On Wed, 13 Oct 2004, William Sherman wrote:
> I'm not having much luck using material produced with the
> MjpegTools with DVD Studio Pro -- or any Apple product for
Wow - I've never had any problems (well, I am having one issue with
MPEG-1 (.m1v) files that _should_ according to the support/forums
be resolved with the DVDSP 3.0.1 update) importing mjpegtools
generated .m2v files.
> to Apple support, but then I recalled that there is at
> least one member of this group actively using to two
> software products together, so I figured this would be a
> more productive avenue.
That would be me :-)
> I'm using a recent CVS version of mjpegtools (I got tired
> of waiting for the followon to 1.6.2) -- 10/05/2004 to be
Well, I have attempted to set the wheels in motion for a release but
so far haven't heard too much back about getting a release cycle
started.
> precise. It's also a pretty recent version of DVD Studio
> Pro (Academic version), version 3.0.1. But really, I haven't
Great - that's what I was using last night - created a couple DVDs
and started on the third one (then couldn't decide was style I wanted
to use and put it off till another night ;)).
> had much luck with any of the Apple software reading mpeg-2
> files created with the mjpegtools.
Hmmm, was this with the CVS version or before you upgraded from 1.6.2
to the CVS version?
> The default version of Apple Quicktime won't even recognize
> mpeg-2 files at all. Fortunately, the Production Suite of tools
> that I purchased with my came with an upgrade to QuickTime Pro.
Yeah - Apple deserves a demerit or two for _that_. The MPEG-2
playback module's a $20 upgrade to a "free player". Then if you want
to _encode_ it's another $30. So the "free" player program isn't
very useful until you upgrade the heck out of it. AND EVEN THEN
it balks at DPME (Dual Prime Motion Estimation) (and so does DVD
Player). Seems someone at Apple didn't read deep enough into the
MPEG-2 specs... AND that is one of the reasons I changed the default
in mpeg2enc to be "no-dualprime" (the other reason is that there's a
bug that can generate whiteblock artifacts ;)).
Oh - you bought the "Production Suite" also? Took me a few hours
to install the ~24-30GB - now to start reading the manuals :-)
> Unfotunately however, while QT-Pro would recognize and read the
> files it is not able to handle them at a respectible rate --
> after the first few moments of one file I created the frame
> rate of displaying the video drops to between 2 and 7Hz.
This is for just "playing"? You're not trying to encode - correct?
When/how was the file generated? If it was generated using 1.6.2
then you're likely getting hit by the DPME bug.
> Whereas a version of mplayer that I downloaded for my Powerbook
> plays the file just fine.
I build my own MPlayer (and ffmpeg, etc) but yes, the "quartz" video
module(s) in MPlayer do a good job.
> I should say that my Powerbook is a brand new 15" w/ Super Drive",
> and a 1.5GHz G4 processor. Also, the files I'm trying to play
Lucky you - I got my Powerbook back when 1GHz G4 was the state of the
art (but the 17" screen's nice ;)).
> come from two sources -- a Canopus 100 capture via dvgrab, and
> using smilutils to feed into an mpeg2enc pipe and then multiplexed
> with the mjpegtoosl multiplexer -- at bitrates within the DVD specs.
Ah - yep sounds like your workflow is similar to mine. All except
for the last part. DON'T multiplex the files together! DVDSP wants
the elementary file - the .m2v file!
> The other source is an IVTV capture from a Hauppauge PVR-350.
> In that case, the capture was at bitrates above DVD spec, so I
> use mpeg2dec to decode them, piped through pgmtoy4m, filtered,
> and then reencoded with the mjpegtools mpeg2enc program, and
> again mplexed.
Identical to what I do - except for the mplex step. Nice to hear
that the pgmtoy4m program is being used by folks other than myself!
I do a similar recoding with the HDTV broadcasts I capture over the
IEEE1394 bus with 'DVHS' (it's one of the demo/test apps in the
Firewire SDK you can download).
Don't mplex the files - leave them as elementary stream files.
> Oh, I use avidemux2 on the latter to trim the
> beginning and end of the TV capture, and then save the files
> as Audio and a separate Raw video stream.
Oh you can do all the trimming, etc right in DVDSP - that's how I
adjust the beginning and ends of a track.
> Enter DVD Studio Pro. When I try to import the "asset" of one of
> these multiplexed mpeg-2 video files, I get a popup that tells me:
> Alert: Import Assets Could not import one file. Incompatible Format
ARGH! And that's the problem. DVDSP wants ELEMENTARY streams - it
will do the multiplexing during the build process.
> I find that an ironic statement coming from a program for producing DVDs!
It's doing, if a bit cryptically, what any program should do - reject
invalid data formats ;)
> Comments, suggestions appreciated.
Leave the .m2v file along - don't multiplex it. Create a .wav
file (either "smil2yuv -a foo.wav ..." or "smil2wav -a foo.wav ..." or
whatever). Then use A.Pack to encode to AC3.
You can use MPEG-1 Layer-II (.mp2) files in a DVD - but NOT Layer3
(MP3). So if the PVR-350 is producing MP2 then you can use that as
is. Otherwise I use 'mpg321' and 'sox' (if needed) to create a
.wav file which can be fed into A.Pack for AC3 encoding.
Import the .m2v and .ac3 files into DVDSP and away you go - it's been
working great for me for over a year now.
I do the encoding on other systems with mpeg2enc because until
recently the dual P4 and Athlon-MP systems are a lot faster than any
notebook. With pipelines of filters involved a dual cpu system
is a much better encoding system than a single cpu notebook. The dual
G5 system (and of course 3 months after I got the 2GHz version they
came out with the 2.5GHz model ;)) is even faster than the Athlon
2800MP (except for yuvdenoise - I really have to look at getting
some Altivec assist in yuvdenoise)!
Summary: use the .m2v and .mp2/.ac3 files without multiplexing.
Good Luck!
Cheers,
Steven Schultz
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