MPEG to AVI XVID

[viraco]

i recently bought dvd to dvd and dvd to mobile portion of fab...
was using trial before hand.

question about file to mobile... i have some disney dvds that i have backup for use by my nieces and nephews when they are over...

i have bought a wdtv live box and i am in the process of converting my dvds to xvid using the generic.avi.xvid.audiocopy profile and its working great on the originals... however i have 3 dvds that i now have on backup only (originals got snapped by 4 year old). when i try to use the same profile on them the a/v is out of sync... i fixed this by doing a vob pass through and correcting the sync issue... but the resulting file is an mpeg...

so here is the question... why cant i get the same resolutions using file to mobile as i can with dvd to mobile, if the source is 720x480 (2) AR-4:3, (1) AR-16:9?

[signals]

What resolutions does DVDFab have available if you try to use file to mobile?

[billbell52]

Have you tried playing the mpeg file on WD TV Live. I think it should play fine. No reason to convert unless you just want all the same format.

[viraco]

sorry cant tell right now... trial on file to mobile expired...
only have license for dvd to dvd and dvd to mobile...
didnt want to buy file to mobile if it wouldnt work like dvd to mobile.
but it was in the 300s (3##x###) and lower... would not let me select 720x###, unless i set custom resolution... which for AR-4:3 is fine, but would have to be set manually for all AR-16:9

wish i could be more help to help answer questions i asked...

[signals]

Try billbell52's suggestion. The mpeg will look better than what you will get with most typical xvid settings (but will be larger).

[GregiBoy]

I think that the problem selecting resolutions just using the VOB is that generally on DVD's, resolution, aspect ratio & stream info is held in the IFO files. As you do not have an IFO for this VOB, it is luck of the draw what will get automatically selected and dependant upon the profile default and the way you hold your mouth.

[viraco]

yah the video plays fine as vob and mpeg... but 4GBs is rather large file to be storing.. takes up a lot of space... it not a matter of format... but file size due to $. i still have about 100 dvds to rip mainly kids movies. i wouldnt have a problem converting the mpeg to such a low res if i was gonna watch on small screen but as it strechs to fit a 47" the image gets blurry. i would like to keep all the resolutions at 720x###. keep them as native to dvd as possible while encoding to an MPEG4 format... right now im using xvid cause i have standalone dvd play that plays divx/divx ultra/xvid. so videos can be played on multiple devices not just wdtv live

[viraco]

i realize that cause im not converting from dvd to mobile dvdfab does not know what the aspect is. which would lead me to ask if there is a way to set a custom width to maintain the width of the mpeg and have it auto crop the black bars that appear on 16:9... for 4:3 i can rest resolution manually... dont have many more 4:3 movies left.
can i create a profile that has a fixed width and auto cropped height?

something i tried that works around the problem is the convert the mpeg back to dvd then rip it down to xvid... but that adds another hour in the process that i would like to avoid and i dont believe to be good pratice to convert 3 times before getting to final product...

[viraco]

just to clarify my problem...
1) tried to rip dvd to avi/xvid and had an av sync issue... (static not progressive)

2) so i used dvdfab and did a vob pt and used "other software" to correct the sync issue that was present in the avi. which resulted in an mpeg2...

3)i want to convert the mpeg2 to an mpeg4... and keep the native resolution (720x###) without having to use "other software".

is this possible with file to mobile option? would i/can i create a profile that has static width and auto crop height?

[Karloff]

i have bought a wdtv live box and i am in the process of converting my dvds to xvid using the generic.avi.xvid.audiocopy profile and its working great on the originals...

Did you back up to single layer dvd or double layer?

If you backed up to single layer, did you backup main movie only? If you backed up the entire DVD to single layer then the quality would depend if your original DVD was a double layer or single layer.

If it was single layer backup of an entire double layer dvd then your quality of the backup could be as low as say 53% of the original.

You would then degrade the video further by converting again and just compound the errors and this is probably why you are getting the sync issues along with the loss in quality.

[viraco]

i had backed up the main movie to single layer... i have made a backup copy of all my movies main movie only... if i could get quality 90% or better then i would keep on SL if not then i would put on DL...
the 3 movies i had problems with where 100% SL... so not quality issue... im just wondering (cause i just thought of it).

if you burn main movie only and remove UOPs, would that cause sync issue? think that might be the problem...

i since realized that removing the UOPs disables forced subs so i just do a full disc and just remove the protections... leaving UOPs and Layer Break in place...

i dont remember seeing layer break settings in the best practice post... so i just keep it there.

[viraco]

just to let you all know... i built a new machine and in turn had to reinstall dvd fab so i got the trial of file to mobile (which i will be purchasing come 2 weeks... next pay check.)

but wanted to let you all know after doing a little tinkering i got it all worked out... the resolutions i get to select from all depend on the codec that is to be used... as im using the xvid codec... i played with aspects and was able to get decent resolutions... im running a test now 2 pass encoding... 1800 bits...
thanks for the help hopefully i dont have any more trouble.