I have some movie files that were ripped from a DVD. They are actually TV episodes of a program no longer on. It was encoded in 640x480 1500k MPEG-4 video AC3 pass through for the audio. I didn't know that when I burned these to DVD, the codecs used were not recognized by my dvd player and not able to play. I have been trying to convert these over to something my Divx certified dvd player will play, but don't know what format to use. I can just about convert to any format using Aimersoft Video Conversion, but need some advise. What would be the best format to convert to to burn to DVD and play of dvd player for viewing on TV? Using gspot, the movie files are in a codec named FMP4 (FFmpeg/ffdshow ISO). The audio is in AC3. Neither of these codecs are installed on my computer, and I do not know if I should install them or not, and if I do, I really did not want to watch them on my computer. Can someone explain what the above codecs are, and why someone would rip dvds in this format, as they won't play on my divx player or windows media player either. Please let me know what is best to do here, as I do have divx plus converter also to work with. I sure would appreciate it. bently
Your Divx certified player can either play Divx/Xvid or mpeg-2 DVD. What you convert them to is your choice. Install FFDshow and go from there.
I want to convert to the best quality. What would you suggest? Why do I need to install FFDshow and do you have an opinion as to why it was ripped into this format to begin with? I do appreciate your comments as I am very new to this but learning. I did convert the movie file into AVI using Aimersoft Video converting Ultimate> Common DVD> AVI. I then use Divx Player Plus to burn to Divx format. It works but the quality is not that great. I will install FFShow and see how that goes, but can you tell me what I should look to do.? Thanks again for posting, gb
Hello - FFDshow is a good general-purpose codec that provides a lot of functionalilty with a very small footprint. It can decode FMP4 (a generic kind of mpeg-4 4cc produced by FFMPEG) once you enable it in the FFDShow video/VFW decoder config. I believe this is a similar kind of mpeg-4 (ASP-advanced simple profile) as xvid/divx. Although I've never encountered it, there's a description of it here: http://www.moviecodec.com/video-codecs/fmp4-codec-with-virtualdub-45814/ How big are the individual source files? (in MB and hours / minutes). How many of these episodes do you want to put on one disk? It is details like this that will guide you to the correct solution. If done properly, a reasonable quality should be obtainable in either case.
I have over 76 GBytes of episodes to convert to a format playable on my divx compliant stand alone dvd player. There are 6 seasons of a number of episodes for each season. Each episode is encoded in this format as discussed above. I will most likely just burn a DVD to capacity and mark on it what season and episodes it includes. I have never encountered this format used before, and being not that knowledgeable about codecs to begin with, I ran into a beehive with this as I didn't know what to do. It looks like most episodes are under 700 mb, with a time of around 50 minutes total, but not all. If I convert to WMV, the file size almost doubles. If I convert to AVI, the file size stays about the same. I did this to a few and then converted to divx format and the burned episodes played, but some parts became blurred motion, like a cable signal fading in and out on TV. I realized this was not the right way to do this, but it did work and I didn't want to waist my time doing this to all episodes if I was getting this blurred in and out quality. I am using Aimersoft Video Conversion Ultimate and it gives you so many choices to convert to, that I picked general video> and then has different options like> ASF, MOV, M4V, MPeg-4, WMV, MKV, AVI, DV, MPeg-1(NTSC), MPeg-1(PAL), MPEG-1(SECAM), Mpeg-2(NTSC), Mpeg-2(PAL), Mpeg-2(SECAM), Mpeg-4(Movie), and DVD Video Format(*.vob) in NTSC, PAL and SECAM. Allot of choices and if I choose one, I can see what the size of the conversion is and how long it takes. I have only tried a few, but from reading last night, it may be my best choice may be Mpeg-2, but I am not sure what Mpeg-2 option to use above, and if it will need again converted to divx format or whatever to play of the dvd player. This is very confusing, but this program I am using makes it much easier for me. It also gives options to all these different settings if you want to change them. I really don't know and appreciate all comments here using this type of program if possible. Thanks again for commenting and please feel free to reply to this thread, as it will definitely help me in learning about this. Edited to say that I tried the Mpeg-2 conversion, and the file size would be 2.9 GB. That's going from 613 MB in its format now, and ending up with 2.9 GB. That would be too big and time consuming to do, I think. Not sure this program (Aimersoft video conversion) will do the job I need to do properly.
