[JellyBeen]

For those of you that are already familiar with FFmpeg, you probably will not need this. On the other hand, those of you that just can't handle all the settings and ripping the Vob into seperate Video/ audio portions , this app will help you out.
get it here> http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/17065

[Thinine]

I've downloaded it twice and still can't get past the "Select File..." window. I click continue and nothing happens.

[Burn]

Thinine,

You didn't elaborate much.. did you first extract the appropriate .VOB file with osex?

After you've done that - run DivXRay.

If you've already done that.. maybe your .VOB file is corrupt? or try MacDivXCreator (avail from VersionTracker)

[Thinine]

So I ripped the vob file again using OSex and get past the file selection screen. I leave the video setting untouched and continue. Then the processing window pops up and the progress bar gets done within a few minutes. However, it never produces a file. As far as I can tell, all it did is verify the file and then stop. I checked top and the program isn't consuming any cycles at all. So what is going on?

[torifile]

Originally posted by Thinine:
So I ripped the vob file again using OSex and get past the file selection screen. I leave the video setting untouched and continue. Then the processing window pops up and the progress bar gets done within a few minutes. However, it never produces a file. As far as I can tell, all it did is verify the file and then stop. I checked top and the program isn't consuming any cycles at all. So what is going on?

I've got the same problem. Ripped using MacDVDBackup or something like that.

[sadie]

Cool name, though.

[Burn]

You left the video setting alone but did you leave the audio setting alone?

I went through all the settings and for some reason can use all with no problems.. until I try using the Excellent quality audio - gets to the same point and stops. I think that 'Excellent' setting may be expecting more code or something different and then chokes and doesn't know how to proceed.

If you tweaked the audio at all try it again - leaving it at the preset or maybe even a lower setting.

If you haven't already, check out the steps in the OSEx readme.. I am totally one for just wanting it all point and click, but found some interesting info about the whole extraction process.

MacDivXCreator puts all the options infront of you - unlike DivXRay that tries to streamline it all.. like any 'streamlining' unexplainable issues pop up..

Maybe the problem is the movie you're trying to rip? Have you tried another? They're all built and encoded with standards in mind but some DVD's stray.. maybe you're trying a particularly hard one.

I think off of www.divx.com there may be a link to a site that has a list of 'problem movies' - maybe the one your trying is there?

Goodluck.

[kingskel]

Does it fix that audio-sync problem every one of these dvd-divx utilities seem to have? I tried to convert a bunch of my dvds, but it turned out to be a waste of time. Left them on defaults - audio out of sync. Changed the aspect ratio - out of sync. And so on. A streamlined dvd-divx utility that works fully (including audio that matches the video) would be a godsend. Anyone have any tips/suggestions?

[Burn]

Hrrmm..

Are these playing off your machine specifically? or have you burned to VCD and experienced the same thing?

What are you using to play them? Quicktime? QT Pro? Have you tried VLC? I don't know any one specific fix as I haven't had many huge problems yet..

If you're only playing them on your machine or burning to CD for future use, you could use the utility Avi2Mov and convert them..

There are also some steps to follow to get it all done manually in QT6 Pro, don't have those handy though - sorry.

[lucylawless]

if you want sync'd divx avi's that you can share with PC people, you are indeed out of luck (and should be ashamed of yourself anyway; those poor hollywood studio execs will be poor and have to eat dog, or dog food at least).

If you want to convert them to MOV to play on macs only, you can do that with Divx Doctor 2 or AVI2MOV (this one has problems with OpenDivx!) or Divx Validator, then you can sync them any which way with this swell little app I wrote: Sync-Hole

you can also find it on versiontracker

[kingskel]

I want to save space - have one dvd that has many movies on it. I would prefer divx avi as those seem to be smaller than mov files. I tried the seperation method whereby you get one file with the audio and one with the video, but again it was out of sync and the mov file was huge. I want to make a small (500-800 meg) file.

[torifile]

I'm still having trouble with it. I picked a vob file that had been ripped using macdvdbackup and it plays fine in the dvd player (when it says to pick a video_ts folder). Maybe I'm picking the wrong vob file? How do I know which to pick?

