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.: The Zion DVD Project :. (Released) — Page 16

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I'd say ditch the DTS track, because although it is better than DD, it will still just be a compressed version of the PCM track. If you put the PCM track on there you are getting the best sound possible from the LDs.
Not all DVD players can play DTS tracks, nor can older amplifiers decode it. But even ancient stereos can decode Pro Logic, and DVD players can all play PCM (they must in order to play music CDs).
So it's a choice of a compressed, less compatible DTS track, or a pure, highly compatible PCM track - I know which one I'd go for!
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ALL dvd players can output the DTS bitstream. The question is whether or not the preprocessor or receiver will have decoding capabilities. In the event that it doesn't, the dolby surround track will still be on the disc. That's why I'm putting it on there. On the other hand, I still don't know if the created 5.1 sound will be worth listening to. A side by side comparrison will be the judge of that. If it is, it's not like we're talking about normal 192k 5.1 audio here. A 1536k DTS stream is the lowest form of compression you can get out of a DVD and 10 times the quality of a normal mp3.

My Projects:
[Holiday Special Hybrid DVD v2]
[X0 Project]
[Backstroke of the West DVD]
[ROTS Theatrical DVD]

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Zion, another question or two about your sound approach. I am always intrigued when someone says they are going to capture using one set of discs and use the sound from another because the spectre of sound sync rears its head.

I was lucky in that my capture didn't have an issue. I captured sound and video at the same time and it was always synced up correctly. On the other hand if you start capturing from different source material I can never see how the person can figure it out enough to make it sync beyond looking and listening at it.

In your case, are you going to sync up your base wavs first? then create the different sound streams based on this one copy of sound, or do it by some other means?
When a woman says yes, she means no - when she says maybe, she means no.

http://www.auky37.dsl.pipex.com/falconlogo_web.jpg
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Originally posted by: zion
The question is whether or not the preprocessor or receiver will have decoding capabilities. In the event that it doesn't, the dolby surround track will still be on the disc. That's why I'm putting it on there.


OK, it's just that in a post above you said you would put the DTS OR the PCM track.
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Originally posted by: tellan
Zion, another question or two about your sound approach. I am always intrigued when someone says they are going to capture using one set of discs and use the sound from another because the spectre of sound sync rears its head.

I was lucky in that my capture didn't have an issue. I captured sound and video at the same time and it was always synced up correctly. On the other hand if you start capturing from different source material I can never see how the person can figure it out enough to make it sync beyond looking and listening at it.

In your case, are you going to sync up your base wavs first? then create the different sound streams based on this one copy of sound, or do it by some other means?


What I'll probably end up doing is using the audio from the same source LD's (faces set) since it seems like the sound quality on the '85 mix LD's isn't as good as the THX versions. I probably won't be capturing the audio and video at the same time though, unless I determine that I can't sync them up properly. I'm going to create a master .wav file and make sure that it syncs up correctly to the video before I create the different dvd audio tracks from it.

My Projects:
[Holiday Special Hybrid DVD v2]
[X0 Project]
[Backstroke of the West DVD]
[ROTS Theatrical DVD]

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Are you able to set the capture size? I don't get this problem at all with the Mainconcept program.

<span class=“Italics”>MeBeJedi: Sadly, I believe the prequels are beyond repair.
<span class=“Bold”>JediRandy: They’re certainly beyond any repair you’re capable of making.</span></span>

<span class=“Italics”>MeBeJedi: You aren’t one of us.
<span class=“Bold”>Go-Mer-Tonic: I can’t say I find that very disappointing.</span></span>

<span class=“Italics”>JediRandy: I won’t suck as much as a fan edit.</span>

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I've had very little luck capturing with VirtualVCR. I have a Bt-based Hauppauge card, running the universal WDM drivers. It took some doing, but they work in VDUB using the wdm-vfw wrapper, though only in preview, not overlay, mode. Still you can look at and adjust the cropping this way, and I've never had any missing picture issues. DScaler also has an overscan adjustment under the settings -> video adjustments menu, though I'm not sure if this is a global setting (I only know it doesn't affect virtualdub)
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I think things are a little different with those older bt based cards. The newer conexant ones seem to be a little more compatible with different software. I've had success using a number of different capture programs, including virtualdubmod and virtualvcr. But this issue of the missing video on the sides is a little different it seems.

One con about this MSI card is that the included PVR software doesn't seem to work with Windows XP. I've tried a number of other programs like SageTV and ChrisTV, but to no avail. I don't really care about the TV aspect of the card that much though, and Media Player Classic (believe it or not) actually works well as a video player, so I can still watch TV through my cable box.

So I guess I'm not going to worry too much about my TV software not functioning if I change the capture card drivers.

