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Twelve steps to make a PC-Mini-DVD
(A revision of the 12 Step Method)
01/09/2000
This method will allow you to create a DVD formatted
movie on a CD-R that is playable in all PC’s with DVD decoding software and or
hardware. It may or may not work in standalone DVD players. The goal is to give
you great quality video and 5.1-surround sound while maximizing both speed and
disk space.
What’s
new:
1. I now resample the audio track to reduce the size by an additional 150 – 200 Megs to give us more room for video, resulting in higher video bitrates in the same size movie.
2.
This
version requires that you also have Sonic Foundry’s Soft Encode Ver. 1.0
3.
Now
uses ReMpeg ver 1.1.0
4.
Faster
method and better quality with smaller file sizes.
5.
Allows
you to adjust different channel volumes. (Louder rear channels)
6.
This
method allows Fast Forward.
First
lets get one thing clear. This is not easy and there is no underground proggie
out there that allows you to put a disk in a drive, hit go, and make a
mini-DVD. It takes many steps and long time. I use the following hardware:
Pentium
III 500 clocked at 566
256 MB
PC100 RAM
Two 18
gig 7200 RPM UltraDMA IDE Drives
One 30
gig Onstream Tape
8X
Toshiba DVD-ROM with Sigma Hollywood MPEG Decoder card
2x Richo
CD-RW drive
44x
CD-ROM
ATI all
in Wonder 128 AGP, 32 megs
System
I play them on:
The above
computer.
52’
Phillips Magnavox TV
Harmon
Cardon AVR-85
Speakers:
Front channel: Four Henry Kloss
model VI
Center: Five-way Henry-Kloss
Rear: Bose 301
Subwoofer: 200 Watt Powered
Henry Kloss
Software:
Hollywood Real Magic DVD Station
It takes
me 12 hours to complete one 1.5 hour
movie start to finish. (not including step 12)
TIPS
for speed and quality:
Don't run
anything else while performing steps 1-11. You WILL corrupt your video Stream.
Be
patient, I’ve tried skipping some steps and other methods but they didn't work
well.
Use two
fast drives. This is more important for quality then a fast processor. Well, at
least as important. If your reading files from drive C then output to drive D.
This can double the speed of some proggies!
If you need help with software and or links contact me at dvdvid_freak@hotmail.com or visit my
site: http://tech-dvd.itgo.com/ I will be
happy to help. If you find other ways that work or are faster and provide
results let me know. Also thanx
to Robshot for the inspiration, Nomad, CM of the
Muscle Soft Crew, Ferrit, MoRE, and all the others
writing shareware for the hard work on there proggies, we couldn't do it with
out you. Thanks to everyone at the DVD Soft forum and all the other
sites that support this. Hang in there!!!!
These steps work on my system, with my hardware, and my Op
system. They have worked on every movie I have tried. This is my only guarantee
to you. It works for me. Good Luck :)
1. System
Requirements:
Pentium
II or III with MMX (the faster the better)
64
Mb RAM
DVD-ROM
Drive(6x or greater)
CD-RW
Drive ( note: cd-rw not Cd-r)
At
least 10 gigs HDD space
Video
card that does true color 32 bit
Case,
Motherboard, monitor, mouse etc..........
2.
Operating System:
In
order for you to use this method you must be able to write and read files
larger than 4 gigs. Fat 32 is limited by this 4 gig barrier. You must be using
an NTFS file system. I recommend Windows 2000 build 2128 or higher. This was
tested in that environment. NT 4 will probably work though. The important thing
is that your disk has a large NTFS partition. NTFS98 didn’t work when I tried
it.
3.
Software you will need:
DOD
Speed ripper or DeCSS (latest version)
DVTOOL
ver. 0.11
VOB
Snoopy (latest version)
ReMpeg
(latest Version)
AC3fix
Streamweaver
ver 5.4
VOB
Splitter
Resize.com
CD
Motion 6.3
For
DVD ver 3.4
Win
on CD ver (latest version)
Soft
Encode version 1.0
STEP
ONE:(ripping) 15-30 min.