Try Avidemux instead. See if it will open the source files, if not install FFDshow and turn on the decoder for FMP4 as described earlier. In Avidemux, leave "audio" as "copy", set "video" to mpeg-4 ASP (xvid) and set "format" to AVI. Save the new file and try it in your player. Not sure why you attempted WMV - does you player support it? http://www.videohelp.com/tools/AviDemux
Hello davexnet, The Avidemux worked real well. I got good quality out of the conversion. I really appreciate your working through this with me, as this was not easy for me and appreciate your input and guidance. This seems like a real nice conversion program to use for xvid, which I also like. Did the person who originally ripped this do it incorrectly or did he/she use a more offbeat rip to do this? One other comment or question is I want to try using FFdshow also. I installed it, but have no idea where it was installed to. It didn't create a desktop link, and I can't find it in the Program directory. Does it install as a plugin type of utility for another media program or what? Do I need to install something other than Windows Media Player to use this with? I would guess so, but what would you recommend and continued thanks. Edit to say that the conversion was about the original size of the file that was converted. Original was 612mb and conversion was 609mb.
Hi bently, yes, Avidemux is one of those programs recommended without reservation by enthusiasts - not just here, but videohelp.com and doom9 also. About the file size compared to the original - you got lucky. The default setting in Avidemux is CQ 4 (constant quality). In this mode, the objective of the encoder is to maintain a constant quality throughout, allowing more bits where it's needed, for example, fast motion scenes or area's of high detail. Not necessarily a problem, but something to be aware of in the future. (Two pass encoding usually recommended if you want a predictable file size) FFdshow installs it's files in \program files\ffdshow - there should be a shortcut to the config programs in the program menu. I'm using XP, and on my system you'll find the shortcuts in this folder: \Documents and Settings\All Users\Start Menu\Programs\ffdshow It's primarily a directshow decoder (Windows media player, certain encoder utilities, anything using the Dshow interface), but it also offers VFW (video for windows) decoding, used by program such as Virtualdub. There's also an encoder, accessible from certain program (Virtualdub being one) The FFdshow "tryouts", as they are called, get updated every week or so, as they are constantly enhancing and improving it. I'm using a 6-month old version and it's working fine for me. Videohelp.com offers links to the latest and older versions: http://www.videohelp.com/tools/ffdshow
davexnet, Well your explanation on how this encodes answers my question as to why the motion was much better in this conversion process. It was very very good. I was quite surprised that this program was actually better than many I had bought to use. That was my biggest problem with divx and xvid, and it was that it had problems, although slight, with fast motion scenes or scenes that had quick motions in them. I could have maybe not had the settings right, but did the best I could without any help other than reading. Your guidance helped immensley. I really liked Avidemux and will continue to encode in it. The CQ4 process is exactly what is needed with these types of conversions. I can't sing enough high praises about it and would have never heard of it without your response here. I was very lucky to have gotten your response and help here, as I have been led down the wrong road with two other sincere persons on other sites I have asked for help on(encode to WMV and encode to Mpeg-2), and couldn't get anyone to respond elsewhere, so I and thank you again. I will have to do a search and read all the posts concerning this, as I want to become much more familiar in how and why people are using this encoder under different circumstances than mine. I have encoded some other episodes late last night and played them, and without fault, they played very well again. When you say to get best results you should do two pass encoding, are you meaning to do the encoding again through Avidemux? Is there an option to batch load more than one movie file at a time so I can leave it on encoding through the night or day, whenever I am not around? bently
Hello - sorry to hear you spent some $$$ and didn't get a good result. I never meant to say you get the "best results" with two-pass. I'm going to explain the issues. The main consideration is whether or not the predictability of the encoded file size is important to you or not. Read on... As I mentioned, CQ mode is not constrained in its bitrate, it will use whatever it needs to meet the quality for a particular scene. Advantages : one pass, uniform quality. Disadvantages: unpredictable file size. 2-pass is another encoder mode you can select in Avidemux/configure /encoding modes. There's two flavors, you can specify the bitrate or file size. In this mode, an initial pass is made through the source and a stat file is built describing the complexity level for each frame. Then the second pass does the actual encoding. It uses the stat file to decide how to best allocate the bits, constrained by the bitrate or file size you chose. Advantages: Predictable file size. Disadvantage: Twice as slow. Hope this helps - there's one caveat about Avidemux's implementation of 2-pass. but it's not really a big deal as long as you know it's there. It doesn't take into account the space needed by the audio. Here's an example. Assume your source file is 700MB, and it consists of 610MB Video and 90MB Audio. If you wanted to re-encode this to a 500MB file, you would set 410MB as the size in Avidemux. This would give you 410MB of re-encoded video + 90MB original audio = 500MB file.
