Hi,

Not sure if this is the right sub-forum to be posting in but...

Basically I'm a bit of a newbie so I've been playing around with using the DVD2SVCD SW and the other SW that's bundled with it to try and convert some Xvid AVIs of the Sopranos to DVD format, so that I can use TMPGEnc DVD Author to put them all onto a 4.5GB DVD I can watch on a set-top box.

I used Chickenman's guide, which is awesome by the way, very useful, and everything worked fine for the first few days I was experimenting with using this SW. When I checked each outputted episode's "bbmpeg_muxed_file00" file, afetr I used the D2SRoba plugin with DVD2SVCD, was perfect i.e. decent enough quality and exactly the size I wanted (about 600meg each).

Now though whenever I specify a size (e.g 600meg) the SW seems to encode it to an arbitrary size and chop the outputted "bbmpeg_muxed_file00", "bbmpeg_muxed_file01" etc into 600meg blocks, sometimes with a little 15meg "bbmpeg_muxed_file02" left over.

Sorry if this doesn't make too much sense, I'm still trying to get my head round the SW myself. Can't help thinking that I've maybe changed one of the default values in the SW so that instead of encoding the episode to ONE 600meg file, it's encoding them and chopping them into 600meg blocks, probably because it thinks each file has to fit onto some media which is 600meg in size?

Anyway, thanks for any help

giffo

When you start D2SRoBa, enter 600 as the CD size. Then check in DVD2SVCD your CD size in the Bitrate Tab, it must read 600 also. If for some reason d2s makes the final image a bit to large ( I just did the 139 eps of MacGyver and EVERYONE came out correct size ) then it will chop it at 600 and give you a small bit as the next mpg. This is generally not a problem if its not 2 big, as its the *.MPV and *.mp2 (or *.ac3) files that you do the authoring with. With 7 eps of 600 each would in theory give a 4200 sized dvdr, so you have a bit of elbow room antway.

Cool CM, thanks for your quick reply. I didn't realise it was nothing to worry about, that it isn't the bbmpg_mux files that are used to do the authoring so it doesn't matter if there's a bit left over Generally as I've been encoding them, they've turned out just a bit over the 600MB except with one of the episodes which turns out at about 1215MB (2 x 600MB muxed files, and a little one left over) and that's with the same settings as the rest Is this possible, or have I obviuosly made a mistake somewhere??

Cheers for your patience by the way, I'm finding there's a bit of a steep mountain to climb when understanding all this. I'm having a bit of trouble and I'm supposed to be technolgically-minded!!

Cheers

giffo

Now that I find very strange indead and I would say impossible. If the CD size has been correctly set, then I cannot see (nor have I ever seen) how it can make the final file twice the size asked for. I occassionally get them a little bit bigger, and some times a bit smaller but always within about 1-2% of the designated size but cannot see how it can ever be double sized. I know CCE 2.67.0.27 is causing oversizing with many encodes when using ReBuilder, maybe tha same applies to D2S. So what version of CCE are you using ?

I'm using 2.50, but it looks like it was a freak occurrence that did just happen the once. I ended up encoding all 7 episodes one after the other during a pretty lazy day at the weekend, because as a newbie I wasn't too confident before that all the settings were exactly the same when I was encoding one episode one day and the next another day. Anyway, got it all working fine, authored it OK and the DVD's working sweet in my set-top box and PS2.

I'm trying to find a way I could've made the encoding process easier by doing all the episodes in one session, with the same settings. I think I read somewhere that it can't be done with D2SRoBa, but maybe that refers to old versions or just bad advice because there's an option (a tickbox) which says "Batch file prepare"? From what I've read (and tell me if this is totally wrong - I'm at work and haven't got the app to play with in front of me) that should rip the audio and then add the relevant lines in the DVD2SVCD .bat file that tells it to encode video from all the episodes one after the other? Trouble is, when I tick this box, it seems to go right on ahead for an hour doing exactly as it would've done f I hadn't ticked it i.e. ripping and encoding and muxing, conversion done.

Cheers

giffo

PS - CM, sorry about the double-posting in another subforum. After I posted this one I saw that the forum hadn't been visited in hours so thought that maybe people weren't checking it too often, but I was obviously wrong

Ah, just had a thought about why that freak time ended up with 2x600MB muxed files and one 15MB muxed file. Maybe I did two encodes of the same .avi file in the same output directory, as I was doing a lot of encoding to try out different settings, but forgot to delete the original output before trying again.

Cheers

giffo

No, the second encode would 100% write over the top of the older encode and no warnings given.

I thought I had included a Batch mode solution in my last update of the DivX to DVD Tutorial, but for some reason its just not there So I have updated it to include it (Note 4 at the bottom), so check it out.

I'm definitely starting to get the hang of using this SW so thanks for the help so far

Tomorrow I'll have a go at following Note 4 in the tutorial to see if I can use the batch facility. I have a quick question though: if I want to batch produce dvd files of different sizes, how would I set this up? Would it be when I initially load up each avi file into DVD2SVCD, and set it in the Bitrate tabbed section? I was just wondering because ordinarily I'd set it when I run D2SRoBa but if its getting exectuted automatically then I don't have a chance to ask for a certain-size output file.

Cheers,

giffo

You set each encode up the way you want it by running DVD2SVCD and NOT the RoBa pluggin, then as the audio is extracted, you exit DVD2SVCVD. Set them all up and they can be AVI to DVD, AVI to SVCD, DVD to DVDR, etc all mixed up together, it doesnt matter. Then set up the Batch.bat file to run the D2SRoBa.exe. Its all in Note 4;