DVD2SVCD
All of you who have used CCE previously or created an SVCD with another tool than FlaskMpeg and the bbMPEG plugin know that SVCD creation isn't exactly fun as it requires many different tools and many steps. To cut a long story short: All your cries for help have been heard and DVD2SVCD is the program for you if you simply like to enter the number of CDs, which audio and subtitle streams you want, then enter the DVD in the drive, press a button and when you come back a few hours later you have the CD images ready to be burned.
DVD2SVCD combines many programs together: vStrip to rip the DVD (best ripper around), DVD2AVI to create a DVD2AVI project, Mpeg2dec and Avisynth for the fastest frameserving from DVD2AVI to CCE including bicubic resizing, azid with auto restart to make an optimal AC3 -> WAV conversion, SSRC to downsample the audio files, then toolame for the best WAV -> MP2 compression there is, video encoding in CCE, then applying pulldown flag in case of an NTSC video, multiplexing video and audio using bbMPEG and finally creating SVCD images for burning using VCDImager. Furthermore DVD2SVCD supports multiple audio streams and selectable subtitles (the latter only works on standalone players). The program comes as a complete package that contains all the free softwares requires. You only have to add CCE SP 2.50 (and no other version).
You'll need the following software for this guide:
DVD2SVCD
1.05
CCE SP - NOTE:
Demo version. You can buy the full version online. Homepage.
A Cue/Bin capable burning program: CDRWin, FireBurner or Nero
Step 0: Setup
The DVD2SVCD installer will install all the noncommercial applications for you. Then install CCE SP (remember: it MUST be v2.5, NOT 2.62 or later).
Step 1: DVD2SVCD
Start up DVD2SVCD. It starts up with the following tab selected:
Press the folder button and select the largest .IFO file on your DVD disc. Total Track length lists the various PGCs on the DVD which represent a Title. Generally the longest one is the right one. In this case there's 3 long ones and the disc is T2-UE. Depending on which length you select you get the theatrical release or the director's cut.
The back of the DVD case should tell you whether the aspect ratio is 4:3 or 16:9. Most movies are 16:9 nowadays but if you're not sure better look up the disc at Amazon.com, they list whether it's 16:9 or not (usually 16:9 is called "enhanced for widescreen TVs" or "enhanced for 16:9 TVs").
At the beginning the first audio track is selected, if you configure the audio in a later step you can then see here that more than one (or a different one) has been selected.
If you have an NTSC disc and would like to convert it to PAL check that button. Keep in mind that this feature is in beta state. If you have a PAL disc and after converting it's interlaced you have to do it again and this time check PAL Telecined (interlaced). If you want your PC to be shut down after the conversion is finished check the Automatic Shutdown checkbox.
Now let's start at the beginning: DVD Rip:
It would be possible to use DVD2SVCD from an already ripped disc but I strongly suggest you let DVD2SVCD do this as well as it uses the best program on the market but spares you to learn the complicated commandlines required for it. So check Activate DVD ripping. If once you're starting the whole process ripping should not start come back here and select Use vStrip instead.
Also,
in almost each tab there's an Extract to Folder. Since there's no free space
check it's important that you select a folder and drive that has more than enough
space. You should have at least 10GB free for a large movie, more is even better.
If you want to store the files all in the same place you can go to Misc settings:
Press the Set default output folder option and all files will be stored there. Also make sure DVD2SVCD is checked if you're converting a DVD and PVA2SVCD if you're converting a PVA stream (captured mpeg2 broadcast).
The
crash recovery option might come in handy if the program aborts somewhere. It
will write a logfile which you can load pressing the Crash Recovery button and
then you can press the Continue button and the conversion process should continue.
The DVD2AVI tab gives you some additonal DVD2AVI configuration parameters:
Here you can select if Force Film should always be on (that was the default in earlier versions) or if you select Automatic DVD2SVCD will analyze the DVD2AVI project to determine whether to use Force Film or not.
You
can also select IVTC if you know that Force Film will fail.
Now let's move forward to audio:
Select the audio bitrate you want (224kbit/s is the max you can use for SVCD), select the desired level of 48 -> 44.1KHz downsampling (SVCD requires 44.1KHz) - as usual the higher the quality the longer it takes. I use High here.
