the file back in WMP and everytime I jumped ahead the sync issue got worse.
TimeFix will divide the file into as many chunks as it needs to try to weed out what it considers bad timecodes. If the Replay sputters a couple of times within a few seconds, some of the files produced by TimeFix may not contain any information. My question is, when you say you tried to load the second part of the file, was that the FINAL segment produced by TimeFix or were there others? If there were others, you might try joining file 1 to file 3 (file 2 might contain less than a second of information). By looking at the file sizes for each file produced by Timefix, you can get an idea of whether the file contains any real information. That said, TimeFix does nothing to correct audio errors. Its sole purpose is to prevent timecodes that "restart" from fooling editing programs that rely on these timecodes to determine a total duration for the video. In many cases, but not all, once these editing programs have the correct duration for the video, audio sync falls into place.


----------



## MrSaLTy

Quote:

_Originally posted by jarzynka_
*I've seen a few posters in this thread mention use of ULead's DVD Workshop, so I thought I'd try their 30 day free trial off the web site. I have a question to those users on how to set the program up as not to re-encode the MPEG2 files from the Replay.


I've looked under Global Settings and Preferences, but every time I burn a disc, it asks me what I want the bit-rate (quality) to be. I would assume that means it's re-encoding the MPEG2 files when it creates the VOB, etc.


If anyone could shed light on this, I'd greatly appreciate it. Thanks!*
I use DVD workshop and I really like it..... If you choose settings that are higher then the original mpg file, it won't re-encode the file. I found this in the DVD workshop FAQ on uleads site. If I have a mpg that is a high quality one from the replay I just choose 6meg VBR and etc like the file is and if you watch the screen it will just shoot past the encoding step real fast. Now if you have motion menus... It WILL have to encode those as they are taken from the mpg and encoded there. When I make a DVD that is the part that takes the longest.


Ok.... here is the bit from uleads FAQ I ripped it.....


Q4: When creating titles using the Make Disc command, why does Ulead DVD Workshop always re-encode my MPEG files?

A4: DVD Workshop will re-encode the MPEG file when the specified encoding bit rate in Make Disc is lower than the encoding bit rate used by the original file. If you want to retain the original encoding scheme of your file, you must specify a higher encoding bit rate than your original encoding bit rate in Make Disc.


----------



## Rich A

Quote:

_Originally posted by scochran666_
*Rich, please remember that you are using a 4000, and I'm using a Showstopper. Obviously, something in the encoder has changed between the two that helps alleviate the over-sized GOP issue.*
Ah, yes .. I'm sorry I keep forgetting that. Although I do have an even older RPTV 2000 series with removable drives, it currently sitting on the workbench collecting dust. I'm using two RPTVs now, another 3000 series for 'unimportant shows" I just want to watch once, and the 4080 for anything I intend to archive or anything I want to watch without commercials.


I had a problem with the old RPTV 2000 about 3 months after I got the 4K. Maybe it got "jealous" and decided to stop working in protest.  heh heh.


----------



## JDC

Quote:

_Originally posted by CProgrammer_
*


TimeFix will divide the file into as many chunks as it needs to try to weed out what it considers bad timecodes. If the Replay sputters a couple of times within a few seconds, some of the files produced by TimeFix may not contain any information. My question is, when you say you tried to load the second part of the file, was that the FINAL segment produced by TimeFix or were there others? If there were others, you might try joining file 1 to file 3 (file 2 might contain less than a second of information). By looking at the file sizes for each file produced by Timefix, you can get an idea of whether the file contains any real information. That said, TimeFix does nothing to correct audio errors. Its sole purpose is to prevent timecodes that "restart" from fooling editing programs that rely on these timecodes to determine a total duration for the video. In many cases, but not all, once these editing programs have the correct duration for the video, audio sync falls into place.*
The second file was the larger of the two, but when inputted to tmpg it shows as only like 12 secs.


But no biggie, I have created a couple svcds from the Replay mpegs but they have some audio sync issues.


As a side note, has anyone noticed while editing out commercials that when you goto skip ahead in the show that it may out of order. Like this last mpeg I was working with, I was in about the middle of a 1hour show and thought the clip i was making was ending at the commercial break. But I noticed that clip was supposed to be at the end of the show, so I had to go back and extend the clip. I've noticed this a couple times with different mpegs and wondered if anyone else has noticed it. I've primarily noticed this with Tmpg.


----------



## IvanX

This is slightly off topic, and apologies if it's been covered elsewhere. But I am curious if the VBR encoding used in high quality mode ever exceeds 9.8 Mbps?


The reason I ask is that I was hoping I could make DVD's using the unmodified (aside from demuxing, if necessary) ReplayTV 4000 files. With some I have been able to do this, but I have one show (Max Headroom) which my authoring application (Apple DVD Studio Pro) refused to make the DVD files from, because it claims the bitrate at one point in the show exceeds 9.8 Mbps -- unfortunately, it doesn't actually tell me what the bitrate IS, just that it's too high.


Is this possible, or is there something else that might be wrong (and might require fixing with a tool like Womble, Timefix, etc)? Are there any programs (Mac or PC) which would allow me to see the actual bitrate at that point in the file? I'm not as familiar with what's available for Windows, so please forgive me if these are obvious questions; I imagine there must be some program which displays the live bitrate of an MPEG-2 file during playback.


Thanks for any insight...


----------



## WarrenJ

IvanX,


Can't help you with the Mac, but Windows PC users can download a free version of 'Bitrate Viewer' at : http://www.tecoltd.com/bitratev.htm 


Warren


----------



## dwater

Ah, another Mac user - make a refreshing change 


You might like to try mplayer, which is actually for Linux, but has a version for MacOSX too :




I ported it to IRIX and I seem to recall it has plenty of options.


