$ divx2cvcd ~+1/"f1.avi" [tcprobe] RIFF data, AVI video Video Output: 352x240 alto sin bordes: 180, con borde: 30
by paranouei
LinuxMalaga
News(06/09/2003): New script divx2cvcd available. This new script doesn't use transcode anymore so now supports more codecs and its more customizable. http://dvdripping-guid.berlios.de/divx2cvcd-new
News(20/01/2003): New forum available. You can ask there your questions about this guide.
So you just came from shopping with your brand new DVD player, and now you would like to transcode your Divx files to VCD to enjoy them in your big TV at the living room…
This task can be done in linux, you can even automate it so you just have to type i.e. divx2vcd <file.avi>, go for a walk, and when you are back you have a fresh .bin and .cue files ready to burn.
Ok, let's see a few basic concepts before we begin:
VCD: Video CD. It's an MPEG-1 stream, at 352x288 and 25 fps (PAL), or 352x240 and 29.976 fps (NTSC). It has constat bitrate at 1150kbps and the audio is MPEG layer 2 at 224 kbps. You can fit as many minutes as the CD says (74 or 80).
SVCD: Super Video CD. It's an MPEG-2 stream, at 480x576 and 25 fps (PAL), or 480x480 and 29.976 fps (NTSC). The bitrate may be variable up to 2600kbps, and the audio can be between 32 and 384 kbps. Depending on the bitrate you choose you can fit more or less minutes, but you can usually fit between 40 and 55 minutes per CD.
XVCD, CVCD..: These are modifications of the standard, with different bitrates, etc., and they could not work on all DVDs. But today's DVD players can play almost everything.
For instance, CVCD is just a VCD with variable bitrate. This way, "easy" scenes take a lower bitrate so you have more space left and you can fit more minutes. You can fit this way more than 90 minutes in a CD.
Mplayer. This will be our input filter for transcode. This way, transcode will be able to handle everthing mplayer can read (divx, realmedia, subtitles…)
Transcode. This is the main tool. It's for transcoding between almost any imaginable format.
MJPEG Tools. This will be our output filter. Also, in includes tools for multiplexing the mpg.
VCDImager. This tool is for creating the .bin and .cue files from the mpg.
Also, my scripts use some basic utils like bc (calculator) and perl.
Well, once you've got that, let's start ;)
I wrote the following script "divx2vcd", it takes care of the calculations to get an image with the same aspect ratio (adding black borders if needed). It uses constant, so it's fully VCD standard. The maximum file size (to make them fit in a CD), it's in CDSIZE variable. The script creates the video and audio with transcode, then it multiplexes them with mplex, and finally it creates de images. You can download it from here. I'm gonna paste it here so you can see it (sorry comments are in spanish):
New script Divx2CVCD (16/12/2002). This scripts gets all information from the .avi file, and then calculates automatically the video bitrate to make it fit in a CD in CVCD format (VCD with variable bitrate). You can change the QUANTUM variable. It's the quality (like the CQ-Constant Quality from TMPGenc), it must be between 2 and 31, the smaller it is, the biggest quality. With a value under 8 you get good quality. You can change AUDIORATE too. The script is available here, and I'm pasting it here:
News(06/09/2003): New script divx2cvcd available. This new script doesn't use transcode anymore so now supports more codecs and its more customizable.
For the SVCD creation is basically the same script, I only adjusted it to create a SVCD. You can change CDSIZE, QUANTUM, MAXVIDEORATE and AUDIORATE. You don't need to create an bbmpeg template because it creates it automatically.. Like before, you can download the script from here
If we've got a divx file in a foreign language, and a subtitles file it is also possible to transcode them when we create the *VCD. The subtitles will be recorded as part of the movie (so you can't disable them when watching the *VCD).
The method is quite simple, you just have to have a subtitles file supported by mplayer (subrip, microdvd… mplayer supports almost everything), and put the file in the same folder as the .avi, and rename the file so it has exactly the same name as the .avi file (except the extension of course). This way we make mplayer to autoload the subtitles. You can try if it works before transcoding, just do mplayer <file.avi> and see if the subtitles are autoloaded.
