Picture size after burning after exporting from Womble

[Captain Khajiit]

Okay, I've finished a first rough version of a project in Womble. I export it with the general tab set to Separate which produces a single .mpg file containing both video and audio. When I play it in VLC it looks to be the same ratio and crop (2.40:1) as when I play the DVD itself direct from the drive - also in VLC. So far so good.

I used DVD flick to burn the mpg to a DVD just see what it looks like after burning and the resulting DVD has its picture squashed horizontally. It *seems* to have the same size black bars top and bottom, but left and right there is a massive black gap between the video and the sides of my TV screen. It's a similar kind of problem to the one I recently experienced with AVIs - and have yet to solve.

Has Womble done something to it that I'm unaware of? I followed ADM's guide to rip the disc and import it to Womble and export it from Womble. I didn't select any option to change the aspect ratio, crop, whatever, at any point in the process, so why do I receive a squashed picture at the end?

I'm really exasperated with this. I'm sure I'm doing something really newbie-ish wrong but can't understand for the life of me why this is happening. Can someone please help me while I still have some hair left?

 

[Gaith]

If you set the Womble export to separate, it will produce two files, one audio, one video. It's a bit tricky, because the "separate" text is a link to the separate option, not a current status reading.

As for the exports, if it's natural in the VLC player, it's fine and your dvd-making software's to blame. Womble has a built-in DVD file-maker which isn't fancy but produces entirely solid results. Unless you go for a really fancy DVD-making program, that might be your best bet.

 

[Captain Khajiit]

Thank you so much, Gaith :-D You're right: that's exactly what was confusing me, and you explained it very eloquently. I now have the two files, so I'm getting there.

EDIT: All right, for some reason the DVD button near the timeline crashes, but the one in the top right doesn't. So I can use the DVD maker on Womble. I have a question about encoding, if you'll indulge me.

When I look at Export MPEG Detail Information I can see blue for stream copy and red for reenocde. I have red streaks wherever my video sources come together. There are quite a few on the audio and only two on the video. I was actually hoping not to have any re-encoding, as I have used no effects - for precisely this reason - all my audio has the same bitrate and sample rate, and all my videos are in exactly the same format.

The two for the video are where the video seems to fade out. Is this classed as an effect? Is the same true for the audio? i.e. wherever you fade in and out do you require reencoding? Or have I done something wrong with transitions?

The video has re-encode 0.1698% and stream copy 99.8302%. The audio has re-encode 0.278% and stream copy 99.72%. Will I notice the difference? Thanks again!

 

[sithlord]

http://www.videohelp.com/tools/Restream

I think this could perhaps help you there.

 

[Captain Khajiit]

Thanks, Sithlord! I was editing my previous post while you posted!

I'll give you feedback on your final Star Wars edit by tomorrow, my friend! I hope it is still going well!

 

[Gaith]

The two for the video are where the video seems to fade out. Is this classed as an effect? Is the same true for the audio? i.e. wherever you fade in and out do you require reencoding?

This is indeed normal. To my experience, the fades in and out of black don't result in a noticeable hit to visual quality; it's mainly the filters that do that.

Glad to be of help!

 

[Captain Khajiit]

Glad to be of help!

You certainly were! The DVD burned perfectly, so it was my program causing the problem. :grin:

EDIT: Well, the aspect ratio is perfect, but the DVD skips at certain points. It's very infrequent but it would be enough to ruin an edit. It's not where the edits are, but it seems to be a short while before. Has anyone come across this?

 

[tranzor]

A skipping issue might be the type of media you burned it on. What did you use?

 

[Captain Khajiit]

After using Womble's DVD maker, I burned the movie to a TDK DVD R+ using Imgburn at 4x.

I've just used the trial of DVD Lab to author and burn the project again actually, and it played almost perfectly this time, apart from a slight glitch in the audio at the beginning, which is not audible in Womble's preview and was not heard previously. I seem to get a slight glitch in a different place every time I burn the movie, although admittedly I am tweaking it ever so slightly in between burns - this in fact the reason why I'm burning it: to see how it plays.

