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An free alternative to Womble

2713 Views 26 Replies 12 Participants Last post by worldofaaron, Jun 18, 2003

JohhnyReplay

Discussion Starter · Apr 12, 2003

I just wanted to share my excitement about a free alternative to Womble that I just noticed today...

MPEG2Cut...can be found here http://darkav.de.vu/

It IS NOT frame accurate... but it is simpler to install and WAY faster than GOP Chop.... and it seems to let you to chop at least at sub 1 sec intervals...probably a GOP...

I took a file that I have been fighting with for a LONG time and cut the segments out of it that were not commercials...saved them as their own clips and DMF2 made a dvd WITHOUT re-encoding...

one of the interesting things was that since the peices i wanted to save were split as clips, i was able to find the one section that had a wierdness in it relatively easily... i could then go back and re-create thhat section being more careful to take all remnants of the commercial out and re-load it into DMF2....

For anyone who has had difficulty getting DMF2 to not-re-code, give this a shot...

The one downside is that it saves them all as separate clips...so when you pull them all into DMF, it shows and icon for each one... now all I need is a program that can QUICKLY re-combine them.... (unless the Womble group buy finally comes through REALLY cheap...)

if I can;t recombine them, then maybe the DVD Lab program will be a better fit than DMF2 since you can customize the menu to only show the first clip, but then the other clips would follow automatically...

Anyway, just wanted to share my excitment over finding a way to finally get my West wings to DVD without re-encoding them before my HD runs out of space... I have tried EVERY method here... the only close to working before was demuxing...but then I alwys seemed to have worse than normal sync problems (not awful though...it was my backup plan)....

Good luck.. let me us know if any of you have luck with this method too....

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JohhnyReplay

Discussion Starter · #2 · Apr 12, 2003

I should also mention the way that I was able to find the one clip that was causing me problems...

When you load the clips into DMF2 and then go all the way to the last page, the are two sets of numbers at the bottom of the screen....

Required/Available hard drive space

Required/Available disc space

Check ONLY Create DVD Folders. Then , if the number before the slashes in BOTH of those lines are exactly the same, then DMF2 will not re-encode... If it is different, then it doesn't like at least one of the clips... go back and delete them all, then add them one at a time and keep going to the last page to check to see if the one you just added causes the probelm...

I ashould also note that I also use DVD patcher to pacth the first header of all of the clips to 5.5mbps.... I don't know if I HAD to do this or not though...

I COULD NOT patch the headers of this 'problem' file before this... I got a message that the sequence header could not be found by DVD patcher... may be caused by the fact that my files get transferred from machine to machine.... that seems to screw up the headers quite badly...

anyway..give it a shot and let me know how it goes...

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Meteor

· #3 · Apr 12, 2003

Great find!

I edited a small mpeg clip and it's very clean and no audio lag, I went further and imported the edited clip with Dvarchive and long and behold it played great from my Replaytv box.

The mpeg clip is from a 45xx at medium quality.

My next experiment is cutting the commercials in an hour show and check for audio syncing and compatibility with Replay files.

JohhnyReplay

Discussion Starter · #4 · Apr 12, 2003

Glad to hear it may work on 45xx series too... I only have 5xxx series file to try it on... I'll probably do a lot more testing this weekend... I hope we don't find a problem with it....

Meteor

· #5 · Apr 12, 2003

I did an hour show and it worked great, I did 3 edits and imported back to dvarchive, no syncing problem and played flawlessly.

If is not frame accurate it's very close because I haven't figure how to monitor audio, I'm guided by video from the fade in from black to the fade out to black on each commercial break and it's damn accurate.

dkan24

· #6 · Apr 12, 2003

I don't understand why I can cut a clip using MPEG2CUT and then import it back into dvarchive and it plays perfectly (on a 4040). But if I try and cut a clip using Womble, it won't import or play back.

I would rather use Womble, but the ability to play back cut clips is very useful.

j.m.

· #7 · Apr 12, 2003

Quote:

Originally posted by JohhnyReplay

The one downside is that it saves them all as separate clips...so when you pull them all into DMF, it shows and icon for each one... now all I need is a program that can QUICKLY re-combine them.... (unless the Womble group buy finally comes through REALLY cheap...)

Try DVTool at:
http://www.musclesoft.de/combatman/software/dvtool.html

There is a freeware version available (.49) though you must register by making a donation (in an amount you choose) to gain access to the newest version.

It proclaims to be able to merge MPEG2. From my brief test of the free version, it appears to work. Good luck! Let us know if the combo of mpeg2cut + DvTool works for you.

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djheater

· #8 · Apr 12, 2003

Have you gotten the audio to work? neat program a lot faster visual editing than TMPG for sure.