Rip
the VOB files to your HDD using either DeCSS (preferred by me) or DOD Speed
Ripper. The first file you see in the Video_ts folder that is 1 gig is usually
the movie. This will have a file name like vts02_1.vob. For example if your
movie starts with the file vts02_1.vob then all the files that start with
vts02_xx.vob make up the movie. Everything else on the disk is for menus, extra
scenes and info files. FYI: .ifo files contain the information file that is
used by the DVD player for navigation, frame rate, order, menus, etc...... the
.bup file is an exact copy of the .ifo file used only if there is an error
reading the .ifo file. After you have ripped the DVD to your hdd you can delete
all the other stuff that isn't the movie (unless of course you want to copy the
extra scenes) to free up some hdd space. If you have the space then leave it
until your done, in case you make a mistake.
STEP
TWO:(merge files) 5 min.
Create
a folder on your NTFS partition called Merge ( call it what you want, I'm
giving all these file and folders a name so that it can be easily refernced in
this paper) Start up DV Tool ver 0.11. Click on the File Processor tab. Under
function click on "merge files". Click on the "add element"
button located under "input file:" It looks like an E. Add your .vob
files in order. and select the output path as the Merge folder you just
created, and name it merged.vob. This file will probably be larger than 4 gigs,
hence the need for NTFS. These files must be merged and compressed as one file
in order to preserve system headers, A/V sync, and GOP Header sequences.
Although on the DVD disk you may have 3, 4, or even 5 seperate .vob files they
are really originally authored as one file. The .ifo file tells the player
where they are split and how to restart the next file. Since our software
doesn't look at the .ifo we must remerge the file.
NOTE: I
realize the DeCSS can also remerge these files. I had problems with this so I
don't use it. This paper is about what works for me. I hope that you will try
variants of this and let me know of better ways :)
STEP
THREE: (demultiplex audio) 5 min.
For
this process we use VOB Snoopy. Goto file>open and load your remerged file.
Create another folder called "demux" Click extract. In the pop up
window select audio. It will then prompt you for paths and file names. VOB
Snoopy will demux all audio streams that it finds. Most movies have at least
two audio streams. One is 5.1 surround and the other is 2 channel. Some movies
have DTS and others, VOB Snoopy will not demux these (it will find PCM
streams). The larger file is 5.1.
STEP
FOUR: (resample audio) 1 ½ - 2 hours
Open
Soft encode. Go to Options>encode settings. Data Rate should be 224, sample
rate MUST be 48Khz. Audio coding for 5.1 should be 3/2(L,C,R,l,r). To enable
the .1 in 5.1(subwoofer) check LFE Enable. Bit Stream mode should be Complete
Main. Dialog Normalization= -27 db. DO NOT check Intel Byte Order. Click OK.
Now open the audio file by going to File>open. Direct it to your audio file
and click OK. SE will now go through several verification loops and load the
file. For a large file this can take up to 45 mins. or more. Once it is load
you are ready to resample. If you like you can change the volume for individual
channels. Some receivers don’t amplify the rear channels well so you might want
to raise those. This is done by right clicking on the track (in the graph are)
and unlocking the track. Then you are free to adjust the volume on the left
hand side of that track. After you are done lock it again. After you’re
satisfied with your settings go to File> save as. Name the file and make
sure the file type is AC3. Click Save. SE will say that reencoding may
adversely affect bla bla bla. Ignore this. This process can take 2 – 3 hours for
an entire movie. It took 1:45:32 on my system. After it is done the file size
will be HALF the original. I personally can’t here the difference, but I’ve
been to a lot of concerts. So now we have more room for a higher bitrate in our
video, without any additional A/V artifact!!! (NOTE:Write down the filesize of
the original .ac3 file for the next step.
We just
created an extra 180 megs of space J
STEP
FIVE: (Transcode video) 8 – 10 hours
Some
people have reported problems with ReMpeg. I haven’t had any. I recommend that
before this step you reboot to give this the best possible environment to
function in. Open ReMPEG. In the "main" tab click the open button and
load the .vob file that Step two created. It will take a few minutes to map all
the GOP sequences. While that is loading open the merge folder and view the
properties of the .vob file. Note the file size. Now you must decide whether
you want the movie on 2 or 3 disks. 3 disks give you better quality of course.