It is interesting that you manage to get Apple DVD Studio Pro to burn DVDs straight from RTV mpegs. Will that work with any quality recordings (ie standard, medium, and high)? Can you use DVD Studio to burn SVCDs and VCDs from RTV mpegs too? I might just fork out the dosh for it, if it can do SVCD and VCDs too...


Max.


----------



## dwater

Quote:

_Originally posted by dwater_
*Ah, another Mac user - make a refreshing change 


You might like to try mplayer, which is actually for Linux, but has a version for MacOSX too :




I ported it to IRIX and I seem to recall it has plenty of options.
 *
I just tested it on Mac and it worked quite nicely at full screen. It has output like this :


A:10453.8 V:10453.8 A-V: -0.005 ct:-43.994 313280/313280 16% 72% 4.0% 131871

A:10453.9 V:10453.9 A-V: 0.024 ct:-43.992 313281/313281 16% 72% 4.0% 131871

A:10453.9 V:10454.0 A-V: -0.109 ct:-43.995 313282/313282 16% 72% 4.0% 131872

A:10453.9 V:10453.9 A-V: 0.001 ct:-43.995 313283/313283 16% 72% 4.0% 131872

A:10453.9 V:10454.0 A-V: -0.032 ct:-43.998 313284/313284 16% 72% 4.0% 131873

A:10454.0 V:10454.1 A-V: -0.123 ct:-44.002 313285/313285 16% 72% 4.0% 131873

A:10454.0 V:10454.0 A-V: -0.035 ct:-44.005 313286/313286 16% 72% 4.0% 131874

A:10454.0 V:10454.1 A-V: -0.025 ct:-44.007 313287/313287 16% 72% 4.0% 131874

A:10454.1 V:10454.2 A-V: -0.138 ct:-44.011 313288/313288 16% 72% 4.0% 131875

A:10454.1 V:10454.1 A-V: -0.029 ct:-44.014 313289/313289 16% 72% 4.0% 131875

A:10454.2 V:10454.2 A-V: 0.023 ct:-44.011 313290/313290 16% 72% 4.0% 131875

A:10454.2 V:10454.3 A-V: -0.110 ct:-44.015 313291/313291 16% 72% 4.0% 131876

A:10454.2 V:10454.2 A-V: 0.000 ct:-44.015 313292/313292 16% 72% 4.0% 131876

A:10454.2 V:10454.3 A-V: -0.034 ct:-44.018 313293/313293 16% 72% 4.0% 131877

A:10454.3 V:10454.4 A-V: -0.104 ct:-44.021 313294/313294 16% 72% 4.0% 131877

A:10454.3 V:10454.3 A-V: 0.006 ct:-44.021 313295/313295 16% 72% 4.0% 131877

A:10454.4 V:10454.4 A-V: -0.006 ct:-44.021 313296/313296 16% 72% 4.0% 131878

A:10454.4 V:10454.5 A-V: -0.097 ct:-44.025 313297/313297 16% 72% 4.0% 131878

A:10454.4 V:10454.4 A-V: -0.010 ct:-44.026 313298/313298 16% 72% 4.0% 131879


I'm not entirely sure what the numbers mean, but I expect what you're asking for may be in that lot somewhere.


BTW, when you test mplayer, try it with a short movie file first, because :


MPlayer(1)

...

NOTE: These keys may/may not work, depending on your video

output driver.


general control

...

q / ESC stop playing and quit program

...


I tried it with a 3 1/2 hr long movie (PeaceKeepers), and it played full screen by default. I had no control using the keybaord, so I had to let the movie play through (ie, I watched it - excellent movie).


Hope it helps.


Let me know about Apple DVD Studio Pro's capability with VCD and SVCD. Thanks!


Max.


----------



## Synapse

Back when Rich was talking about his new DVDR I knew I had to get one soon. A week or so ago I hooked up with a Pioneer DVR-104 and it's sweet. I have made some great DVD's now and have learned that going the replay>dvdr route is often easier and faster then going dvd>dvdr. In fact, the first two hour movie I ripped direct from dvd was too big to burn, like 800meg too big. Transcoding it to fit would be an awful waste of time. So, using the Replay that same move was like barely over 3gigs. Not bad at all, and as you know the quality is still great.


Anyway, I do have a great replay capture sitting on my hard drive where the audio is way off from the video. pvastrumento doesnt fix it, because it was actually encoded that way (it does fix that 66ms or so error most replay mpegs have). So, I demuxed it and now would like to find a little application that will let me play with the audio and video sync to get it lined up again and then reprocess the stream "fixed". Is this possible? Does anyone know any good tools to that end? Thanks in advance for any help!


----------



## IvanX

Thanks for all the tips. MPlayer I tried out and its output didn't display what I wanted, unfortunately; however, I am happy to know of its existence. Bitrate Viewer was pretty cool, and I analyzed the file. I definitely found the peak in the file that corresponds to where DVD SP gives up, but it was around 8.3 Mbps, comfortably within the 9.8 limit, and not really different from peaks that occur elsewhere in the show which play fine. I also tried PowerDVD on a PC and it made the DVD from the same file just fine. So I don't really get why DVD SP complains; my best guess is that since many here have noted that the ReplayTV MPEG's are "dirty" (as in, not strictly to spec), maybe there's just something in the file that throws DVD SP for a loop. The question, then, becomes how to clean the file (assuming that's what the issue is). Any ideas?


The DVR-104 is awesome. I can burn 2x (with the right media) on my iBook with the drive in a FireWire enclosure. Great fun.


Thanks again for the comments, any others that help out are welcome!