[lucylawless]

Originally posted by kingskel:
I want to save space - have one dvd that has many movies on it. I would prefer divx avi as those seem to be smaller than mov files. I tried the seperation method whereby you get one file with the audio and one with the video, but again it was out of sync and the mov file was huge. I want to make a small (500-800 meg) file.

avi and mov are file formats. the video track is compressed with a codec (COmpressor/DECompressor). The efficiency of the codec will determine file size. The codecs commonly used in mov container files are usually Sorenson or DV, which are not very effecient. You can also use a better codec like divx, 3ivx, vp3, Xvid, or Apple's mpeg-4 in either an avi or a mov (though some of those in avi files are unheard of). Mov, as a file format is a spectacular piece of technology. It supports multiple tracks for audio, video, text, flash, chapters whatever, and if you read up on wired sprites you'll just never be the same again. AVI (Audio Video Interleave) supports one video and one audio track. mp3 audio is technically not even allowed, but WMP for windows is sloppy enough that it works anyway. AVIs corrupt easily, because they store their catalog info or whatever at end of the file (so if you download half an avi you've got nothing). AVI is the de facto standard on Windows, for some reason, but even Windows users all agree that it is an archaic and horrid format, and they try to make the move to mp4, which is based on quicktime (mov). But it's hard to change the de facto standard, especially to one that is new and not supported by most software (yet).

To get back on track, if you encode to divx, you'll have an avi (unless you use MediaPipe, in which case you can have anything you want). If you run that avi through Divx Doctor, you'll have a mov, with the exact same video data in it, but because of the nature of the two file formats, your mov will be about 2 MB smaller than your avi. You can actually edit either one in Sync-Hole, but since it only saves mov files, you'll have a mov file at the end. Sync-Hole does not change the file size at all.

I hope you're all sufficiently bored by now..

[G4ME]

oaky nooob question about divx encoding, what actual software do i need, it seems to me that this DivxRay converts a file to and AVI but where do I get the file from another program, the DVD it self? Explain more for those of us that have no cule

[kingskel]

lucylawless:

Many thanks for the detailed answer! I haven't tried it recently - my recollection was that the resulting mov files were almost twice as large as the avis (!). I must have had an incorrect setting there somewhere. I will try the DVDBackup -> DivxRay -> DivxDoctor ->Sync-hole method. Obviously, it would be cool if there was an all-in-one app to streamline this process, but this should work.

Thanks again.

[thanatos]

Originally posted by kingskel:
lucylawless:

Many thanks for the detailed answer! I haven't tried it recently - my recollection was that the resulting mov files were almost twice as large as the avis (!). I must have had an incorrect setting there somewhere. I will try the DVDBackup -> DivxRay -> DivxDoctor ->Sync-hole method. Obviously, it would be cool if there was an all-in-one app to streamline this process, but this should work.

Thanks again.

OSex > ffmpeg > DivX validator produces nice DivX avi rips that work nice on both Macs and PCs with perfect sync,

There are some problems with 2/3 of the NTSC movies (sound out of sync) but all PAL movies work fine. Most NTSC movies seem to change framerate in the movie so ffmpeg loses audio sync...

[lucylawless]

that's true, I've only really heard of sync problems in NTSC (Never The Same Color) movies. maybe we should just leave DVD ripping to those in Europe and Asia...

re Divx Doctor: There is a setting to decompress audio. This will add about 1 GB to a 100 minute movie. If the source audio format was WMA (boo, hiss), the audio is decompressed regardless of the preference setting. No sane person has ripped a DVD with wma audio in about 2 years, and I doubt if any of the mac divx encoders even support wma audio. So you don't have to worry about that anymore, as long as you don't go and set that setting manually in Divx Doctor. Also, since Sync-Hole has a preference to save a self-contained movie, if you're planning to use it you can de-select that option from Divx Doctor, and create a reference movie. This will only be about 70 MB total for a 100 minute movie.

