Cayars: DVDBurner

[abasu2003]

With the newest release, I am still having the issue where only VOB files and the ISO containes no menus.

I am burning 2 one hour episodes so there should be some menu. The compressor is working (as far as I can tell) but there is no menu generation. No errors are showing up either.

[Cayars]

What version of this are you running. It will tell you at the top left in the copyright notice at the end.

[abasu2003]

version e

[CyRex]

I am using version E with Cayars16. I tried burning a DVD, and the demux goes fine, but when it starts running requant.exe, it never finished the first one. From the start, it says 100% completed, but I left it for about 2 hours and it never changed and never went to the next file. Is there a newer version of requant that I should be using?

[Cayars]

No, that is the current version you would want to use.

All the problems I've found so far working with people on files is that the file being processed isn't a correctly encoded DVD compliant file to begin with.

Demux is not to fussy with the files and will demux a lot of files that could have a problem with one of the next steps.

Can you try running the DVDBurner without compression and see how that goes?

[CyRex]

The default record type is set to DVD Standard Mode, so I don't think that is the problem.

I just tried it once with no compression on ISO mode. It went all the way through, but in the end there was no ISO in my work directory. After it demuxed the files, it went really quick popping up a few command prompt windows, then shot me back into Sage after a few seconds.

I just changed a few things and am trying it again now...

[Cayars]

It seems the MUX program is real picky and doesn't like a lot of files if there are any audio issues.

[CyRex]

Ok well it goes all the way through on both modes now. The only problem is, the ISO file that I get is only 978 Kb. The problem I was having before is that my work directory had a space in the name, which apparently messed some things up. I got rid of that and so far so good, except for the 978 kB file... Has anyone else had this problem?

EDIT: I just trying burning the ISO and playing the DVD... All that it does is show the background image, which I'm assuming is the DVD menu, and then it stops...

[CyRex]

Originally Posted by Cayars

It seems the MUX program is real picky and doesn't like a lot of files if there are any audio issues.

What audio issues would there be? It should be fine if i'm using the DVD Standard mode, right?

[abasu2003]

not always
for some reason our cards don't always encode in stereo sound, which i have no idea why they wouldn't.

anyway, to check to see if your audio passes the test, try this:

go into a command prompt and go to the DVDBurner directory. Then execute:

mpgtx -i D:\<test.mpg>

where D:\<test.mpg> is replaced with the full pathname of the file you wish to burn to dvd

[Cayars]

Soon, abasus2003 is going to be able to put together a FAQ on this since he's learning so much.

(We've been working on this a little for the last couple of days in IM)

[CyRex]

Here is what I got when I tried running "mpgtx -i" on one of the mpg files:

mpgtx -i d:\sagetv\VivaLaBam-1755735-0.mpg
warning: couldn't find any valid system header. I'm continuing anyway
d:\sagetv\VivaLaBam-1755735-0.mpg
Mpeg 2 Program Stream File [Video/Audio]
Muxrate : 10.12 Mbps
Estimated Duration: 02:53:30.03s
Aspect ratio 4/3 (TV)
Not interlaced, chroma format: 4:2:0
Size [720 x 480] 29.97 fps 8.00 Mbps
Audio : Mpeg 1 layer 2
384 kbps 48000 Hz
Stereo, No emphasis

[abasu2003]

as cayars pointed out, we've been working on this through IM, but that only means that i'm maybe 2 steps ahead of you in troubleshooting and nowhere near an expert.

the thing that a couple of us saw before was that the audio on some of these files was 48kbps and mono. those definitely will nto work. However, now it seems taht there are problems with the audio files of the ones that are showing up as 384kbps stereo.

Anyway, the problem is most likely from the audio file and we can verify that now.

Start the DVDBurn process through Sage. When the demuxing window pops up, go into the taskmanager and end the DVDBurner.exe program. The Demuxing window should still be running the mpgtx.exe program and it will run to completion. At the end, you will end up with an .mpv file and an .mpa file (hopefully, I'm still new at this too ). Then, go into the command prompt, go to the DVDBurner Directory, and you will manually execute the remuxing command. This is of the form:

mplex -f 8 -o "$FILE_OUT" "$FILE_VIDEO" "$FILE_AUDIO"

So for you, it should be:

mplex -f 8 -o "d:\temp\working\title1.vob" "d:\temp\working\title1-0.mpv" "d:\temp\working\title1-0.mpa"

where d:\temp\working should be replaced with whatever directory those files are in.

Then it will probably give you an error, so report back the results.

[CyRex]

Okay I tried what you said, but the files in my "working" directory were named title1-0.m2v and title1-0.mp2. That aside, when I ran the command here is what I got:

mplex -f 8 -o "d:\dvdburning\working\title1.vob" "d:\dvdburning\working\titl
e1-0.m2v" "d:\dvdburning\working\title1-0.mp2"
INFO: [???] mplex version 2.2.2 ($Date: 2003/05/13 20:27:15 $)
INFO: [???] File d:\dvdburning\working\title1-0.m2v looks like an MPEG Video
stream.
**ERROR: [???] File d:\dvdburning\working\title1-0.mp2 unrecogniseable!
**ERROR: [???] Unrecogniseable file(s)... exiting.

Is that the error you were expecting me to get? Also, just so I have some point of reference, do you (or anyone) have this working right now?

I just got layed off the other day so I have more free time now. If I can be of any assitance testing, let me know. I have a decent knowledge of various coding languages and audio/video processing...

Thanks for the help thus far guys...

[Cayars]

Yep, it didn't like the audio file. Why I'm not sure. I've yet to get any errors on my system from this so it's hard to figure out.

[Cayars]

Let's try something else and see if we can narrow the problem down to the demux or mux stage. Here is another tool you can use to do the demux.

Run it like this:
bbdmux mymovie.mpg 0xE0 c:\workdir\demuxed.mpv
bbdmux \mymovie.mpg 0xC0 c:\workdir\demuxed.mpa

mplex -f 8 -o "c:\workdir\mux.mpg" "c:\workdir\demuxed.mpv" "c:\workdir\demuxed.mpa"

This will demux the video, then demux the audio and then remux it back again.

Let me know what this does.

[abasu2003]

Just to exclude other possible factors, the compression only deals with the video, not audio, correct?

At least we'll know that it doesn't ahve to do with that.

Also, another question.

How come sometimes it deals with m2v and mp2 files and sometimes its mpa and mpv files?

[Cayars]

Yes correct. Matter of fact the order is
DEMUX
COPY MENU FILES to work directory
COMPRESS if needed
MUX
AUTHOR
BUILD ISO
BURN ISO TO DISC

The compression is done only on the demuxed video file. Audio is never touched.

[CyRex]

Well, looks like you succeeded in narrowing down the problem... Here is the output from mplex:

EDIT: Moved mplex output to attachment

So where does that leave us? I tried playing the resulting .mpg and it looked fine, although the audio may have been off a few millisecs...

[abasu2003]

I got the same problem using bbdmux