Well, I hope this little guide was helpful for you ;).
$ divx2cvcd ~+1/"f1.avi" [tcprobe] RIFF data, AVI video Video Output: 352x240 alto sin bordes: 180, con borde: 30
INFO: Multiplexing file Pelicula00.mpg *** Multiplexing: 99% - 90263 of 91169 A/V units. (99)% INFO: Finished multiplexing Pelicula00.mpg *** Multiplexing: 100% - 91169 of 91169 A/V units. (100)%
Playing Pelicula00.mpg. Cache fill: 0.00% (0 bytes) MPEG-PS file format detected. VIDEO: MPEG1 352x240 (aspect 12) 23.976 fps 0.0 kbps ( 0.0 kbyte/s) ========================================================================== Opening audio decoder: [mp3lib] MPEG layer-2, layer-3 MP3lib: init layer2&3 finished, tables done AUDIO: 44100 Hz, 2 ch, 16 bit (0x10), ratio: 16000->176400 (128.0 kbit) Selected audio codec: [mp3] afm:mp3lib (mp3lib MPEG layer-2, layer-3)
Could not find matching colorspace - retrying with -vf scale... Opening video filter: [scale] The selected video_out device is incompatible with this codec. VDecoder init failed :( Opening video decoder: [libmpeg2] MPEG 1/2 Video decoder libmpeg2-v0.3.1 Selected video codec: [mpeg12] vfm:libmpeg2 (MPEG 1 or 2 (libmpeg2)) ========================================================================== Checking audio filter chain for 44100Hz/2ch/16bit -> 44100Hz/2ch/16bit...
XF86VM: Selected video mode 640x400 for image size 352x264. X11 error: BadMatch (invalid parameter attributes)
MPlayer interrupted by signal 6 in module: decode_video - MPlayer crashed. This shouldn't happen.
$ cat log
*************** FILE INFO *************** Frame Size: 640x360 - FPS: 23.976 Length: 35112 - Seconds: 1464 0 hours, 24 minutes, 24 seconds Recommended averagge video bitrate: 4320 Using max video bitrate: 2000
mplayer -noframedrop -vo yuv4mpeg -ao pcm -waveheader -v -osdlevel 0 "/lfs/dl Cache1/movies/bt/Madlax/[Ayu]_Madlax_02_[F59ADC24].avi" &
(cat stream.yuv | yuvscaler -v 0 -M WIDE2STD -O VCD -n n | mpeg2enc -v 0 -s -f 2 -b 2000 -q 3 -F 1 -n n -4 2 -2 1 -o /lfs/toBurn/tmp/Pelicula.mpv) &
News(06/09/2003): New script divx2cvcd available. This new script doesn't use transcode anymore so now supports more codecs and its more customizable.
mplayer -noframedrop -vo yuv4mpeg -ao pcm -waveheader \
-v -osdlevel 0 $MPLAYER_PARAMS "$FILE" &
echo "(cat stream.yuv | yuvscaler -v 0 $SCALING -O VCD $NORM | \
mpeg2enc -v 0 -s -f 2 -b $MAXRATE -q $QUANTUM $FRAMERATE $NORM -4 2 -2 1 \
-o $DIR/Pelicula.mpv) &
" >> $LOG
(cat stream.yuv | yuvscaler -v 0 $SCALING -O VCD $NORM | \
mpeg2enc -v 0 -s -f 2 -b $MAXRATE -q $QUANTUM $FRAMERATE $NORM -4 2 -2 1 \
-o $DIR/Pelicula.mpv) &
Quite outdated.