I'm hoping the fact that there were no problems with the visual at all this time is due to the fact that the video is now 100 % stream - i.e. the whole bar is now blue - and DVD Lab is a better DVD builder than Womble. I'm also hoping that when I finally to get it to burn without glitches, it will be the same for anyone else who burns it.

I was wondering at one point if it might something to do with the GOP structure, as there were quite a few video clips being joined together. I assume Womble knows what it's doing... The video file Womble generates has open GOPs, but I don't think this is meant to be a problem. Still it would be nice to have some way of checking that there are no problems with the GOP structure.

 

[tranzor]

you need to learn a bit about womble. I really suggest scrolling through it's help file and the options you can play around with


the audio glitch is a known bug, then again it could be a hard cut you made.

this info is in the instructions:
Womble's instructuions recommends that to avoid this issue, even though it might be only a segment you have now, to let womble encode the entire audio stream if any changes are needed

this can be found in womble's options
go to options and then the export tab, check the box that says
"re-encode the whole audio if any part needs re-encoding"

try it and see if you still get the glitch. In womble's export box you can change what type of output audio is being used and make sure you match it to what you want.

Speaking of the export box, under the video tab click on "expert" next to the word stream and change the output encode to "maximize quality"

also back under womble's options screen and then on the export tab, the first two choices are for gop. The second choice has a gop for dvd compliance option and if you are afraid of a non standard gop, then make sure you are checking that box

 

[Captain Khajiit]

Thanks! I already knew about the maximise quality bit and the need to fade the audio in and out and stuff. (The glitch wasn't anywhere near a cut.) I'd forgotten about those GOP options to be honest, and wasn't sure about whether to use them. I'm still not sure about whether open or closed GOPs are better. I've googled it and most people didn't seem to think there's anything wrong with open GOPs. Using the closed GOP filter will reduce quality slightly?


You're right: I'll have to look through the help files much more thoroughly. Thanks for the well-deserved slap on the wrists.

 

[tranzor]

I use womble for virtually all of my edits. In my latest (in the works) edit I found a way to get around an audio glitch and around using a fade to connect two clips that may produce a hard audio cut

Womble has a cross fade option for audio only if you use special effects.

I kind of figured an easy way to get a cross fade without it (damn program should offer that as a regular option)

ok for this example we are going to have two clips named 1 and 2.

It also should be noted now that womble will allow you to extend a clip if you pull/drag at the end of it

so let us say clip 1 is 2 mins long, but for our project we had to cut it at 1 minute. Even though the clip is 1 min on the timeline, let us say we now need that clip to really be 1min 20 seconds. Drag the end side of the clip (like as if you are going to pull one end of it, womble will only highlight the end of the clip and not the whole thing) and the clips running time will extend for however long you drag it (which you can fine tune)

I mentioned that because it is a needed part

ok so on our timeline we have clip 1 joined with clip two. We have a fade out for clip 1's audio and a fade in for clip two to remove any hard audio cut. Though it would be better if it made a crossfade to blend these two audio sources together and giving you something much better than a fade

here is what we do. Right click on clip 1 and hit copy. Now go down two rows on womble's timeline to the extra audio line. Right click/paste

Womble will allow you if your video has audio to copy and paste the clip on the audio timeline

Match the durations so if your video starts at the 10min 04 second mark, your audio clip should start on this mark as well to sync them.

On the video line right click on clip 1 and select audio and Mute the track

Now clip 1 will be using the audio you copied from the video timeline to the audio timeline and
if you have it start in the same spot the sync should be fine.

here is the crossfade effect. On the video time line take a look where clip 1 and 2 meet. On the audio timeline drag/pull the end of clip 1 a second or two over into the start time of clip 2

this will work as a fake crossfade. You can still fade out the audio of clip 1 because the fade will occur after clip 2 has started. Likewise add a 1-2 second fade in on clip 2

In the end as clip 1 is fading out, clip 2 is fading in but at one point both sounds overlap in a nice mix

I am sure I made this much more confusing than it had to be, but I hope you get the idea