[lucylawless]

Originally posted by kingskel:
...Obviously, it would be cool if there was an all-in-one app to streamline this process, but this should work.

Thanks again.

the next version of MediaPipe will allow Multiple input and output streams, so it will be exactly what you want. For now, you have to do the audio and video separately and combine (and sync if necessary) at the end. There's a deCSS pipe out there, but you have to find it yourself; it doesn't come in the standard MediaPipe install

[mrfrost]

I also need some help with this.

So I have made a VOB file of my DVD using OSex. I used that VOB file in ffmpegX using the preset VOB --> DivX (PAL) setting. Now I have a 450 MB file without extension. No application will open it and changing the extension to avi doesn't do it either. Did I miss out on something? I did try dragging it on DivX validator but that didn't seem to do a thing?

Any help would be appreciated

[lucylawless]

when you started encoding with ffmpegX it should have popped up a terminal window. maybe you could paste here what it said?

[mrfrost]

Originally posted by lucylawless:
when you started encoding with ffmpegX it should have popped up a terminal window. maybe you could paste here what it said?

I'm encoding it again as a test. Everything seems to be the same as the last time :

mrfrostsosxbox 11:03 mrfrost% pbpaste | sh
No accelerated IMDCT transform found
No accelerated IMDCT transform found
No accelerated IMDCT transform found
Input #0, mpeg, from '/Volumes/Media/Sopranos/SOPRANOS_SEASON2_DISC5/TITLE01-ANGLE1.VOB':
Stream #0.0: Video: mpegvideo, 720x576, 25.00 fps, 7500 kb/s
Stream #0.1: Audio: ac3, 48000 Hz, 5:1, 384 kb/s
Stream #0.2: Audio: ac3, 48000 Hz, 5:1, 384 kb/s
Stream #0.3: Audio: ac3, 48000 Hz, 5:1, 384 kb/s
Output #0, avi, to '/Volumes/Movies/Movies/Sopranos/SOPRANOS_SEASON2_DISC6/Sopranos DivX/DVD5_ep1':
Stream #0.0: Video: msmpeg4 (hq), 640x352, 25.00 fps, q=2-9, 1000 kb/s
Stream #0.1: Audio: mp3, 48000 Hz, stereo, 128 kb/s
Stream mapping:
Stream #0.0 -> #0.0
Stream #0.1 -> #0.1
No accelerated IMDCT transform found
Press [q] to stop encoding
frame=74180 q= 3 size= 410331kB time=2967.1 bitrate=1132.9kbits/s s

[gorgonzola]

Moving to Software forum.

[mrfrost]

Well...the encoding is done and I got the file to launch using vlc this time. Only to find out that I have the Spanish sound track and the image is very shaky.

[lucylawless]

what do you mean by "shaky"? And did you let the encoding finish (your last problem was fixed) or stop early (your last problem might still exist)? Does the output play in quicktime, or just VLC? Did you choose PAL because it's a PAL dvd or just because ripping PAL dvds is easier? Often dvds of TV shows are interlaced, which might make the image come out shaky, or make horizontal distortions of some kind. I think ffmpegX has a deinterlace option, but I don't know how effective it is.

for the audio, I believe mAC3Dec can read from VOB files, so you can decode a few minutes of each track to see which is the right one, then either set the stream mapping yourself in ffmpeg or encode to mp3 from mAC3Dec or MediaPipe and add the audio as a separate file in ffmpegX. Also I think 0SEx will tell you which audio stream is which, and let you extract only the one(s) you want

[mrfrost]

what do you mean by "shaky"?

By "shaky" I mean that it looks as if a frame is missing after every second. I can't describe it better than that I'm afraid.

And did you let the encoding finish (your last problem was fixed) or stop early (your last problem might still exist)?

I let the encoding finish completely ! Took about 7 hours.

Does the output play in quicktime, or just VLC?

Just vlc. QT gives me the error r)that a software component is missing.

Did you choose PAL because it's a PAL dvd or just because ripping PAL dvds is easier?

I used PAL because it's a PAL dvd and I thought that seemed like the best thing to do at the time? I'm really a novice so I choose the most obvious options.