----------



## Synapse

The Womble programmer Chang hooked me up with a free 90 day key, but I have to enter it every time I launch it. Luckly it's such a clean little app I can just leave it open. I am gonna pay for it asap! Anyway, my verison is 3.12 6/2002... is that the latest I expect? TTYL!


----------



## dwater

Hi IvanX,


I just got a Firewire DVD-RW. I would like to be able burn DVDs, SVCDs, and/or VCDs.


I see you are able to use DVD Studio Pro to do this. I went to the Apple Store in Palo Alto to have them try it out there, but it failed to even load this file :

http://reality.sgiweb.org/maxw/tmp/r...vball_clip.mpg 


How were you able to get it to work?


I used Toast to burn a DVD from such a file, but it wouldn't play on anything - not even the same DVD-R device.


I don't mind spending money on s/w, if I could only be sure it was going to work.


The only path I've managed to find to burn RTV mpegs is this :

[email protected] wrote:

> Hi Max

>

> snip

>

> Used MPEG Info to check the

> stats:

>

> vball_clip.mpg

> Mpeg 2 Program Stream File [Video/Audio] you were right MPEG2

> Muxrate : 1.95 Mbps very low bit rate... just above vcd....low end of svcd

> Estimated Duration: 40.85s

> Aspect ratio 4/3 (TV)

> Interlaced, chroma format: 4:2:0

> Video Format: NTSC

> Size [352 x 480] 29.97 fps 1.82 Mbps expected 720x480, but I think

> 352x480 is in the dvd range

> Audio : Mpeg 1 layer 2 mp2....good for both svcd and dvd, however...

> 224 kbps 48000 Hz dvd must be 48khz, but svcd must be 41khz

> Stereo, No emphasis

>

>

> I also used bbDEMUX, saved audio as .mp2 (1meg) and video as .m2v (6.6meg).

> Ran the .m2v though mpeg2decX, scaled at 720x480 using QT Motion Jpeg A.

> The audio got a little tricky, bbDemux did not extract the audio correctly.

> Use a very simple demuxer, download from the tools section of my site.

> But this little app did not do the video correctly.

> Anyway, Open iTunes, select Advanced -> Convert to mp3

> Select the mp2 from the simple demuxer.

> Opened the .mov with QT, selected all, copy.

> Opened the .mp3 with QT, selected Add from the Edit menu, to add the

> video to the audio.

> Exported as DV stream (QT Pro).

> Started new project in iMove, then quit.

> Moved the DV clip into the Media folder of the new project.

> You ready to edit your clip.

>

> Transcoding to SVCD went a bit easier

> Use mpeg2enc function of MMT for default svcd settings.

> Select the .m2v file from bbDEMUX, and encode.

> The original mp2 may work ok, but is not svcd standards compliant.

> Open the .mp3 from above in QT, save as .wav

> Use mp2enc function of MMT to encode the .aiff to .mp2

> Use mplex, vcdxgen and vcdxbuild, then burn to disk.

>

>

> I think this is what you were looking for.

> Good Luck

> RNC


Provided FYI and with credits. This worked for me, but only for the relatively short mpeg I quote above. Longer ones (like the other one in the same directory, above) require stupidly large files - it died when it ran out of disk space at 35GB or so.


Can you make comment on your experience with DVD Studio Pro with RTV mpegs?


Thanks.


Max.


----------



## Synapse

dwater.... whoa, thats a lot of work!


I take the mpegs (usually extracted with SwapDV), fix and edit them in Womble, create the vob files in Ulead's DVD Factory, and burn them with Nero. Piece of cake! Easy as pie! Etc! 


Rich, this is pretty much what you do, but with spruceup instead of the ulead schmack, right?


----------



## dwater

Quote:

_Originally posted by Synapse_
*dwater.... whoa, thats a lot of work!


I take the mpegs (usually extracted with SwapDV), fix and edit them in Womble, create the vob files in Ulead's DVD Factory, and burn them with Nero. Piece of cake! Easy as pie! Etc! 


Rich, this is pretty much what you do, but with spruceup instead of the ulead schmack, right?*
Well, I only use Macs - my post was really directed at IvanX, who also seems to use Macs. Womble isn't available on Mac, IINM. I'm not entirely sure how comparable our techniques are.


I think the main problem with the path I use is that I need to go to DV format in order to get it into iMovie. That is what creates a huge file. (I vould be wrong, I forget exactly where I fail). I haven't tried to avoid that step; perhaps I will sometime.


Max.


----------



## madSkeelz

Mac OS does *not* support MPEG-2. That's why iMovie, FinalCut, and DVD Studio won't touch the extracted files. With the release of Jaguar [the next major rev. of OS X], QuickTime will be able to display MPEG-2 files, but not edit them. I don't know that DVD Studio or FinalCut will be able to do much with them, however.


----------



## Rich A

Quote:

_Originally posted by Synapse_
*dwater.... whoa, thats a lot of work!


I take the mpegs (usually extracted with SwapDV), fix and edit them in Womble, create the vob files in Ulead's DVD Factory, and burn them with Nero. Piece of cake! Easy as pie! Etc! 


Rich, this is pretty much what you do, but with spruceup instead of the ulead schmack, right?*
Pretty much .. I edit in Womble .. then break the mpeg program stream into elementary streams. Then stick it in SpruceUp. But I don't use Nero at all. I burn directly from SpruceUp using it's own internal burning. I've also tried using SpruceUp to make DVD title sets and then use Nero to burn them to DVD-R. But there was no difference in time for burning, so I just save a few minutes and stay in the SpruceUp program when ready to burn. '


But I sure wish I had a 2x DVD burner instead of a 1x.