If you decide that you want two disks, then the total file size of your .m2v +
your .ac3 file must be as close to, but not greater than 1.28 gigs. Each disk
will contain .ifo, .bup, and .vob files. Creating the files as 640 megs instead
of 650 give you room to resize (discussed later), and add the control files.
For three disks target file size must be as close to, but not greater than 1.92
gigs. Now you must calculate the percentage bitrate to use in the options tab
of ReMpeg. To do this subtract the size of your ORIGINAL audio file form the
.vob file size. This gives you the size of the actual .m2v that ReMpeg is
using. Now take the targeted filesize (2 or 3 CD’s) and subtract the size of
the resampled audio file. This gives you your targeted .m2v file size. Now take
the targeted file size we just calculated and divide it by the actual size of
the .m2v (not .vob) You should get a number like .3016543. Move the decimal two
places to the right and round down to the nearest whole number. In the previous
example this would give you 30%. If you came up with a percentage that when
entered into ReMpeg results in a bitrate lower than 1500000 then consider use
more disks. ( if this is confusing see example below and enter in your file
sizes instead of mine)Bitrates below 1.5 generally produce crappy results such
as blockiness or shimmering. (Note: Your TV’s Sharpness should be lowered for
digital content.) After ReMpeg has loaded your .m2v file goto the options tab
and enter your calculated percentage.
Bitrate high enough? Set the priority to high. Use Integer DCT and
orthogonal search technique w/ half PEL. Uncheck calculate PSNR. These settings
gave me the fastest results. If you want a SLIGHTLY better video quality use 2
pass search technique. Go back to the main tab and click the encode button.
Enter into the popup window a path and file name. ReMpeg should now start to
work. This part takes a loooooong time, so go to bed or something.
Equation
Example:
Original
.vob size 3.94 gigs (4,236,384,256 bytes)
Original
.ac3 size 361 megs(379,357,440 bytes)
Target is
two disks (1,342,177,280 bytes) 640 Megs x2))
4,236,384,256 File size of all .vob’s merged in to one
- 379,357,440 File size of original
audio(.ac3)
3,857,026,816 File size of video (.m2v)
1,342,177,280
Two CD’s
- 189,678,720 File size of resample audio
(.ac3)
1,152,498,560
Bytes available for video on two cd’s
1,152,498,560
divided by 3,857,026,816 equals
0.298804912431285517927806908978462 or 29.8%
STEP SIX:
(resize) 2 min.
Place
the file resize.com into your path. Before going further I will explain the
reason for this. In the final step of this process you will burn your newly
created mini-dvd. DVD players, software and hardware, look for a file system
that has been packetized in blocks of 2048 bytes. Streamweaver is very DVD
aware. It knows that each .vob file must be divisible by 2048 bytes in order to
be read by a player. If you don't give it files that summation is divisible by
2048 SW will give you an error. So will CD motion. So with that being said lets
see if our file is the correct size. Add together the filesize in bytes of your
ReMPEG .m2v and your Soft Encoded AC3 file and divide by 2048. If you came out
with a whole number like 154879 not 154879.215896 then skip this step.
If you didn't come up with an even number then we need to resize. Take the last
whole number, in this case 9 and add 1. Multiply this number by 2048. Subtract
this number from the sum of you audio and video files. The difference is the
number of bytes you need to increase by.
EXAMPLE:
Audio
file is 300379200 bytes.
Video
file is 1607518791bytes
Added
together 1,907,897,991(.vob size)
divide by
2048= 931590.815917
round up
=931591
multiply
by 2048=1,907,898,368
subtract
.vob size 1,907,898,368-1,907,897,991=337
Filesize
needs to be increased by 337 bytes
Goto a
dos Prompt. change to the directory that the Rempeg .m2v is stored. Type the
following:
Resize +
337 videofile.m2v
STEP
SEVEN: (multiplex) 15 min.
