EXTREME FRUSTRATION: DVD-A wants to recompress fully compliant video

homestarrunner wrote on 7/5/2003, 3:13 AM

Folks,

I have been scouring this forum for an answer to my troubles. It seems that DVD-A does not like my MPEG video and wants to recompress it.

This video is about 1 hour of camcorder footage that was converted to DV-AVI with my Canopus ADVC-100, then fed into Premiere for special effects and title generation. The video changes to something else about 2/3 of the way through, and is cut at this point. So, that makes TWO SEPARATE FILES! In the end, the second file is giving DVD-A headaches, but not the first one (even though they have identical attributes).

After post-processing, the video is exported back into the DV-AVI format, followed up by a compression to MPEG2 by the Canopus ProCoder software. WAVs were generated separately by ProCoder. FYI, the video was compressed using 1-Pass VBR with 4000kbps as its target and 9800kbps as the upper limit. TMPGEnc sees the video as 9800kbps.

For post processing, I used BeSweet (http://dspguru.doom9.net) to convert the wavs to AC3 (48Khz, 384kbps). Combined M2V with AC3 to get an MPG out of TMPGEnc. Fed the MPG into DVD Architect, then manually added the separate AC3 track because DVD-A would not detect the one inside the new MPG.

That's where the software decides to run with its tail between its legs, so to speak, and begs me to recompress the *!@$#!# video that I just spent two hours recompressing! >:-( The first one is OK, miraculously, but the second one is not OK for some odd reason!

I have read many of the tips here on the board, including the one about recompressing the AC3; that didn't help, and neither did just converted the M2V to an M2P with nothing else inside. Furthermore, I once got it to completely cooperate, but then it started giving me the abstract "0x8004e715" error (search the forums on that one).

Quick reminder for A.D.D. people and others with very brief attention spans (wink) : This problem only affects the second video, which is half as long as the first. This second video is also 9800kbps, fits easily onto a CD, and I believe is 100% compliant to all the necessary specs.

In short...what the FSCK is going on? Please help me ! I've been sitting on this one for two days now, and the client will be calling very soon.. :-S

Thanks,
- Brad

Comments

homestarrunner wrote on 7/5/2003, 3:28 AM

OK, I took a deeper look and discovered what is really going on:

* The original WAV is not the same length of time as the MPEG2 video.

For some weird reason, it's about 4 seconds longer. That's why the AC3 isn't the same length, and so DVD-A thinks that it needs to recompress the video. :???: Where is the fscking logic in that?!?

* The video was OK'd by DVD-A when not used in conjunction with the audio

This confirms the audio problem, in that it is too long. I will be trimming it to the exact length of the video (in milliseconds).

CrazyRussian wrote on 7/5/2003, 4:46 AM

I dont think having fskn audio longer than fskn video would cause DVDA to recompress: what would it do in recompression? making audio or video shoreter or longer? If you video 9800 kbs, and your AC3 is 384 kbs, that would make entire stream 10,184 kbs. Is it over the limit?
What do you mean by "The video changes to something else about 2/3 of the way through, and is cut at this point" What does your video changes to?
I was gonna throw in couple more possiblities and possible answers, but then... this entire process looks like ordering pizza in new york from san franciso - sure it can be done, but would anyone do it that way?
Just do whatever you need to your DV files in Premiere, output it as DV, import it into DVDA as DV, and then let DVDA recomress audio as AC3 and video.
There are so many steps and so many "sharewere" programs, it would be really hard to see which piece is failing. Of course none of those programs have support or anything, so I would suggest letting DVDA to do the compression and see how that works

homestarrunner wrote on 7/5/2003, 5:49 AM

I got the DVD burnt finally. The video itself is a recording of the high school speech & debate tournament. this segment is 40 minutes. after that, they cut to interviews w/ each student. I felt that two separate menus on the DVD would be appropriate here, rather than one long continuous segment with chapters. So, the video has two "sections" if you will.

The second segment had the longer audio; where it would have gone wrong is with Canopus, not with the shareware stuff. (btw, BeSweet is freeware, GNU/GPL. Works quite well actually).

The problem was the 4 seconds of extra silence that weren't supposed to be there in the first place...and I dont' know how they got there either. But Canopus would have to be responsible for that.

In re: to the bitrate question, *yes* this would put the bitrate over the limit, but that's allowed in the DVD spec anyways. Video can spike at 9.8Mbps and still have a bunch of audio leftover. It's not 9.8Mbps sustained data rate; merely a spike in the VBR stream.