PROBLEMS FOR STANDALONE DVD PLAYBACK OF AVI and DIVX
- Variable Bitrate Audio (CBR is the standard for standalone DVD AVI's in VBR will cause progressive audio lag errors)
- Audio Split across Interleaves (Aligned with Interleaves is standard and no known playback errors will occur)
- Non-AVI v2.0 container (MP4 and MKV containers are too new for most players)
- Framerate 25fps for PAL(UK) OR 23.97fps for NTSC(USA) if in the UK you need to re-encode to 25 frames per second to ensure correct playback
- FOURCC not DX50 or DIVX (XVID will work but maybe jumpy)
- Packed Video Bitstream ** (see N-VOP below this may need to be unpacked) the easiest way to unpack this without re-encoding is to use MPEG4 Modifier from Moitah that will do it in about 30s you can also change the DAR and PAR as shown below
- Third party
software known to interfere with the normal use of DivX for Windows
Software.
Some sections contain options for removing many filters that have the
*potential* to interfere with the good operation of DivX for Windows. download the DivX All in One Fix HERE it is a good starting point if you know you have installed codec packs that might interfere with your DivX encoding.
These normally use for AVI's that are enocoded for PC playback only and are NOTsupported on Standalone DVD players so should be removed using VirtualDub or one of the other applications mentioned below.
- B-VOP's (Bidirectional Video Object Frames, which improves the playback quality)
- P-VOP's(Predictive Video Object Frames)
- N-VOP's (can be Zero Time as in a packed bitstream** OR non-Zero Time)
- QPel (Quarter Pixel Encoding used to improve MPG4-ASP compression over the standard Half-Pixel or normal MPG4)
- GMC (Global Motion Compensation, will improve scenes where there is lots of motion)
The first job is to change the VBR audio to a CBR there are only a few sucessful ways to do this use VirtualDub or VirtualDubMod with the LAME or Fraunhofer ACM, its easier to do this with Avery Lee's version the Mod version requires lots of de-muxing converting and re-muxing
If you have DivX Pro Convertor licenced with the Professional v6.9.1 of the codec the Video will be fine however the audio with remain at the VBR and will cause you playback audio errors the FOURCC codec will be changed and the aspect ratio for Home Theater will change to the video will be fine, notice that GSpot displays only the DivX503b2851p metadata and no ISFT tag while the VDub twins show the metadata as DivX503b2816p a lower build number than for the Pro Convertor.
Its also a good idea to change the Codec to DivX if you leave it at XVid it will play but it will skip and become annoying well it is a free libavcodec and way and is great to use on just your PC the example above shows what will happen after a successful DivX Convertor change notice the audio MP3 remains at VBR, this will cause audio sync errors even if the audio frames are aligned with Interleaves
The above example shows what will happen if you use VirtualDubMod and VirtualDub both with give you CBR audio so will work on your DivX enabled DVD player however the VDubMod version will keep the Audio frames aligned with Interleaves which is a more successful method especially with AC3 audio VDubMod is good at this see my tip
HERE.SPLIT ACROSS vs ALIGNED WITH INTERLEAVES
Gspot tells us that "Split" means that some audio frames are split across interleaves, i.e. part of the audio frame resides in one chunk and the remainder of it is in another, with a video chunk in between. On v2.5 beta the wording is "audio split across interleaves" or "audio aligned on interleaves", which should help to make it clearer. I'm not making any claims about the relative merit of one scheme vs. the other, but it does seem important enough to report.
- Nandub splits AC3 audio, BUT not MP3 in CBR nor VBR
- VirtualDub always seems to Split across interleaves even when the LAME ACM is used.
- VirtualDubMod splits AC3, but does not split CBR MP3. however it will split VBR MP3 if you answer "YES" to the question about allowing it to "rewrite the header" Otherwise it Aligns.
- AVIDemux will Split as default however it will Align with if the reservoir is check on the MP3(lame) conversion.
- AVI ReComp will Align as it uses a bundled version of VirtualDubMod that will allow you to edit the AVS Script if you know how to di this, very advanced stuff.
- AVIMuxGUI never splits anything always Aligns.
THE VERDICT:
VirtualDub's method is very simple and uses the LAME MP3 ACM to perform the task in 1/4 of the time it takes with the VirtualDubMod version and I have had no playback audio errors with either version have a look at my tips and exactly how to best perform these two methods
HEREFINAL THOUGHT:
You might like to tryout AVI ReComp v1.5.0 (that uses VirtualDubMod v1.5.10.2) that will keep the video in the libavcodec XVID FOURCC (the DivX codec is not yet supported) format BUT will skip when played back on a Standalone Player the audio conversion however is very easy as shown below
If you choose to use another alternative AVIDemux v2.5 even when a VBR timemap is created to keep the Audio and Video in Sync
The Video codec is still XVID so will give you a few skip errors. The Audio conversion is best done using the MP3 (lame) which is the same used in VirtualDub if you disable reservoir in the LAME config then it will become Aligned in the same way VirtualDubMod operates.
Here are the results for the alternative conversions but only the audio is changed as they can't change to DivX note that AVIDemux Splits across Interleaves like VirtualDub (unless de-reservoir is used) and AVI ReComp uses VirtualDubMod and so it remains Aligned,
FOOTNOTE:
It is also worth mentioning that it you want to convert your AVI's into DVD format VSO's
ConvertXtoDVD will handle any Video codec and Audio codec bitrate even a variable bitrate (VBR) and create DVD Video's with no audio sync problems, by default all DVD Video VOB's audio are at a constant bitrate (CBR) it also has the added option to resize and pad to give you the DAR that you require for you TV.
On the flip side the one and only way to convert a DVD format into an AVI is to use
AutoGordianKnot by len0x (based on VirtualDubMod with AVISynth) which will encode a an AVI with the FOURCC of DX50 with either CBR AC3,DTS or MP3 with flawless results everytime with the Audio Aligned on Interleaves for best playback.
It also has the option to encode into XviD with a VBR MP3 audio but this will give audio lag when played on standalone DVD players with often jerky video, so stay away from this unless you plan only to watch the conversion on a PC.
EXTRA NOTE:
It must also be added that even the
DivX Convertor Plus v8.0 latest bundle codec v6.9.2 that includes the DivX HD format using the MKV container as opposed to the usual AVI container will not convert a VBR video stream to CBR but create excellent H.264 files with AAC audio streams.
These screen dumps from G-spot clearly show that the AVI v2.0 container for the original VBR XVID codec converted using VirtualDubMod v1.5.10.2 has been converted to DivX using the 720x576 Home Theater format with audio frames still aligned on interleaves but has kept the troublesome VBR (variable bitrate video) this will cause your standalone DVD player with DivX progressive audio errors. You must still convert to CBR first using one of the methods above to ensure non-failure.
Come on guys at DivX lets have the Home Theatre format convert VBR to CBR as standard ....
×