----------



## scochran666

Rich, those of us with DVD+R/RW drives can't use Spruce to burn - it just doesn't recognize the drives properly, so we have to use Nero or some other program. Just FYI.


----------



## Ed Rempalski

Speaking of +RW's, has anyone seen any +R Media anywhere? My Philips drive came with a flyer that said that they would have a firmware upgrade avail Q1 2002 to allow the use of +R media, but I haven't seen any mention of either updates or media in months.


----------



## scochran666

I bought my first batch of +R media direct from HP when it first became available - it was the lowest price at about $5/disc before shipping. Circuit City and Best Buy sell media at extortionist prices ($8+ per disc). CompUSA sells it, and sometimes a good price sneaks through (I picked up 2 3-Packs last week at $12 each, or $4/disc).


For online purchases, there are a couple of good options that I have seen, including www.rima.com ($3.10/disc in 10-packs, $2.85 in 100-packs) and www.supermediastore.com (a number of pricing options). You can also find them at a lot of other sites, such as www.TheNerds.net. 


I'm trying not to buy in bulk right now, since prices are going down pretty quickly. I just buy what I think I need for the next 3-4 weeks.


The biggest problem with finding media is that most search engines treat the "+" as a search operator. Even putting "DVD+R" in quotes often doesn't work well. Check out the forums at www.dvdplusrw.org - the subject frequently pops up with people relating their latest finds.


Good luck!


----------



## Synapse

I need to get a copy of SpruceUp... it's not made any more, right? Can you hook me up Rich? Later.


----------



## Rich A

Quote:

_Originally posted by Synapse_
*I need to get a copy of SpruceUp... it's not made any more, right? Can you hook me up Rich? Later.*
Synapse .. I dropped you a personal message here on the forum. Did you get it?


----------



## Rich A

Bump ... Yo Synapse .. did you fall off the end of the earth or something?


----------



## Synapse

my bad... just a little out of it lately! Ill go check my messages!


----------



## jason531

I created my first DVD yesterday, but I'm not sure whether I'm doing this correctly. It looks great, but it took a really long time and I just want to know if this is normal.


1. I extracted the file from my Showstopper HD using extract_rtv. This was about a two hour show at medium quality and the extracted file was about 5.3 GB.


2. I used Womble 3.12 (6/2002) to trim out commercials, etc. When I hit the record button, I changed the audio to 48 khz and didn't change anything else. It took about an hour on an Athlon 950. Is this about right?


3. I used the Womble GOP Fixer to fix GOP size errors. This took about an hour to process a 4 GB file. Is this about right, too?


4. I authored and burned the DVD using Ulead DVD Movie Factory SE that came with my WinTV-PVR. This process took a long time as well because of the multiplexing stage.


Is there a way to streamline this long and tedious process? Is there a way I can get Womble to assemble the edited video, convert the audio, fix GOP size errors, and multiplex in one step?


Thanks in advance for any help.


----------



## Rich A

An hour for Womble to "save" your Mpeg seems a little long. But I may be comparing apples and oranges. In my case the biggest files I've done were high quality. I'm just burning one right now that ended up at high quality just under 4 GB. (The Shadow) If I recall the Womble save was around 3 minutes. Like I said though, I'm comparing apples and oranges because my system is about two and a half times your speed and I'm also using a very fast 4 drive raid array to do all the processing on.


But even so, I still thing an hour is not right for you. I'd guess maybe 10 minutes or so sounds better.


If you change (even accidently) any parameter other than the audio, it will do a full re-encode. And I would guess THAT would take multiple hours for your long video. We need someone running a one K processor to compare with.


When you go to save, just open up the Audio options section and only change the value from 32 to 48. Don't change anything else. I think if you also changed something like the 192 kHz sampling to say 224, it might slow things down.


----------



## scochran666

A couple of things, Jason. First, use the GOP fix tool _before_ you do anything else to the MPG file. Until you have that file cleaned up, editing can introduce new problems.


Second, a little more information about your hardware might help diagnose the speed issue. I suspect that one (or more) of the following is true:


1. You are using a single hard drive, and all operations are saving the new files onto that same hard drive that the source files are on.


2. You are using a slow (5400 RPM) hard drive - many people will tradeoff between speed and price when buying a high-capacity hard drive.


3. Your drive is fairly full, and/or you haven't defragmented it recently.


Any, or all, of the above can lead to sub-par performance when working with these huge files. If I'm off the mark with my guesses, please let me know. Otherwise, I suggest that you consider a slightly different configuration - this _really_ sped my processing up.


First, use two 7200 RPM drives when processing your video files. Alternate back and forth. In other words, if the original MPG file is on C:, during the GOP fix save the new file to D:. Then, when you edit the MPG on D:, save the result on C:. Back and forth.


Make sure that each of the drives is on a different IDE chain. They shouldn't be a master & slave pair. Ideally, each should each be the only drive on it's cable.


I recommend that these drives be used for nothing else. The operating system should be on a third drive (yeah, I know, but speed costs).


Finally, keep them clean. After you do a bunch of editing, and have deleted all the leftover files, empty the recycle bin and defragment.


I had the luxury of having a spare system to build up for my editing box (nothing else is installed). I ended up with a Athlon 1.4GHz, 512 MB Ram and two 7200 RPM hard drives, a 40 Gig and an 80 Gig, each on it's own Ultra 100 channel. I keep the drives clean of clutter, and I defragment once a week. I still didn't follow my own rule regarding putting the OS on a seperate drive, but I find this works very well. For most operations, it runs very smooth and fast. Honestly, the drives are the expensive part - the rest can be had for around $300.


Considering the time that it saves, it's well worth the cost. I just wish that we could batch the GOP utility - I hate babysitting that thing, and would prefer it just ran overnight.