Often dvds of TV shows are interlaced, which might make the image come out shaky, or make horizontal distortions of some kind. I think ffmpegX has a deinterlace option, but I don't know how effective it is.

for the audio, I believe mAC3Dec can read from VOB files, so you can decode a few minutes of each track to see which is the right one, then either set the stream mapping yourself in ffmpeg or encode to mp3 from mAC3Dec or MediaPipe and add the audio as a separate file in ffmpegX. Also I think 0SEx will tell you which audio stream is which, and let you extract only the one(s) you want

Thank you for that info. That are the most usefull few lines I have read all day. I will try to get the right audio track the next time.

So now I guess my only remaning issues are the stuttering of the video and the QT incompatibility.

[mrfrost]

Another thing I noticed is that the intro movie of the serie plays without the stuttering?

[lucylawless]

that might also suggest interlacing. A lot of times on film dvds, the extra features like behind-the-scenes or music videos will be interlaced (and the movie is not). I wouldn't be surprised if they touched up the intro movie a little for the dvd, and it alone is not interlaced. (I've only seen the sopranos once, and I don't remember the intro movie. Is it different on the dvd than it is on tv in any way?)

For quicktime, have you installed any of the divx playback codecs (divx, 3ivx, ffmpeg from the divxosx package)? if you have further trouble with playback in quicktime, I compiled a little FAQ, mostly focusing on playback and decoding.

[mrfrost]

Originally posted by lucylawless:
that might also suggest interlacing. A lot of times on film dvds, the extra features like behind-the-scenes or music videos will be interlaced (and the movie is not). I wouldn't be surprised if they touched up the intro movie a little for the dvd, and it alone is not interlaced. (I've only seen the sopranos once, and I don't remember the intro movie. Is it different on the dvd than it is on tv in any way?)

For quicktime, have you installed any of the divx playback codecs (divx, 3ivx, ffmpeg from the divxosx package)? if you have further trouble with playback in quicktime, I compiled a little FAQ, mostly focusing on playback and decoding.

As far as I know the intro of each episode is the same on TV as on the DVD. What exactly does it mean when video is interlaced? Do I have to change the setting in ffmpegX if this is the case?

So far I'm having no luck trying to find the right audio track. When encoding the audio with mAC3dec 1.5.1 I don't get to choose an audio track and according to OseX audio track 1 is the English one (allthough that gave me Spanish after encoding).

Is there a way for me to encode only part of the movie (let's say 5 minutes) so I can try some audio tracks and settings without having to encode the entire movie?

Thank you for the FAQ, I'm printing it right now and I will read it very carefully tomorrow morning.

[lucylawless]

there is an excellent resource already provided that can tell you everything you want to know about interlaced video here.

0SEx also lets you rip to elementary streams, which will give you separate files for each track. I've also heard somewhere from the author of ffmpegX that the sound sync might be substantially better if you input a separate wav file for the audio, but since you're not having sync problems, that doesn't concern you.

I thought there was a general deinterlace option in ffmpegX, but it seems it's only available to [S]VCD encoding. I recommend MediaPipe. You can encode your video there (it has a good deinterlacer), and add it in ffmpegX with passthrough and encode the audio there (I believe ffmpeg has problems creating proper AVI's with passthrough'd audio, not that any AVI with mp3 audio is 'proper'...). Or better yet, avoid the AVI deathtrap altogether and save as a quicktime movie. You can add audio to quicktime movies with QuickTime Pro

you can terminate your ffmpeg encoding by typing 'q', but I don't know if it will produce a playable movie this way, since the AVI format puts a lot of important stuff at the end of the file. Try it. MediaPipe will let you stop in the middle and have a working file.

[Axel]

Originally posted by Mr_Frost:

By "shaky" I mean that it looks as if a frame is missing after every second. I can't describe it better than that I'm afraid.

I was having the same problems with ffmpegX 0.0.4e, 0.0.4f and 0.0.4g
It seems there is a bug in the ffmpeg executables included in those versions. Switching back to ffmpegX 0.0.4d solved that issue.