DVD ripping help - FPS, MKV, VLC issues

Hello all,

Sorry I'm positive this answer is probably around somewhere. I'm not entirely sure what the exact problem is though - which makes a search difficult.

Firstly here is some software I'm working with:

Handbrake
FFMPEG
ANYDVD
MKVTOOLNix
VLC
MPC-HC
Totem Movie Player

I have many DVDs I'd like to put on my HTPC. I understand the copying (ripping) process. I understand (re)muxing vs re-encoding.

Sometimes I run into issues where my resulting MKVs have audio / video sync problems in VLC. It's not correct to call it a sync issue. What's appears to be happening is the video frames per second is incorrect.

This doesn't happen with all DVDs.

Example DVD problem: Harry Potter and Sorcerers Stone Widescreen.

It is Dual Layer, MPEG2 video, AC3 audio.

I've tried 2 ways of ripping: 1: remux to MKV using MKVToolNix. 2: re-encode using Handbrake (FPS: same as source; video: MPEG-4 FFMPEG; audio: pass-through)

In both cases, the resulting MKV fails to correctly play in VLC. The resulting video portion of the film is longer in time than it should be. I'm guessing the correct FPS should be 29.97?

Adding to my confusion is that VLC plays direct from the disc correctly.

I've tried correcting the portion in the MKV header called "Nanoseconds Per frame"

This value is supposed to be ignored, and the player should look to the internal codec which in the case of the simple remuxing would be mpeg2.

Totem Movie Player correctly plays the re-muxed MKV movie. I haven't done a whole lot of other testing yet, but that makes me think it's a VLC problem.

It does bring another question. If the film is 23.976p - but has pulldown pre-applied in the stream essentially making it 29.97 - What should the correct framerate be? How can I force proper playback of the MKV file in VLC?

I haven't tried MakeMKV, but I did find a problem which sounds similar to mine:

http://www.makemkv.com/forum2/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=1395

That mentions issues with in VLC playback.

What are you using for playback? Any issues?

I'm beginning to see the pros of that no hassle concept. In my defense on the Blu-ray's I've done, it's been painless. Strip out the extra tracks and subtitles as I could care less about them and remux the video and audio into MKV. Plus on a few Blu-ray's, I did have some playback issues with the M2TS files which didn't occur when I remuxed them to MKV.

I figured a few things, the folder structure of my Blu-rays and DVD collection would be more elegant as they would be in one single file and all the same container (MKV). Since I don't really care about subtitles, and extra audio - removing them seemed logical.

Mainly I didn't realize how odd DVDs were and how important the built-in information contained in the VIDEO_TS structure is.

I have found the true problem. It appears to simply be a weird DVD. Not broken or anything. I'll have to try out MakeMKV, or CloneDVD. The other programs I normally use aren't properly grabbing the Main movie. It's grabbing everything including portions which are Interlaced, Progressive and putting them together Like the FBI warning which is Interlaced and putting that Before the Progressive Main movie. Thus weird things happen when trying to play it.

The DVD has 6 titles but VTS_01 goes from _0 to _8. Normal DVDs have their various titles clearly separated in VTS_01, VTS_02, etc

Thanks. I also found some other work arounds too. Mplayer can correctly grab the main movie stream and dump it to a VOB.

ANYDVD - if told to ignore all Adverts, Trailers, and titles under 10 minues also correctly grabs the main movie when doing "Rip DVD to drive".

After remuxing the VOB to MKV, it plays as expected. My only gripe is the raw .M2V (MPEG 2 stream) reports itself as 29.97 fps. When playing it is 23.976. VLC reports it as 59.94 fps, but plays fine.

Mplayer initially says 29.97 when opening the raw .M2V stream, then immediately says a warning that the content is actually 23.976.

It seems that all these weird flags of the VIDEO_TS spec make things more complicated than necessary. Can't even the most primitive DVD player take a 23.976 progressive film and automatically do pulldown without these weird flags?