----------



## Synapse

After much effort... I am back in business buring DVDs from my reply rips. For a good amount of time my Womble was srewed up, not even the programmer could get it working. During the trouble shooting process, I changed over from XP to 2k. After getting everything working again, this is the process I use most often: extract with replayer or swapdv, gop fix with womble or pvastrumento if necessary, edit with womble if necessary, create vob files with uleds dvd factory, and burn them in nero 5580. works like a charm. My Pioneer DVR-104 came with a copy of CyberLink PowerDirector, I could have sworn it was going to burn at 2x on my 1x media (the option was available), but before i got around to testing it I reloaded my box and now I can find the blasted dick. I need to get organized. I have been working alot on a new ecommerce web site based on this schmack. Gotta sleep. Later everyone!


----------



## jason531

scochran666,


I did use a single drive for the source and edited mpegs. I knew it was a mistake when I did it, but errantly thought I would be cpu-bound rather than I/O-bound. And, yes, it is a 5400 rpm drive - actually a 30 Gig drive from a Shopstopper that I am upgrading to give as a gift. On the positive side, the drive was defragged and I always run my OS on a separate drive. I also have everything spread out among four IDE channels (two on the motherboard + two on an add-on card), three hard drives, and seven partitions (I'm a bit anal about partitioning). Here is the Readers' Digest version of my layout:


Drive 1 - [OS] [Data] [CDStage]

Drive 2 - [Apps] [MP3] [Backup]

Drive 3 - [DVDStage]


I'll optimize my current hardware and run some more tests before I buy more drives. The DVD+R/RW drive ate up my toy budget for a while.


Regarding the GOP fixer, which fix(es) should I run before editing, the GOP time code and audio PTS fix and/or the GOP DVD compliance size error fix? I scanned the file before editing it and it found numerous errors of all three types. Since I was experimenting anyway, I edited the file despite the errors and when I scanned the newly assembled file (now with 48 kHz audio) I only had GOP size errors.


Thanks for all of you help.


----------



## Rich A

For Synapse .. did you say you went back to Win2K from WinXP? And now it works?


I've been stating since the release of XP that in my own personal opinion WinXP is not the best choice for some of us doing a lot of multimedia advanced stuff. Like authoring (S)VCDs and DVDs.


I've always used Win2K and have been happy with it. I believe I once mentioned here that XP and some programs (ie Womble) didn't play well.


Everytime I mentioned that (my own personal experiance) I was taken down a peg or two by people who suggested I should upgrade my system and/or software and that XP was fine. It might be noted that I change/upgrade my hardware every six months. I often stick in the XP system disc and after a few days of nagging problems always end up going back to a "perfectly" working Win2K. Just my own 2 cents there.


For Jason,


There may be a problem with the latest Womble GOP fixer. Won't affect the "fixing" though. You have no choice. Just run the scan. If it finds anything it will fix it automatically and the little display line will say which problem it found how many errors it found and how many errors were fixed.


Can anyone confirm what I've been experiancing? The ability to save it as another name no longer works. That option is greyed out. It always uses the original file only and mods that file. There was something else that wasn't quite right but I'll have to go home to check as I don't use the "fix" very much.


I was using it for the low quality RPTV Mpegs which almost always had a problem. The High quality were much better, only needed a "fix" about 5 percent of the time. However, I've since gone back to the ATI All In Wonder Card for capturing my DVD as their latest release of MMC 7.7 is now has 48 Khz audio and it makes fully compliant VCD SVCD and DVD mpegs. There are "never" any GOP problems with the ATI and I can capture mpegs full D1 at 9 Mb/s making for rather outstanding DVD source material. I've found only thing better has been non-real time multipass encoding with some of the better software encoders.


Still the RPTV is what I now use for a "back up" and for situations where I need two programs running at the same time. (One on the RPTV, and the other on the ATI)


Using the ATI has cut my total authoring time by around 15 minutes as I don't have to wait to extract the RPTV file from the ReplayTV. As soon as the capture with the ATI is done, I'm ready to author.


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## dwater

Quote:

_Originally posted by scochran666_
*A couple of things, Jason. First, use the GOP fix tool _before_ you do anything else to the MPG file.*
Anyone know of a GOP fix tool for Mac OS X.


Max.


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## scochran666

Jason, run all of the fixes before you start editing. It's just good insurance - I got quite a few errors at the "Create DVD Title Set" stage when I skipped any of the fixes.


Rich, I'm not experiencing the problem with the GOP tool that you are. My last download was the 6/2002 version, which I picked up on 7/14 (IIRC) - is there an update after that? I checked last week and didn't see a new version (download and compare to previous file size).


When I use the GOP tool, it doesn't do anything automatically - I have to do each stage manually. If I read your message above correctly, it is not letting you run the GOP Size fix on low-quality MPGs.


I discovered that it won't do the GOP Size fix on the 1/2 D1 format low quality files from my Showstopper. It will still fix the PTS Time Code errors on the LQ files. If the 4000 series uses the 1/2 D1 format as well, then chances are you are seeing the same behavior. I've given up on recording anything important at low quality until I see a new release from Womble that handles this correctly.


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## t_tringle

Jason,


One thing you need to make sure is that when you save your Womble file, you are using the same settings as the input file. Such as when you save a high quality Replay file you have to make sure that your using a program stream, and that it's 6000 CBR, with 224 audio.


If you use something lower, it will try to re-encode that video.


The same goes for Uleads products if you don't use an equal or higher video bit rate and the accompanying settings it will re-encode the video and while it will work, the quality will definitely suffer from the original file.


Of course I don't have a 3000 unit, I have a 4K unit.


Good luck.