Open Streamweaver. Load the Audio file and video file. It is important that the video file uses a .m2v extension and the audio uses AC3. (Note: SW will accept mpeg 1 streams if the file name is .mpv, however it must have the correct GOP sequence headers. At the moment I don’t know any software that does this.) Select the output path. The output path should be a directory with nothing in it. Click on “enable scan. (This tells SW to write the info that decoders use for Fast forward.) Click on "resolve tc", which means resolve time codes. This step is to resync the audio and the video. When it has completed your file should now have an in and out entry. In is always 0:0:0:6 and out is something like 1:35:23:17. This means 1 hour, 35 mins, 23 seconds and 17 frames. Double click on the video line and go to edit time codes. Usually the audio file has a longer out code. Use the longest time and enter it in the popup time codes window of the other. Check protected. If you don't check protected SW ignores your entries and creates its own. Go to the audio file and check protected also. Now both files should have the same time codes in the main window. Click make. You WILL get some errors like " possibly corupted video stream" Just click yes. We fix this later. Also it will also say that there is data after the end of the video stream and will only use bla bla bla . Just click yes. After this is done test the vob file in a software decoder like Power DVD. Don't skip around in the movie, let it play normally. If you skip around in file mode it is not using the .ifo file it may become "un-synced" when the file is really "in-sync" It should be in sync though.
STEP
EIGHT: (split the files ) 10 min
Use
a DVD Aware program like vobsplitter or mpegutil or DV Tool to splt your new
vob into 2 or 3 files, depending on the number of disks you wanted. Each file
should be no larger than 640 megs. Depending on what you use to split them you
may need to do some remerging to get to the desired file sizes. These files
MUST be split at a cell ID so that they each maintain a legal system header.
This is what I mean by DVD aware splitter. Using a hex editor can actually do
this but it's too much for the scope of this paper. Make sure that each file is
still divisible by 2048. Refer to step five for this. If it's not then resize.
NOTE: Patches were recently released to cause SW to split at various file
sizes, however the second and third .vob’s don’t have system headers and cannot
be used in SW to create the individual .ifo’s needed.
STEP NINE
(recreate DVD files) 30-40 min.
Create
2 or three new folders and name them diskone disktwo disk three..... open VOB
Snoopy and demux (extract) your audio and video files from each of the files
created in the previous step, placing each set (.m2v and .AC3) into a separate
directory. Open Streamweaver and remux each vob again( see step six) The only
difference this time is that your second and thrid file sets will probably not
sync unless you change the in time of the video. Example: Changing 0:0:0:6 to 0:0:0:21(in
time) will start the video 11 frames after the audio. Usually the streams are
less than a second off so you only need to change it by a few frames. If it is
more than 29 frames then change the seconds. Remember to check protected in the
time codes window. Also note that the streams start at 0:0:0:6 so if you change
one to 0:0:0:7 your not starting it 7 frames after the other but 1 frame. You
may need to run ac3fix on the audio files in this step.(the first file is
generally ok but he rest require ac3fix) If your asking yourself why we have to
demux them and remux them again it's so we can give each file an .ifo and .ini.
Without the .ifo file you can’t fast forward. Each one should have it's own
directory.
STEP TEN:
(authoring)10 min.
Open
up CD Motions authoring tool. Goto file>new. Name it whatever. Another
window pops up asking for a chapter name, call it whatever it doesn't matter.
It will ask you what TV format you want. Say yes to NTSC. Now click the button
in the toolbar that says dvd. Click image. As long as it is a bitmap it doesn't
matter what picture you use. (I use one of the bitmaps in the CDMotion
directory.) Click on the next required field, stream. Enter in the path to your
>VOB file not the .ifo. Change chapter type to exclusive. Click OK. In the
grey part (empty) of the window right click and go to compile(make) for
recording. It will say the "the project has been modified" click yes.
In the compiler output window select a drive path. It will go to the root and
create a video_ts folder. Click yes twice after it's done compiling click OK
and exit the program. Repeat this step for each of the disks you want to make.
Remember to rename the video_ts directory after each one so that CD Motion
won't overwrite your previous compile.