transcode -i "$FILE" -V -x mplayer -y mpeg2enc,mp2enc \
-F 1 -Z ${WIDTH_OUT}x$ALTO_OUT -Y -$BORDE,0,-$BORDE,0 \
--export_asr 2 -E 44100 -b $AUDIORATE -o $DIR/Pelicula
transcode -i "/lfs/cache13/movies/tmp/Shades.Of.Truth.01-Canto-Esub-VNM.avi" -V -x mplayer -y mpeg -F s,2,/tmp/divx2svcd-24678/template -Z 480x480 -Y -0,0,-0,0 --export_asr 2 -E 44100 -b 160 -o /lfs/cache13/movies/tmp/Pelicula *** WARNING: The option -V is deprecated. *** *** Transcode internal frame handling is now in YV12 / YUV420 *** *** format by default because most codecs can only handle this format, *** *** otherwise leading to unnecessary time and quality wasting conversions. *** *** If you want to have to "old" behaviour (RGB24 as internal format), *** *** then please use the new -1/--use_rgb option ***
[import_mplayer.so] tcextract -i ./stream.yuv -x yv12 -t yuv4mpeg tc_memcpy: using mmxext for memcpy tc_memcpy: using mmxext for memcpy
*** WARNING *** *** You are using the "mpeg" export module. *** *** This is probably not what you want. *** *** This module is based on the bbmpeg library, *** *** which is obsolete, as is this export module. *** *** This module may be removed in a future *** *** transcode release. *** *** Use the mpeg2enc or ffmpeg export modules instead *** *** in combination with a vcd, svcd or dvd export profile *** *** WARNING ***
INFO: using reference profile (SVCD) INFO: profile type is (NTSC) INFO: mixing up parameters from profile (/tmp/divx2svcd-24678/template) quant_value = 7 max_bitrate = 4000000 INFO: resize from w/h (480/480) to (w/h) (480/480) [export_mpeg.so] mpa codec not found ! [transcode] warning : (encoder.c) audio export module error: init failed [transcode] critical: failed to init encoder
by xevian (xevian@iespana.es) translated by paranouei
News(20/01/2003): New forum available. You can ask there your questions about this guide. (NB, it's abandoned forum, the newest post on it is on Feb 02, 2003, titled "mencvcd installation")
Be have seen before how to rip a DVD to Divx, now we are going to see how to rip a DVD to VCD, and to transcode an AVI to VCD. You may wonder why we want to do this. There are DVD players which can play Divx, but the majority of them can't, but almost all of them can play DVD and SVCD. We are gonna focus on VCD, because it has smaller size than SVCD.
The main tool for this is mencvcd, and you can find it in mjpegtools package -> Downloads (side menu) -> Tarballs -> mjpegtools_1.6.1-1_debsrc.tar.gz (7.8Mb). The version may be newer and the size may be different. You will see there are many files with the same version but smaller, the reason this file is bigger it's because it includes some libraries and utils we are gonna use like "libmovtar", "quicktime4linux", "jpeg-mmx", "mjpegtools". Once you've got the file, do ./configure. When it finishes, you will see a summary with the available libraries. I'm not going to say how you can get them all, because it will take so long, but it's not so hard, I did it in half an hour (and that's because I've got a modem).
Well, so now we have mpegtools installed, so we have the mencvcd command at our disposition. If you execute the program without parameters, you will see some examples of how to use it to transcode AVI to VCD or DVD to VCD. I'll past them here with one more example:
Some options:
To choose the language we need the option -alang <language>:
o -alang es (spanish audio) o -alang hu,en (hungarian, but if there isn't, take english)
To choose the subtitles we use the option -sid <subtitle number> (there is another option to take subtitles from a different file, but I haven't done it, anyway, we'll see later how to do it.):
o -sid 0 (the first language subtitles) o -sid 1 (the second language subtitles)
If you want to know which number is each language, you have to look at mplayer output. You can grep the output so you see only what you need. For instance, greping "sid" you will see all the subtitles with its number (0=en (english); 1=es (espanol…). Greping "aid" you'll see the audio languages:
xxxxx@xxxxx$ mplayer -dvd 1 -vo null -ao null -frames 0 -v 2>&1 | grep sid [open] subtitle ( sid ): 0 language: en [open] subtitle ( sid ): 1 language: es [open] subtitle ( sid ): 2 language: pt [open] subtitle ( sid ): 3 language: iw [open] subtitle ( sid ): 4 language: pl [open] subtitle ( sid ): 5 language: el [open] subtitle ( sid ): 6 language: cs [open] subtitle ( sid ): 7 language: tr [open] subtitle ( sid ): 8 language: hu [open] subtitle ( sid ): 9 language: hr xxxxx@xxxxx$ mplayer -dvd 1 -vo null -ao null -frames 0 -v 2>&1 | grep aid [open] audio stream: 0 audio format: ac3 (5.1) language: en aid: 128 [open] audio stream: 1 audio format: ac3 (5.1) language: es aid: 129 xxxxx@xxxxx$
mencvcd matrix matrix.avi
This will create a VCD from an AVI, there are no format options because it takes them from the AVI file. It takes some time, about the double of the movie time. At the end it creates two image files. When it finishes it will say "Insert a CD and press a key", then just put a CD, hit a key, and it will burn the VCD and ask you for another one when it finishes.