TIMT


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## Rich A

Quote:

_Originally posted by scochran666_
*Jason, run all of the fixes before you start editing. It's just good insurance - I got quite a few errors at the "Create DVD Title Set" stage when I skipped any of the fixes.


Rich, I'm not experiencing the problem with the GOP tool that you are. My last download was the 6/2002 version, which I picked up on 7/14 (IIRC) - is there an update after that? I checked last week and didn't see a new version (download and compare to previous file size).


When I use the GOP tool, it doesn't do anything automatically - I have to do each stage manually. If I read your message above correctly, it is not letting you run the GOP Size fix on low-quality MPGs.


I discovered that it won't do the GOP Size fix on the 1/2 D1 format low quality files from my Showstopper. It will still fix the PTS Time Code errors on the LQ files. If the 4000 series uses the 1/2 D1 format as well, then chances are you are seeing the same behavior. I've given up on recording anything important at low quality until I see a new release from Womble that handles this correctly.*
It seems to be doing all the "fixes". Just does them all automatically. The version I'm using was downloaded at least a few weeks ago. Maybe I have an older version. Womble is known to update versions without making any version or date changes.


Here's what happens to me.


Open up Tools to Fix Gop.

I can click on any of the three option boxes. The "save as" box is greyed out and can't be used.


I browse to a file to put in the input selection. The output file option is still not available. Plus as soon as I load the mpeg, all the options except the first one are greyed out. So I hit selecting that which is the scan for the three types of errors. It does that and will show which error number it found and how many of each. I still can't change the output file.


I click on "fix" (the only available button other than quit and it does the whole fix thing, at the end showing the number of which fix was done plus the actual number of fixes it did for each.


It seems to be fully automated and I can't just select one type of scan or fix. I can only do a general scan for all three problems and then can only "fix" all of the problems it finds. Strange. I just downloaded another copy tonight. I'll try again.


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## scochran666

Rich, that certainly sounds like what I am seeing with low quality, 1/2 D1 (352x240, I think) format files from my Showstopper. That is normal behavior, until they update to correct GOP Size errors in 1/2 D1 files.


From your earlier post, I thought that when you were hitting "Scan" it also triggered the "Fix" automatically, without user intervention, which would have indeed been strange behavior.


The good news is the 1/2 D1 format is valid for the DVD spec, and will be handled by any DVD player. It's just a matter of getting Womble to fix the GOP sizes for it.


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## Rich A

Thanks for that info. The RPTV low is indeed 1/2 D1. That by the way is 352x480 not 240. However I've never had the utility need to fix any GOP size errors in my RPTV mpegs. I've never seen anything with a GOP bigger than 15. But I'm using a 4000 series, and no longer do the extracts from the series 2 or 3K I also own. Most of the times when a fix is needed (with my 4K unit) it's the PTS and audio error, and both the medium and high files don't show any errors at all, only the low quality mpegs.


I have been doing one low quality every day for the last few weeks and still have never had any GOPs over 15. Others (with the same 4K series) have reported the need to fix the GOPs often and mostly with the low quality series.


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## Synapse

RichA: "Bump ... Yo Synapse .. did you fall off the end of the earth or something?"

----


Yeah, I drop off the face of the Earth on occasion. 


I did go back to 2k from XP, and it does solve some real issues when dealing with this schmack. I think this may have to do with a leaner kernel, or even cleaner drivers perhaps? Hmm. However, I quickly missed some of the advantages of XP, and have since switched back. Things are working nicely now... I use a Deowoo 5700 to feed DVD's into my 4160, usually captured in high quality. Then I extract with SwapDV (which does have problems selecting destination directories, as does the Womble GOP fixer). PVAStrumento actually introduces an awful audio lag in my files, but Womble's fixer is perfect. So, I use it on everything for those damn audio pts errors, whatever those are. I author and burn in one shot using Ulead's DVD Movie Factory, which I do like quite a bit more than SpruceUp (thanks for that RichA, BTW)!


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## Roto

Quote:

_Originally posted by scochran666_
*A couple of things, Jason. First, use the GOP fix tool _before_ you do anything else to the MPG file. Until you have that file cleaned up, editing can introduce new problems.*
I haven't done a lot of these yet, maybe about a half dozen DVD-Rs with Womble and Ulead DVD Movie Factory now. To me the GOP repair hasn't made any difference because as soon as I put a segment in the clipboard it seems to be fine.


If I take the mpg straight from the Replay and run the GOP fix it will find plenty of errors. So far for me everything I copy to the clipboard seems to get fixed right then and there. I copy the segment of the show I want to keep to the clipboard (leaving out the extra minute or two before and after the actual show) and then save that to a new file. Every time the new file has come up with no errors, so I don't bother using the GOP fix anymore.


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## Synapse

Roto... I have had the same experience, so now I don't use it anymore as well. Ulead's DVD Factory is turning out to be great software.


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## Rich A

Regarding the Womble's GOP fixer .. I have never had the need to fix either the Medium or High quality RPTV 4000 series mpegs. Those being the ones off-loaded from my 4080 RPTV. However almost every low quality Mpeg needs fixing. Usually the PTS errors.


I don't do any kind of off-loading with my older 2 and 3K units any longer, but remember that I did have to "fix" many of them. (this was before Womble introduced the "GOP Fixer" utility)


Lately I've been using only my PC Video/Capture card for DVD creation and the RPTV low quality for long running series that I'm interested in. Like putting 5 episodes of "Nero Wolf" on a single DVD-R. My low quality RPTV mpegs are the best quality for the lowest size whereas my Computer captured Mpegs are the best quality for the highest size.


Hmmm, just re-read the last paragraph. Sounds confusing. This is what I mean.


