Welcome to a small collection of tips which hopefully will make your dvd authoring experience a little less stressed.
Creating a dvd is by no means a simple process, but it doesn't have to be difficult either as the whole process can be broken down into individual process's, the following is an example of steps which I use in preparation to making a dvd and can be broken down into the following steps.

I make no claim to discovering these methods myself this is simply a collection of knowledge gained from various sources and steps that I regularly use, so I thought I'd put them here together, any questions or comments please feel free to pm me via the video help forums.

Preparing AC3 Audio
Joining ac3 audio streams
Fixing ac3 headers and time codes

Preparing subtitles
Joining subtitle files
Importing subtitle files to DvdLab Pro

Converting Divx / Xvid to mpeg2
Encoding with Mainconcept encoder

To join 2 or more ac3 files into 1 file use the good old command prompt and the copy command like so..

i.e.copy /b firstac3file.ac3+secondac3file.ac3 all.ac3 /b – the /b switch is needed to inform Windoze that it's dealing with binary files.
Important Note once you have done the above the resulting file will report the wrong 'length' in the header, to fix the header use the tool below

For this job I use Subtitle Tool

1. Open 1st srt file
2. Check length of 1st video file in virtualdub and enter it here.
3. Then click open and load 2nd srt file.
4. then save out to new file.

A 30 day trial version of DvdLab Pro can be found here.

I will assume that you know how to make your dvd+menus in dvdlab and therefore simply show the subtitle stuff (for further guidance there are lots of guides to using dvdlab on their homepage and some can be found at videohelp)

1. click the sub1 tab (subtitle box will appear)
2. click import and select your srt file.
3. click generate subs, this will then produce a file with .sp1 extension an add it to the movie.

Repeat as many times as needed for multiple subtitles (click the new empty sub2 tab)

NOTE: If you have more than 1 movie, all movies must have the same number of subtitles otherwise things get screw'd up! (know bug)

NOTE: while dvdlab generates the subs it stores each subtitle as a 1MB bitmap file in a temp directory (mine was c:\temp) and it didn't delete them afterwards, as there was 700+ in my project that was quite a bit of wasted HD space. Odd because the resultant sp1 file was only about 2MB

Have fun

This little guide is for those of you wanting to convert your avi, divx, xvid files to dvd compliant mpeg 2 files using the Mainconcept Mpeg Encoder, the reason I use MainConcept is mainly because of it speed compared with TMPGEnc encoder, on a 2.1Ghtz system I can convert a 90min film in a little over an hour

This is by no means a definitive guide as there is always more than one way of doing anything on a computer, these are just some of the steps which I use when making a dvd.
I make no claims to being a guru with MainConcept encoder and this is not ment to be a beginners guide either, these are just my methods that work for me, for more in depth details of all the settings RTFM (see the excellent pdf manual that comes with the encoder or the more advanced one available on their webpage here)

First job is to identify the file details with a useful free tool - avicodec

Main info I'm after here is the Video resolution (1) which here is 608*256 (write these down for use later on) and the aspect ratio of the movie (2) which here is 2.21:1 (not very accurate as 608/256 should be 2.375, but if it is 16:9 or 4:3 you can skip the crop and scale section further down)

NOTE: The bottom two lines state weather your system has the codec's installed to play the file, if it states UnSupported click the WEB button on that line and it will take you to a download site for the appropriate codec - nice touch - BUT I would steer well clear on installing so called codec packs , only install codec's as needed - DON'T install everything under the sun just because it's offered to you - that's just asking for trouble.

Step 1.

Fire up Mainconcept encoder and load your file ....

Here I've loaded gangs1 as the AVI source and the separate audio in wav format (extracted via full processing mode in virtualdub)
Selected dvd as project type and chosen to output to separate video/audio files (Elementary out put for use later with dvdlab - if your project has ac3 audio select Elementary Video only), as it's pal I've chosen mpeg layer 2 audio to keep as much film quality as possible.

Step 2.

Next click on the Details button, the following screen will pop up.

Step 3.

Next we need to set the crop and scale to get the right picture setting that will tell the encoder to add the black bars top and button (as the AVI is not 16:9 / 1.77 or 4:3 / 1.33)
So hit the Crop & Scale button.
Un-check the Keep Proportions box in the window below (if its checked) and enter the new value into the height box.

BUG - when entering a new value in the height box - if you type the number in directly (as opposed to using the slider or spin controls) and just press OK - mainconcept will forget the new settings!
to get round this little bug type in the number then press the TAB key (notice the slider jumps) then press OK.

How did I get that number you might be asking? well details are below but I recommend you read this excellent guide here by DJRumpy for a better under standing.

Our original video had a resolution of 608 x 256 which has a video aspect ratio of 608/256 = 2.375
Multiply the physical height of the mpeg were making (576), by the MPEG display aspect ratio you want.
Since this is in widescreen format we use a ratio of 1.77 (16:9),
576 * 1.77 = 1019.52
This is our videos true width. We then apply our original VIDEO's aspect ratio of 2.375
1019.52 / 2.375 = 429.27 then round it to even.
So this movies actual video image area would be 1020 x 430 = 2.375 ratio, with black bars of 73 pixels added on the top and bottom to make 1020 x 576 squished into 720 x 575 mpeg.

NOTE: For NTSC footage replace 576 with 480 in all calculations.

Next click OK then the Advanced button.

Here I've set up Aspect ratio to 16:9 (I've left everything else as default)
NOTE: Auto GOP settings can insert I-frames at scene changes - useful for accurate dvd scene menu's etc.

Step 4

Next click on the 2nd tab - Advanced video settings and I setup as follows..

I generally don't touch the audio settings but feel free to have a fiddle if you want to save more space by reducing the bitrate of the audio (if you don't mind the reduced quality)

That's generally it as far as the settings go, click OK to get back to the main window and hit the convert button.

If your project has two AVI files, then after setting things up, click on the File menu Add to batch list
Start over again for the next file, then Add to batch list again
Click encode list to one file, set output name and click Start encoding - this will result in 1 large video file and 1 audio file ready to use in dvdlab.
NOTE: if the 'Encode list to one file' is grayed out then the settings in one of the files is not the same as the other (setting have to be identical) use the copy to main, delete entry, adjust settings then add to batch.....

Have fun

Last updated :: Wednesday, February 22, 2012

© Roderz 2012 :-)