mencvcd matrix -dvd 3 -w
It will transcode the VCDs from title 3 from the DVD (sometimes the first titles are trailers, adverts, and stuff like that), in 16:9 format (that's the -w option for). After a long time, it will ask you the CDs again and burn them.
mencvcd prueba -vfr 2 -vnorm p -w /opt/glftpd/site/video/requiem_for_a_dream/rfad.avi -sub /opt/glftpd/site/video/requiem_for_a_dream/rfad.srt
This is an example of creating the VCD with the subtitles in a different file. The path to the subtitle file is set by -sub option.
paranouei Posted: Mon Jan 20, 2003
CVCD is just a VCD with variable video bit rate and lower audio bitrate, that way you can fit more minutes on a CD. It will work on almost any DVD player, and the quality is pretty good (better than VCD depending on the bitrate).
The script divx2cvcd automatically detects the movie length, and it adjusts de bitrate to make it fit on a single CD, so you don't need to fiddle with the settings anymore.
I recommend to everyone to try the divx2cvcd and see the results.
i tried to convert one movie to cvcd with quantization 5 and the resulting file was 13 mb bigger than 1 cd so it was split into two parts. then i tried quantization of 6 and then the file was about 40 mb smaller than 1 cd. so is it really supposed to create file fitting on 1 cd? to me it seemed as if i go for higher quality (smaller quantization value) i get bigger files. if it really is attempting to create file fitting on one cd then do i need to change the calculation of bitrate somehow to get something less for q=5 or more for q=6?
The truth is it's quite hard to guess the future size using one pass variable bitrate. The calculations are based on trial & error, but some times they can fail.
You can't set an "average bitrate" with one pass, you can only set "max bitrate", and quantization, so my method was to use as "max bitrate" the ideal "average birate" + 5%. But if you have a file with lots of action, maybe it will use "max bitrate" all the time, so it will oversize. So you can remove the line under # +5% in the script, or change the quantum value as you did.
If you do more trial & error, may be you could recommend me the best values which worked for you
> I know KVCD and MVCD but why should I use CVCD if it's just standart and so > the quality isn't far good as MVCD or KVCD. Or what?
Yes, look at the date of the message! . One year ago, there were only scripts for VCD, SVCD and CVCD, so CVCD was the best of them.
Of course now the best (for me) is KVCD.
paranouei
If you get wrong colours when transcoding some files, remove the -V option from transcode options. That will solve all problems.
The -V option uses the YV12/I420 as internal video codec which is much faster encoding, but it has problems with some files.
I mean some weird red shadows, and there are on the left and right mirroreffects of the film. To know you are having this problem, transcode will give you this warning during transcoding:
[video_trans.c] warning: odd clip parameter invalid for Y'CbCr processing mode
> How do I remove the "V" option from transcode?
Open the divx2vcd, divx2cvcd or divx2svcd script with your favourite text editor. Then look at line wich begins with "transcode ….". Then delete the option "-V" from that line, and save the file.
documented on: 2004.06.19