STEP
ELEVEN: (create image) 5 min
Create
a folder on the root of one of your drives called AUDIO_TS. Upper case and make
sure it is in the root directory. Some DVD Players require this folder but
require that it is empty also. This is for the future DVD-Audio standards. Open
ForDVD. Under options>disk options check upper case file and directory
names. Change the name of the folder that CD motion created for your .vobs back
to VIDEO_TS. Uppercase and on the root directory. Do this one at a time obviously. First drag that directory into
the ForDVD window. Then drag AUDIO_TS. Click Bld to disk. After it is done
making the image you should have two files. Control.img and Layer1.img. Delete
Control.img. You don't need this file (unless you intend to send this out to a
processing plant). Change layer1.img to disk1.img Do this for each of your
.vob/ifo directories. Note: All CD motion programs look to a file called
CDmotion.ini for the directories such as image, temp, template. These
directories can be whatever you want but they need to really exist or the
operation will fail. It will not create these directories for you. ie.
imagedir=d:\temp is where image files that ForDVD creates are stored.
STEP
TWELVE: (Burn your CD) 1 to 2 hours depending on your hardware.
Now
we have some more choices. If you want this disk to be played in a standalone
DVD Player then you will have a better chance if you use CD-RW disks. Some will
play CD-R but not many. If this is just for your PC then use CD-R disks they're
cheaper. The following is one of the reasons disks don't work in standalones.
If you don't care then skip it.
There are a number of reasons DVD-Video players can't play DVD-Video content
from CD media:
1) checking for CD media is a fallback case after DVD playback fails, at which
point the players are no longer looking for DVD-Video content
2) it's much simpler for players to spin CDs at 1x speed rather than the 9x
speed required for DVD-Video content
3) many players can't read CD-R discs
Computers are more forgiving. DVD-Video files from any source with fast enough data rates, including CD-R or CD-RW, with or without UDF formatting, will play back on any DVD-ROM PC as long as the drive can read the media (all but early model DVD-ROM drives can read CD-Rs). Author the DVD-Video content as usual then burn the VIDEO_TS directory to the root drive of a CD-R or CD-RW. To be compatible with future settop players that might read MiniDVDs, turn on the UDF filesystem option of the CD burning software. To achieve longer playing times, encode the video in MPEG-2 half-D1 format (352x480 or 352x576) or in MPEG-1 format.
The problem is that CD-Rs (Orange Book Part II) are "invisible" to DVD laser wavelength because the dye used in CD-Rs doesn't reflect the beam. Some first-generation DVD-ROM drives and many DVD players can't read CD-Rs. The common solution is to use two lasers at different wavelengths: one for reading DVDs and the other for reading CDs and CD-Rs. Variations on the theme include Sony's "dual discrete optical pickup" with switchable pickup assemblies with separate optics, Sony's dual-wavelength laser (to be initially deployed on Playstation 2), Samsung's "annular masked objective lens" with a shared optical path, Toshiba's similar shared optical path using an objective lens masked with a coating that's transparent only to 650-nm light, Hitachi's switchable objective lens assembly, and Matsushita's holographic dual-focus lens. Look for drives with the MultiRead label, which guarantees compatibility with CD-R and CD-RW media.
CD-Rewritable (Orange
Book Part III) has a lower reflectivity difference, requiring new
automatic-gain-control (AGC) circuitry. CD-RW discs can't be read by most
existing CD-ROM drives and CD players. The new "MultiRead" standard
addresses this, and some DVD manufacturers have suggested they will support it.
The optical circuitry in even first-generation DVD-ROM drives and DVD
players is usually able to read CD-RW discs, since CD-RW does not have the
"invisibility" problem of CD-R
If you want a garaunteed
method that will definetly play dvd then gather the following items and use the
following steps:
For either medium use the same steps. Open Win on CD
(CeQuadrat VideoPack). Choose disk image. Input he path to your disk image
files and use mode 1, 2048. Make the CD.
Oh and go to
tech-dvd.itgo.com!
DVD Freak / Bonkers4ip