questions about encoding.

[davexnet2]

Hello - I just tried 1.6.1 for the first time, nice looking GUI.
I've got three questions -
If the source file has DVD-compliant audio, is there an option for it to be retained?

My 2nd questions concerns the encoding speed in HCenc.
My source is MKV/H.264 decoded by FFDshow.

In Hcenc/thefilmmachine, I get about 14 fps during encoding, cpu utilization is approx 55%.

I tried the same source file in another program (AVStoDVD) that also uses HCenc, and in that case I get
22 fps and cpu is at 98%.

Why is there this difference ?

Third, I got a crash right at the start of the DVDAuthor step - here's the log - thanks for any info.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
- 3/6/2010 4:55:52 PM
- MKV to DVD conversion
- The FilmMachine version 1.6.1
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Initializing.

Computer Info
CPU name : AMD Athlon(tm) 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 4200+
Available memory: 2.00 GB
Windows version : Microsoft Windows XP Service Pack 3
Initializing finished.

Saving Project File

DirectX Version = 9.0c

AC3Filter installed = False
ffdshow Audio Decoder installed = True
RealMedia Splitter installed = True

Saving MKV-Info files
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
- 3/6/2010 4:56:08 PM
- Free on drive I: 16.12 GB
- Audio Extraction
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

DirectShow messages:

Extracting audiostream 1 from K:\k-temp\#music\Paul McCartney - A little later [HDTV 1080p x264 AC3].mkv

DirectShow Filters used:
FileWriter
NullRenderer
ffDshowFilter
SampleGrabber
Avisynth Source Filter


Audio extraction finished.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
- 3/6/2010 4:56:30 PM
- Free on drive I: 16.09 GB
- Video Encoding using HC Encoder by Hank315 version 0.23
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Executing HC Encoder.

Encoding of I:\dvd-copy\TFM_Avisynth_Script1_File.avs finished

Total Video size in bytes: 502075706
Total Audio size in bytes: 35706880
Total Audio + Video size in bytes: 537782586
Total Audio + Video size in MB: 513

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
- 3/6/2010 5:28:36 PM
- Free on drive I: 15.62 GB
- Video PullDown
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
DGPullDown is working in the background.....
Video PullDown finished.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
- 3/6/2010 5:29:15 PM
- Free on drive I: 15.62 GB
- Creating DVD compliant files
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Mplex is multiplexing the video and audio stream of file 1 .....
INFO: [Mplex.exe] mplex version 1.9.0 (2.2.7 $Date: 2006/02/01 22:23:01 $)
INFO: [Mplex.exe] File I:\dvd-copy\TFM_EN~1.M2V looks like an MPEG Video stream.
INFO: [Mplex.exe] File I:\dvd-copy\TFM_EN~1.AC3 looks like an AC3 Audio stream.
INFO: [Mplex.exe] Video stream 0: profile 8 selected - ignoring non-standard options!
INFO: [Mplex.exe] Found 1 audio streams and 1 video streams
INFO: [Mplex.exe] Selecting dvdauthor DVD output profile
INFO: [Mplex.exe] Multiplexing video program stream!
INFO: [Mplex.exe] Scanning for header info: Video stream e0 (I:\dvd-copy\TFM_EN~1.M2V)
INFO: [Mplex.exe] VIDEO STREAM: e0
INFO: [Mplex.exe] Frame width : 720
INFO: [Mplex.exe] Frame height : 480
INFO: [Mplex.exe] Aspect ratio : 16:9 display
INFO: [Mplex.exe] Picture rate : 29.970 frames/sec
INFO: [Mplex.exe] Bit rate : 8552000 bits/sec
INFO: [Mplex.exe] Vbv buffer size : 229376 bytes
INFO: [Mplex.exe] CSPF : 0
INFO: [Mplex.exe] Scanning for header info: AC3 Audio stream 00 (I:\dvd-copy\TFM_EN~1.AC3)
INFO: [Mplex.exe] AC3 frame size = 1536
INFO: [Mplex.exe] AC3 AUDIO STREAM:
INFO: [Mplex.exe] Bit rate : 49152 bytes/sec (384 kbit/sec)
INFO: [Mplex.exe] Frequency : 48000 Hz
INFO: [Mplex.exe] SYSTEMS/PROGRAM stream:
INFO: [Mplex.exe] rough-guess multiplexed stream data rate : 9129800
INFO: [Mplex.exe] target data-rate specified : 10080000
INFO: [Mplex.exe] Setting specified specified data rate: 10080000
Multiplexing finished.

DVDAuthor is writing the VOB files.....

[The_Mask]

1) What do you mean by DVD compliant audio (PCM, DTS or AC3)? If the audio is DTS or AC3 and you don't do a framerateconversion or something els on the audio then the audio is extracted and not encoded, thus the audio will be exact the same as the source.

2) That could be that the other program uses different settings for HCEnc. Do you know what settings are used?

3) Do you get an error message or something?

[davexnet2]

Thanks for responding - regarding (1) Yes, I meant the source file with dvd-compliant AC3. Perhaps I missed something in the GUI, I'll go back and check.
(2) I'll double check the settings and report back.
(3) it just gave a Microsoft error box, and asked me if I wanted to report it to them.
Here's the info from Windows application events:
Faulting application dvdauthor.exe, version 0.0.0.0, faulting module dvdauthor.exe, version 0.0.0.0, fault address 0x0000ec79.

[The_Mask]

1) You can't select this in the gui, it is done in the background when you didn't select framerate conversion etc.
3) Can you try to run dvdauthor manually and see if it gives an error. Just open a cmd box and type in dvdauthor to see the commandline options.

[davexnet2]

Regarding Dvdauthor - the problem did occur as you described in the CMD box.

However, I uninstalled and reinstalled the whole product and now it's working.
I wonder if the A/V product interfered with the installation the first time.
(I temporarily deactivated it this time)
I'm running Avast 4.8 Home. Never had an issue like this before.

[The_Mask]

Could be but it could also be something different. I'm glad that is works again.