Then select the audio channels. Here's how that works: If you check Audio 2 Priority 1 you can have 2 different audio tracks, but by default you have just one. Configure the Audio Priority 1 to the audio track you want to have most. Audio 1 Priority 2 is the alternative for your first audio track. So let's say you selected English as Audio 1 Priority 1 and German as Audio 1 Priority 2. If there's no English track on the disc you'll get German instead. This works the same for the 2nd audio track.
In the very first tab after loading the IFO you can already see what kind of audio tracks there is on the disc so you won't run into any nasty surprises here.
Leave toolame mode to Stereo and make sure you have Autodetection azid gain on as this will make the audio louder without any overflows. The 48 -> 44.1 conversion is best done in SSRC (however atm that will create you a very large temp file on your c:\ drive and you cannot have that file written to another place so make sure you have more than enough space left on c:\, preferably at least 3GB).
If
you want to change the values for the bicubic resizer you can do so in the Frameserver
tab but unless you know what the parameter does you should leave it alone (and
the default value of 0.75 is good). If you want to smoothe the picture you can
activate the smoother in the frameserver tab and configure it there.
Then move forward to Bitrate:
First of all: CD size 730 is a regular 74 minute CD and CD size 790 a 80 minute CD.
This should be pretty straightforward. Between x (minutes) and y (minutes) gives the range of length of the movie in which the number of (the field after mins. use) CDs of size (the field after cd's size). The last field shows the bitrate range you'll get for your movie.
If you use 80 minute CDs you should change all all the 730 to 790. The default bitrate values are pretty good, especially when you do multipass VBR encoding in CCE - which by the way is the best encoder on the market. The bitrate values are also pretty straightforward and need no further explanation.
Also
check the Adjust the audio bitrate... option so you won't get any nasty surprised
during playback because the bitrate got too high.
Next comes Cinema Craft Encoder:
First of all you have to give the path of CCE.
Then select Multipass VBR with at least 3 passes, and 5 passes as maximum. Higher values won't really improve quality anymore. Personally I chose 4.
The Image Quality Priority indicates how many bits will be allocated to complex parts of the picture. It's a value between 0 and 100 and the smaller the value the more bits will be allocated to complex parts. If you think scenes with a low amount of action look bad you should increase this value.
The
default for the anti-noise filter seems good to me. Also leave the other options
checked.
If you have an NTSC disc don't forget to configure the save path in the pulldown
tab. Then let's configure the subtitles:
If you want subtitles check Rip subtitles and select the subtitle streams you want. Leave the Min. ms between subtitles value alone.
When
you select SVCD Subtitles you will get selectable subtitles (works only on standalones
and not on all). CVD subtitles are equivalent to what I-author creates for you,
they should be less supported but who knows, maybe that's the only mode that
works for you. In any case both SVCD subs and CVD subs can be turned on and
off. Permanent Subtitles will burn the subtitles in the video stream so that
they cannot be removed.
Then set a label for your CDs and the Movie title.
You can also specify a Title picture and change CD picture (that's being displayed when you have to enter the 2nd CD). Selecting Use ChangeCD picture on all CD's will add a change picture to the last CD as well.
Then
DVD2SVCD can make chapters automatically if you check VCDXBuild (slected by
default) and DVD chapters which will create chapters for you that are at the
same positions as the chapters on the DVD. If you prefer to have chapters having
fixed length select Fixed chapters and enter the default length.
Now that everything has been configured go back to the Conversion tab again
and press the Go button.
DVD2SVCD will then switch to the log tab which shows you what's being done at the moment:
First thing a window will pop up prompting you to select the right subtitle stream again, giving you a change to verify the subtitle selection and if the colors are OK:
Usually you'd of course get more than just this one stream but here we're dealing with an NTSC disc and these usually don't have too many subtitle tracks.
If the one subtitle being shown isn't enough for you to decide just press the Show Next button.
When
everything is OK press OK.
At the end you should have a number of CD image files (.bin/.cue).
If the process should abort at some point, go to the Misc Settings tab, press the Crash recovery button and select your project file (dvd2svcd project file.d2s). DVD2SVCD will then start the first unfinished task and everything after that.
Note that from this point on you can disregard all references to the save-to directories when using DVD2SVCD unless you want to change to change them to something else.
Step 2: Burning
Select one of the following options:
I
have a number of .bin/.cue files and want to use Fireburner
I have a number of .bin/.cue
files and want to use CDRWin
Step 3: Troubleshooting
There's an excellent live Q&A for DVD2SVCD and you can get help via the DVD2SVCD Forum after having read the Q&A.
TRACKED DOWN BY PUCKBUNNY00