JohhnyReplay

Discussion Starter · #9 · Apr 12, 2003

dkan24 and djtheater... on the main page of the website I linked, there is a short note about how to get the audio to work... I haven;t tested it but it says to make sure to install MPAlib...which is also downloadable from the website....

jwstaton

· #10 · Apr 12, 2003

This is a great find!

I do have a question though.

After using MPEG2Cut on a one hour show to remove the commercials, the remaining clips when added together are larger than the original Replay TV file. The original file was 2.5 GB and the new file(s) combined are 3.34 GB.

Any ideas why?

JohhnyReplay

Discussion Starter · #11 · Apr 12, 2003

When you say added together, do you mean in DMF2 or merged with another program... if in DMF2 , try pulling them in one at at time and check to make sure the size DMF says is the same as the file size, if it is bigger then DMF thinks it has to re-encode...

jwstaton

· #12 · Apr 12, 2003

My apologies, let me clarify.

After using MPEG2Cut, I highlighted all the files that were created and they equaled 3.34 GB. I also used DVTool to combine the files with the same resulting file size.

The original Replay file before editing was 2.5 GB, and the edited segments were larger than the original.

I have a Replay 5040, the video was recorded at medium quality.

Thanks,

John

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Larry Stewart

· #13 · Apr 12, 2003

Quote:

Originally posted by JohhnyReplay
The one downside is that it saves them all as separate clips...so when you pull them all into DMF, it shows and icon for each one... now all I need is a program that can QUICKLY re-combine them.... (unless the Womble group buy finally comes through REALLY cheap...)

Try TmpGenc. Under the file menu, go to TOOLS, the scroll to the last option on the right, cut/join. It will let you combine several Mpeg2 files without re-encoding. Be sure and select Mpeg2VBR as your file type since the default selection is mpeg1.

Belial6

· #14 · Apr 12, 2003

I have been unable to unarchive the rar file. Has anyone else had a problem unraring it?

JohhnyReplay

Discussion Starter · #15 · Apr 12, 2003

I did have some problems today with the rar archive... winrar seems to work ok on it though... there is a command line version that I used...downloadable from the winrar website...

tluxon

· #16 · Apr 12, 2003

Quote:

Originally posted by Belial6
I have been unable to unarchive the rar file. Has anyone else had a problem unraring it?

The latest version of PowerArchiver does a great job with .rar files.

When you copy the edited file back into DVArchive, is a new .ndx file created? Or does it use the original?

Tim

Larry Stewart

· #17 · Apr 13, 2003

Quote:

Originally posted by Belial6
I have been unable to unarchive the rar file. Has anyone else had a problem unraring it?

Do a Google search for MPEG2CUT. There are .zip versions available.

JohhnyReplay

Discussion Starter · #18 · Apr 24, 2003

It's been a long time testing, but I thought I'd post my results so far in getting the Mpeg2Cut files to burn flawless dvd's.... VERY close... a couple of caveats, it IS NOT frame accurate. you will have to settle for GOP or even 1s accuracy. You will also have to spend more time than I suspect womble would take...though I don't really know from any experience since will not buy womble unless the group buy is attractive...

Here's my notes.... and _please_ critique.... I have spent way to many hours trying to tweak this...

MANY thanks to a bunch of folks who have helped along the way, but especially Rich A and pmcneill.... I don't know how many others have the problems that I do, but my system doesn't seem to respond to this stuff as well as Rich A's... and i have reinstalled windows and used several machines... but this process seems to work on even the most difficult files I have gotten so far...

the process details...

- Cut and save the non-commercial segments with Mpeg2Cut... leave a small (

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JohhnyReplay

Discussion Starter · #19 · Apr 25, 2003

Just a quick update. I also tried using the Merge function in TMPGENC's Tools lat night after my other post... It looks like it may also be a good option for merging the individual commercial-less segments... It looks like it remuxes when it merges the files, so it may make the process must more streamlined... haven;t fully tested it out though... I left a dvd bruning this morning... so I'll see when I get home...

Has anyone else had a chance to try this out on other problem MPEG's?

JohhnyReplay

Discussion Starter · #20 · Apr 26, 2003

Anyone interested in this or just me? I am curious if anyone else has tried using these tools and had luck or problems.

btw, I noiced that the merging of MPEG2 files in TMPGEnc IS time limited...as is the multiplexing option in it...

I went to the TMPGEnc website today and noticed that they also have a DVD authoring program now. Just downloaded the trial... It's cheap $68... but it also included the full TMPGEnc Plus packagae as well... sounds like DVDlab would be a better option though if Oscar can get ReplayTV files to work better....

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