TyTool 10r4 - Extraction/Frame Accurate Editing/DVD output/Closed Captioning...

[lrhorer]

No, the DVD standard calls for a maximum of 30 frames GOP.

Yes, I know. The fact the standard calls for 30 frame GOP blocks does not mean many players can't deal with nonstandard GOP frames.

Some players may simply clear the action when the next GOP starts, thus CC will work on those players though not with the described timing.

I have never observed any timing issues on my players related to CC data. That is not to say no players might suffer such pains.

Also it occurs to me you say you're using an SA Tivo, I'm talking about CCs on a Dtivo, recording direct satellite streams to Tystream to Vobs to DVD. Probably since SA streams are created in the box they DON'T have long GOPS, thus no problem with CC. Right?

Nope. Sorry, but I have seen GOPs over 100 frames long coming from my TiVo. GOP edits sometimes chew off 3 or even 4 seconds of content. There are also plenty of GOPs which are only 9 or 10 frames.

[lrhorer]

That seems strange. I mean it's one thing for D* to send streams with giant GOPs, but why on earth would an SA Tivo encode that way? Bizarre.

Indeed, but it is in fact the case.

[lrhorer]

Yeah, although OTA SD looks a lot better. I'm just going through some OTA SD vids of The Green Hornet -- 720x480i, with a bitrate of just under 3mbps.

3 Megabits per second? Are you sure it isn't 3 Megabytes per second? 3 Mbps will load a standard DVD-R with over 3 hours of content, and I can't get even 2 hours of standard 480 x 480 content from my SA TiVo on a 4.5G disk without using Nero Recode. The bitstream typically runs around 5 - 6 Mbps unless I recode.

I'm curious as to why you VOB-Mux to New Format. I've found New Format to be, well, not as good.

In what ways? I haven't really found any difference, but I habitually use the new mux format. How have you found it to be inferior?

[Fugg]

Has anyone heard from Josh lately? I hope he is still ok...

He's fine, or as fine as he can be while buried up to his neck at work.


as a matter of fact, is that a ship I see on the horizion?

[cheer]

3 Megabits per second? Are you sure it isn't 3 Megabytes per second? 3 Mbps will load a standard DVD-R with over 3 hours of content, and I can't get even 2 hours of standard 480 x 480 content from my SA TiVo on a 4.5G disk without using Nero Recode. The bitstream typically runs around 5 - 6 Mbps unless I recode.

Yeah, I'm sure. Again, it isn't worth comparing a standalone, which encodes the video itself. But I've never seen an SD broadcast anywhere near 5-6mbps, either OTA or via SD.

[BustedSony]

Yeah, I'm sure. Again, it isn't worth comparing a standalone, which encodes the video itself. But I've never seen an SD broadcast anywhere near 5-6mbps, either OTA or via SD.

Typically TCM runs streams at between 1400 and 2100 Kbps. That means that frequently I can get four or five complete movies on one DVD-r, at original (compromised as it is) quality.

[laserfan]

That seems strange. I mean it's one thing for D* to send streams with giant GOPs, but why on earth would an SA Tivo encode that way? Bizarre.
Aren't you doing an awful lot of re-encoding at that point?

Regarding long GOPs: as lhorer has concurred, it is what it is.

VideoReDo does not re-encode, except around the cut points (as does TyTool) with the difference that it works a lot better! I had pixelation using GOP Editor in FAE mode and gave-up on it in favor of VRD+, which has also a wildly better UI.

Further, I've never had a problem with TyTool's multiplex mode--it always works perfectly. I think it may be "other than SD SA Tivos" that Multiplex mode has a problem with. So I find it very convenient to extract-and-mux-and-audio-convert all-at-once, since the ethernet extraction is time-consuming to begin with. My DVD process:

1. TyTool to grab-and-mux-and-convert-audio to PC in one easy step.
2. Import and edit mpg using VRD+. Output as Elementary Streams, correcting GOP lengths.
3. Import to MuxMan which outputs a VIDEO_TS. Burn.

If I'm not making a DVD, this is as easy as "Edit with VRD+ and save". This I do when I just want to play the mpg on my networked Media Players.

Wildly easier than what you and Jetstream are doing!

[1-big-dog]

Got kinda a strange problem, hope somebody can help. I have successfully used TyTool10r4 for 5-6 projects. Learning as I go. But now, when I try to start the GOPeditor from within TyTool I get a message that sez it is editing the file and then immediately it sez it is done editing. It doesn't even start the GOPeditor. If I start the GOPeditor "manually" it seems to work fine, but it won't start from within TyTool. Seems like TyTool is set to some weird Test mode, so it doesn't even open the GOPeditor. Is it something I have set up wrong in my preferences? I have already tossed the whole TyTool folder, and re-downloaded another copy, and another copy of cygwin, but no joy. Anybody got any ideas? Also when trying to create the IFO files I get an error message from bmp2y4m.exe saying it can't find the file to check the location of the source and executable paths. They are just the same as they have always been. If I run bmp2y4m.exe from the command line with the full paths of the source and executable it gives me the same error messages. I've got something fouled up, just don't know what.

