Odd Behaviour Of Fit-to-dvd Function

[delosio]

I've recently purchased a boxed copy of Popcorn 3 in order to burn on DVD my favourites TV shows broadcasted on free on air DVB-T channels. I own an Elgato DTT stick with EyeTV 3 software and the only thing that I needed was a tool to fit a slightly too large video on a 4.32 GB DVD. I noticed that the Fit-to-DVD function actually has some problems with mpeg2 streams to re-encode. I recorded some Opera's movies directly from a DVB stream, and recompressing with Popcorn I obtained some blurry vob files that make DVD player crash after few seconds of reproduction. I checked the stream exported from EyeTV with Mpegstreamclip and it was OK, no timecode breaks at all. Then I checked the vob file produced by popcorn 3 Fit-to-DVD recompression of the same exported stream and it had 68 timecode breaks to fix. Any suggestion?

[delosio]

Remember that a video DVD is interlaced and the resolution is much less than that of your Mac's display. If you want to see how it will look on a TV be sure to choose Normal size in DVD player. Otherwise the picture gets zoomed up in size and that of course will make it look blurry.

Certainly what you are saying is true, but trust me, that's not just the case! That's a problem of the fit-to-DVD compression handling this particular MPEG2 muxed file. I repeat that the only solution for me is to waste a few minutes checking out the recompressed VIDEO-TS folder, before burning the DVD.

[tsantee]

Certainly what you are saying is true, but trust me, that's not just the case! That's a problem of the fit-to-DVD compression handling this particular MPEG2 muxed file. I repeat that the only solution for me is to waste a few minutes checking out the recompressed VIDEO-TS folder, before burning the DVD.

What you've posted isn't something I've ever checked. I've got too much going on right now to test it for myself. I appreciate your investigation. I don't have any solution. Hopefully I can do some testing later this month.

 

[tsantee]

Odd isn't it? I don't know what could be possibly wrong. I checked out the mpeg file that got blurry after the fit-to-DVD compression in order to figure out the cause, but with no results: the original file itself is OK, no visible artefacts watching it with QT player or MpegStreamClip or VLC. I made a few experiments on the Video-TS folder saved from Popcorn 3. I used Mpegstreamclip to fix the timecodebreaks in the vob recompressed with the fit-to-dvd function, the one that cause DVD player to crash, then I switched the bad vob with the fixed one and corrected the dependacies with MyDVDedit. Then I tested the "patched" Video_TS folder with DVD player and even if the video was yet quite blurry DVD player didn't crash at all. So I think that the best thing to do is to lose a few minutes saving a disk image instead of a direct burn and check out if everything is OK when I use the fit-to-DVD encoding option.

Remember that a video DVD is interlaced and the resolution is much less than that of your Mac's display. If you want to see how it will look on a TV be sure to choose Normal size in DVD player. Otherwise the picture gets zoomed up in size and that of course will make it look blurry.

[tsantee]

Have you downloaded the current version of Popcorn 3? Your boxed version is certainly out of date. Do you have never re-encode checked in Popcorn's custom encoder settings window?

[delosio]

I updated Popcorn to the latest version as soon as installed on my iMac. The settings in Popcorn encoder preferences are corrected.

[tsantee]

I'm not sure of exactly what steps you followed. Here's how I'd do it: I'd add the EyeTV recording to Popcorn with DVD-video as the setting. I'd created some kind of menu and chose Save as Disc Image. If Popcorn started encoding I'd abort and go to the custom encoder settings window and choose never re-encode. Popcorn should now only multiplex the video before saving as a disc image.

 

I'd select the disc image using the Image File setting in Popcorn and burn my DVD at the start of which Popcorn would do the fit-to-DVD compression.

 

Is this how you did yours?

[delosio]

Hi tsantee, well I follow quite the same steps. First of all cut the commercial within EyeTV and then export the stream in "mpeg Program file" format. Then I add this mpg file to the DVD-video window of Popcorn 3 with custom encoder settings on "never reencode". Popcorn 3 just multiplex the stream and save to a disk image. After that i follow the same procedure you describe in order to shrink the DVD with the fit-to-DVD compression, but I don't burn the disk immediately, I save another Disk Image to check the results both with DVD Player and MyDVDEdit, before wasting an optical media.

[tsantee]

Hi tsantee, well I follow quite the same steps. First of all cut the commercial within EyeTV and then export the stream in "mpeg Program file" format. Then I add this mpg file to the DVD-video window of Popcorn 3 with custom encoder settings on "never reencode". Popcorn 3 just multiplex the stream and save to a disk image. After that i follow the same procedure you describe in order to shrink the DVD with the fit-to-DVD compression, but I don't burn the disk immediately, I save another Disk Image to check the results both with DVD Player and MyDVDEdit, before wasting an optical media.

And the end result is a blurry DVD that causes DVD Player to crash? There is one difference in our approach but it shouldn't matter. I add the EyeTV video using the Popcorn Media Browser rather than export the video as an MPEG program stream. When I have had problems with an EyeTV video I'll export as an MPEG elementary stream, however, and drag the resulting .m2v file to Popcorn. Popcorn will automatically match it with the audio stream.

 

I don't understand why there would be this trouble with your videos when Popcorn is only multiplexing them.

[delosio]

And the end result is a blurry DVD that causes DVD Player to crash? There is one difference in our approach but it shouldn't matter. I add the EyeTV video using the Popcorn Media Browser rather than export the video as an MPEG program stream. When I have had problems with an EyeTV video I'll export as an MPEG elementary stream, however, and drag the resulting .m2v file to Popcorn. Popcorn will automatically match it with the audio stream.

 

I don't understand why there would be this trouble with your videos when Popcorn is only multiplexing them.

Odd isn't it? I don't know what could be possibly wrong. I checked out the mpeg file that got blurry after the fit-to-DVD compression in order to figure out the cause, but with no results: the original file itself is OK, no visible artefacts watching it with QT player or MpegStreamClip or VLC. I made a few experiments on the Video-TS folder saved from Popcorn 3. I used Mpegstreamclip to fix the timecodebreaks in the vob recompressed with the fit-to-dvd function, the one that cause DVD player to crash, then I switched the bad vob with the fixed one and corrected the dependacies with MyDVDedit. Then I tested the "patched" Video_TS folder with DVD player and even if the video was yet quite blurry DVD player didn't crash at all. So I think that the best thing to do is to lose a few minutes saving a disk image instead of a direct burn and check out if everything is OK when I use the fit-to-DVD encoding option.