The low quality RPTV is just under 2 Mb/s 1/2 D1 screen. A 45 minute (one hour before editing) TV show ends up around 900 MB in size. The quality (in my case) is about equal or maybe a little less than most SVCDs. Perfectly okay when viewed on my 27 inch TV from 8 ft.


The high quality RPTV mpeg is only 6 Mb/s. My PC capture card can do up to 15 Mb/s without dropping frames. I use the PC to capture things I want the best quality possible. I keep the pc's bit rate at 9 Mb/s or less to keep near to the DVD specs that work best in most stand alone DVD players.


So at 9 Mb/s captured by the PC the final video (45 minutes) is around 3 GB large but far and away better than the best the RPTV can do.


Why did I switch? Because intil recently my PC based system's software capture engine was not able to encode the audio at anything higher than a sample rate of 44.1 kHz. It now can do 48 kHz which is what's needed to author DVD. And the Mpeg out of this PC environment is 100 pecent DVD proper ..


The only advantage the RPTV has is that it doesn't tie up my computer while capturing. There have been many times I've only had free moments to work on various multimedia projects and the dedicated multimedia computer has been tied up doing a capture of something. Because of the high bit rate I'm capturing at, I cannot do any kind of "multi-tasking" with that machine during the capture.


But I still use the low quality RPTVs all the time as mention earlier.


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## raze

Rich,


I know you are an ATI AIW man from way back.

What PC capture card are you using now?

Have you been on the SVCD forum lately/


Later,

Ray


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## Rich A

Quote:

_Originally posted by raze_
*Rich,


I know you are an ATI AIW man from way back.

What PC capture card are you using now?

Have you been on the SVCD forum lately/


Later,

Ray*
I'm using an ATI All In Wonder 128 32MB card. (thinking of getting one of the newer Radeon AIWs some day) Right now the 128 is doing everything perfectly.


And yes, I hang out at the SVCD forum and lurk there daily.


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## repdetect2

Hey RichA,


You mentioned the software engine now being able to capture at 48khz. Can you elaborate? What software are you using to capture your shows? I have 1.1 ghz intel setup, with 512 SDRAM under windows xp. Could I duplicate your obviously excellent results?


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## Rich A

Hi,


The latest MMC from ATI for the ATI AIW Radeon cards. IT's 7.7.1


Although only supported for the All in Wonder Radeons it also works fine for me and my AIW Rage 128.


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## vaylen

I've burned 4 Seinfeld DVD's from ReplayTV mpegs using MPEG2VCR to remove the commercials and DVDit to make the menus and burn the discs. Those were recorded in the lowest quality format on the ReplayTV. I was able to get 8 episodes per DVD and they look good and play well in my DVD player.


Now I'm trying to burn a "Freaks and Geeks" DVD. Now I'm dealing with the HIGHEST QUALITY recordings from my ReplayTV. I was able to remove the commercials from the shows with MPEG2VCR with no problem, which reduced the file sizes from 2.4 gigs to 1.7 or so. But when I try to burn 2 of these episodes to a DVD with DVDit, during the operation called "Planning projet multiplexing" I get the error message "Data exceeded multiplexable bit rate". Does anyone

a) know what this means

b) know if DVDit can handle this task


or, if all else fails

c) which software is better for this job?


I already spent (read: wasted) my money buying NeoDVD plus before finding out it sucks and went with DVDit.


All help appreciated!


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## Rich A

Sometimes those error messages can be misleading. While I don't know what it means in your case I can tell you what usually drives DVD authoring software crazy.


1. GOP 's with more than 15 pictures in them.

2. problems with incorrect audio (ie 44.1 instead of 48 kHz.


Try parsing your mpeg through Womble's GOP fix utility to see if it finds any errors. If so have it fix them and give it another go.


Another big problem for a lot of DVD authoring software is caused when you use program streams for assets. When you are done editing in Womble, de-mulitplex your finished mpeg program stream into separate elementary streams. Keep the name the same for both only setting the extenion proper for each. For example if you had an mpeg named " mymovie.mpg" when you demux it name them "mymovie.mpv" for the video and "mymovie.mpa" for the audio. Then in DVDIT, just import the video and it should find and import the correct audio to go with it and do it's own multiplexing. It "sounds" from your description that you might already be doing that. But maybe not and perhaps what DVDit is doing is doing it's own De-multiplexing and then Multiplexing again. If that's the case, could be that you'll do better supplying it with an already demulltiplexed set of elementary streams.


I use the no-longer-avaialbe SpruceUp myself. I got a copy of DVDit LE with my DVD-R burner, and glanced at it. SpruceUp was much simplier and I stuck with that. The only thing you need to worry about as far as total size for the DVD goes is that you won't be able to fill the full 4.7 GB. Because of over-head, etc. it will be a bit less .. like 4.3 or so. I've never gone over (or had the need to go over) about 3.9 GB. Don't think that's a worry for you as you are well under that size.


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## vaylen

I seperated the .mpg files into .mpv and .mpa files and DVDit ended up crashing trying to make the DVD with that source material...


If anyone else is using HIGHEST QUALITY ReplayTV .mpg files to make DVDs, I'd like to know what software you are using. Or at least how you test the "multiplexable bit rate" so it doesn't exceed the program's limitations.


thanks!


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## Rich A

I use the high quality RPTV Mpegs all the time.


I use SpruceUp for my DVD authoring and Womble for my editing.


FWIW, I've stopped checking the medium and high RPtV Mpegs as I can never find anything wrong with them. I've used them right out of the ReplayTV box with no editing at all and have not had a problem yet.