[mikey]

Laserfan

I had pixelation using GOP Editor in FAE mode and gave-up on it in favor of VRD+, which has also a wildly better UI.

Did you change q1 to q2 for FAE? I could tell no difference in the quality using either. The only place I think VRD is better is menu creation.

[lrhorer]

But I've never seen an SD broadcast anywhere near 5-6mbps, either OTA or via SD.

Um-hm, the SA does. I just ran several best quality .vob files hot off the TyTool skillet, and PowerDVD shows them all fluctuating between 5.6 and 6.1 Mbps, averaging right at 5.8 Mbps. High quality streams come in around 3.5 Mbps, and basic quality streams come across between 1.3 and 1.5 Mbps, which of course is why one can get about 4 times as much content on the SA TiVo at basic quality than at best quality. Of course a great deal of that has to do with the fact the SA TiVo must compress the stream in real time with only a moderate time lag. Allow a processor to crunch on the stream all day long BEFORE broadcasting it, and the compression ratio can be much higher, which is why the digital satellites can deliver so many channels compared to the old C-band satellites.

[cheer]

Regarding long GOPs: as lhorer has concurred, it is what it is.

VideoReDo does not re-encode, except around the cut points (as does TyTool) with the difference that it works a lot better!

Er.

Maybe I have a very fundamental misunderstanding of MPEG. But I don't see how you can change GOP lengths without re-encoding. If you have an I frame (signifying the start of a GOP) followed by, say, 40 P and B frames...and then you tell VRD+ to change the GOP length to 30, then after the existing I frame and 29 P and B frames you need a new I frame, right? Plus any B frames with a forward reference could be b0rked.

I don't see how you avoid re-encoding whenever this happens.

I had pixelation using GOP Editor in FAE mode and gave-up on it in favor of VRD+, which has also a wildly better UI.

Do you have an Intel CPU? Did you set the Quality setting in TyTool.ini to 2? If you don't you get a mess at cut points sometimes. Overall edits look gorgeous when I do them in TyTool.

[BustedSony]

Er.

Maybe I have a very fundamental misunderstanding of MPEG. But I don't see how you can change GOP lengths without re-encoding. If you have an I frame (signifying the start of a GOP) followed by, say, 40 P and B frames...and then you tell VRD+ to change the GOP length to 30, then after the existing I frame and 29 P and B frames you need a new I frame, right? Plus any B frames with a forward reference could be b0rked.

I don't see how you avoid re-encoding whenever this happens.

Do you have an Intel CPU? Did you set the Quality setting in TyTool.ini to 2? If you don't you get a mess at cut points sometimes. Overall edits look gorgeous when I do them in TyTool.

"correcting" GOP lengths in Womble (and I guess VideoRedo) is not a full reencode, after all it only takes a few minutes, but it uses matrix changes, as is done in DVDshrink, to turn a P-frame into an I-frame for a new GOP, and changes subsequent B and P frames to follow. So the quality remains the same. Since there are now additional I-frames the size of the file increases by 5 to 15% depending upon how many I-frames are added. I find one problem with redoing the GOP is that on some players the mpeg will freeze or repeat a frame at every new GOP. I try to avoid doing this if I can.

Yes TyTool does a wonderful job of editing, the FAEs are clean and the audio never slips. Sometimes I even use TyTool for "regular" mpegs, though Womble is used more for that, as it is for recalcitrant TyStreams which do go wrong in TyTool.

AMD chip, Quality=1 (the default)
Intel Pentium Chip, quality=2
Intel Conroe C2D, hmm, I wonder if it's better with the AMD setting? I'll have to check that.

[Jetstream]

Hey guys, I've been getting .ty file extraction speeds of 2 to 2.7mbs. Some have reported much slower speeds and I wanted to see how this compares with your results.

[cheer]

Hey guys, I've been getting .ty file extraction speeds of 2 to 2.7mbs. Some have reported much slower speeds and I wanted to see how this compares with your results.

Much faster is possible; check out the soapbox derby thread in the Series 2 forum. I get anywhere from 2.9 to 4.1 MB/sec. Faster still is possible with gige and jumbo frames.

[lrhorer]

Much faster is possible; check out the soapbox derby thread in the Series 2 forum. I get anywhere from 2.9 to 4.1 MB/sec. Faster still is possible with gige and jumbo frames.

I of course have a lowly Series I - although I am waiting with bated breath for the Series III - and 2.7 MBps is about the best I can get, with the average running more like 2.2 MBps. Nick was supposed to develop some turbo drivers for the cachecard, but that effort seems to have evaporated. Nonetheless, the fact I tend to be a perfromance junkie notwithstanding, I really am not concerned about transfer speeds very much because of TyTool's wonderful batch capabilities. I usually wait for a weekend or at least until the TiVo is starting to get "full" with my recordings (as opposed to the autonomously recorded TiVo recommendations) before transferring the content to my hard drive. Then I select maybe a dozen or so videos to transfer and go to bed. Tonight I am going to transfer about 40 Gigs of material to my file server, and I really couldn't care less if it transfers in 8 hours or 8 minutes. Either way, it will be waiting for me tomorrow.