I'm not inclined to say it's DVDit just yet however. The fact that you are seeing a lot of errors being reported worries me. The ONLY ReplayTV mpegs I ever see errors (when checked with the Womble's GOP fixer) are those that are low gualtiy. About 99 percent of them are bad. Womble fixes them fine and they burn fine. The only problem I've seen with the low quality ones are tens of thousands of PTS audio errors. GOB size and other things seem fine.


I wonder if there is something amiss with your ReplayTV mpegs as extracted from the ReplayTV? There seems to be a lot of guys having this problem with all kinds of errors and it's strange that I never see them.


Again I'd suggest using ReplayPC in a DOS window command line mode and see what happens. Since you've now tried two authoring programs and neither work .. I'd look at the source. If you want to try SpruceUp (which I've been using for what seems forever) drop me a private email and I'll help you out. Personally I don't think it's going to help though.


Later tonight, I'll try using my DVDit LE and see if I also have problems. Will post back here my results.


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## vaylen

Just for the heck of it I tried authoring the DVD with Ulead DVD Factory to see if it would work... It works.


I am not as enamored with DVD Factory's menu options compared to DVDit, but I'll live with cookie cutter menus (compared to my Seinfeld menus made with DVDit, which rock I'm not ashamed to say) just so I can have HIGHEST QUALITY masters of all 18 episodes of "Freaks and Geeks". Since there is such a legal dogfight going on about the rights to the music in that show it doesn't appear it will ever appear on DVD and I want to have a permanant copy of that show... Even if it takes 9 DVD+R's to do it.


So far I've now heard of these authoring programs:

-Spruce Up (haven't tried it)

-neoDVD plus (worst money ever spent)

-DVDit (excellent menu options, but it doesn't tell you much when it has an error, I mean "data exceeded multiplexable bitrate"?!? please!

-DVD Factory (kind of a cross between neoDVD's cookie cutter simplicity and DVDit's custom options. At least it works every time so far)


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## Gnarf

Has anyone ever tried NeroMIX or NeroVision Express? I just saw this as I was downloading the new Nero 5.5.9.9.


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## Rich A

That's good news vaylen !! I've found that most DVD authoring software acts differently if the source has any kind of problems. Best of course is to have a perfect source. But is that's not possible, as you can see, some are able to handle problems differently. My offer still goes. If you want to try SpruceUp drop me an email here. I'll "loan" you a copy of mine.  But it sounds very much like DVDit might have better menu creation. I'll find out when I get around to playing with my DVDit LE version.


For "Gnarf" .. I'm also a Nero user and also saw that information. The new DVD application is not yet ready and hasn't been released yet. (although there may be beta copies or something floating around)


I'm amazed at how the Ahead people keep upgrading their product and keep offering these updates to currently registered owners in the form of free updates. I "think" the only upgrade I've had to pay for was prior to version 5, This new application (which I think is going to be integrated into version 5.9 ? ) is also going to be free to current version 5.x owners. Pretty nice. That's a major update (to include DVD authoring) in my opion. (sshhhh, don't let Ahead know I said that)  Have you seen the sample screen shots? Looks to be very intutitive.


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## Pwrbilt

Does anyone know what a "Parseing Error" is when using spruce-up? I'm getting it when inputing media into step 1

Thanks for the help

Rob


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## Rich A

It's a general error that is vague to say the least. Mostly it means there's something wrong with the format of your Mpeg. Important things to watch are the frame size, GOP size (no GOPs with greater than 15 Pictures), and especially the audio which must be 48 kHz not 44.1


Those are the most obvious things and less obvious and more or less invisible to the user are intrinsic parameters that are part of the encoding process, like pack size, and multiplexing rate.


In order of most common SpruceUp chokers.


1. GOP size problems

2. Audio rates

3. Errors in headers (ie PTS errors etc)

4. Broken GOPs


Sometimes, if you supply SpruceUp with elementary streams instead of program streams, you will have less trouble. Then SpruceUp does it's own multiplexing and can sometimes fix small problems. Many times, I've had SpruceUp choke on a multiplexed program stream, only to have it work perfectly after I demultiplexed the program stream into separate elementary streams. Ie. MyMovie.mpv for video and MyMovie.mpa for audio.


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## Pwrbilt

Hi Rich

The stream I was using was demulitplexed, medium quality that had been run through mpeg-vcr gop fixer. I guess its just a bad file. I tried pulling it off the replay twice and the samething happened.


Rob


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## Rich A

Yeah .. sometimes (not often thankfully) one of the RPTV mpegs are beyond hope.


Here's some more information that may help.


Try re-multiplexing the two streams back together with an editor that has an actual DVD profile.


Or, if during the importing of the asset (mpeg video) to your DVD authoring you are seeing a percentage read out .. make note of where it happens.


I've actually done the following and successfully "recovered" a glitched Mpeg. Let's say it croaks at 80 percent. Sometimes, there's something wrong with the original mpeg that causes an editor to glitch (yeah I like that word glitch heh heh) during a joining of two clips. Using a little math you can figure about where in the mpeg the problem is by noting the percent mark in SpruceUp where it died. So stick the mpeg back into Womble and scrub your way to that point. If you are lucky you'll find it at or near one of the joins that you made. If so, cut the mpeg into two at that point and join them back together with some sort of "effect". Like a merge or something. Normally where you are joining is between cuts or a scene change so something like a "merge" effect isn't too bad. What happens is that Womble will then re-encode that 1 or 2 seconds where the transition or effect was added. Since it's re-encoding, it just might (if you are lucky) fix the glitch. I've done this on occassion and the point where SrpuceUp croaked was usually where I can cut out a commercial and re-joined the clips.


Multiplex your streams back to program type.

Stick it back in Womble and get to where it corresponds to the percent as reported in SpruceUp

Cut and re-join that point inserting an effect to insure it re-encodes that full one second or so of video.


Good luck.


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