My Projects:
[Holiday Special Hybrid DVD v2]
[X0 Project]
[Backstroke of the West DVD]
[ROTS Theatrical DVD]

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VirtualDub Sync is what I think will be necessary to get the audio and video to properly sync up.

Problem:
When capturing video with your TV-card and audio with your soundcard simultaneously, after some time audio becomes desyncronized with video. This is because the clock of the soundcard is not syncronized or locked to the framerate of the incoming TV-Signal. Thus the number of audio-samples per frame will change slowly in time. Ok, when adding some timestamps while recording, or using some data framing techniques and e.g. bit stuffing mechanisms, this is no problem anymore, when using these information for playback.
For short sequence capturing, that does not matter because this effect becomes visible only when recording some longer periods (depends on the quality of the soundcard-oscillator and on the oscillator(s) in the tv-broadcast-station or in your VCR).
In order to syncronize audio and video, all capture programs we know (Virtualdub, AVI_IO, etc.) throw away or duplicate frames when audio is behind or in front of video.

Solution:
In order to syncronize audio and video we apply a realtime sample rate conversion to the audio signal and do not throw frames away, anymore. That is, we have some means to permanently measure the time delay between audio and video during the capturing process and e.g. if there are too much audio samples per frame we reduce the number of audio samples in such a way, that there is no audible degradation (in the professional music domain, sample rate conversion is applied when mixing digital audio of different sources, but in a hardware-circuit like the AD1896 from Analog Devices). In order to avoid additional jitter, the measured time delay is feed into a servo loop with a high time constant.
So even when capturing many hours, the number of samples is as specified (e.g. PAL with 25frames per second and 44.1kHz audio sampling frequency, there have to be exactly 44100/25 = 1764 samples per frame).

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but then you have the issue of getting Vdubsync to work in 2000 or XP with its strange vfw workaround because vfw was not designed to work under a 32bit OS environment.

I used vdubsync for mine under windows 98 but I don't think for Zion that is going to be an option.
When a woman says yes, she means no - when she says maybe, she means no.

http://www.auky37.dsl.pipex.com/falconlogo_web.jpg
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Zottig, I just stick the audio in Vegas, and alter the speed (while maintaining pitch) until it matches the video.

<span class=“Italics”>MeBeJedi: Sadly, I believe the prequels are beyond repair.
<span class=“Bold”>JediRandy: They’re certainly beyond any repair you’re capable of making.</span></span>

<span class=“Italics”>MeBeJedi: You aren’t one of us.
<span class=“Bold”>Go-Mer-Tonic: I can’t say I find that very disappointing.</span></span>

<span class=“Italics”>JediRandy: I won’t suck as much as a fan edit.</span>

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Originally posted by: zion
And another thing, my captures still seem to be missing a few pixels of both sides. I was hoping that by installing a new capture card and new drivers this would be fixed, but my new card is doing the same thing. Does anyone have any idea why I might be getting this? I wonder if VirtualVCR is causing this issue somehow?


Your card is a CX23881 based card. Those chips can only capture 688 horizontal pixels. For any capture resolution that you specify over that, the chip will either pad to the desired resolution, or scale the picture. If it is scaling to 720 then the AR will be incorrect, however I believe your card is padding the extra pixels.
You should capture at 688 x 480 and pad to get the desired 720 x 480. The added pixels should not be visible on a TV set anyway due to overscan. Don't worry too much about the lost pixels, as the quality of this chip outweighs the smaller capture window size.

Here is a thread I found that explains it clearly:
http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=81f70e93da02b8f99fc5cf8fbb8bbd52&threadid=73102&highlight=CX23881

If you want to understand the whole issue, start with these doom9 guides:
http://www.doom9.org/index.html?/capture/sizes_newbies.html
http://www.doom9.org/index.html?/capture/sizes_advanced.html
http://www.doom9.org/index.html?/capture/start.html
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Thanks for the reply skeg. I saw that thread earlier today while I was doing a little research on my Cenexant chip. It's true that the CX2388x cards only capture 688 horizontal pixels. However, this is due to clipping on the sides as I found out using a program called Dscaler. With Dscaler, there are a ton of advanced settings you can tweak for your captue card, and among them is the clipping setting. When I uncheck this, the whole 720 pixel resolution can be seen. The major drawback to this is that you can't capture (stabily) with this program.

Another thread I found over at doom9 has a hack that will allow access to those advanced settings and still let me capture with VirtualVCR. Some if what they're talking about is way over my head, but I think I understand how to do it. And as soon as I finish, um, acquiring a visual basic compiler, I should be able to give it a try. I'm excited to see what other things I'll be able to tweak with this.

My Projects:
[Holiday Special Hybrid DVD v2]
[X0 Project]
[Backstroke of the West DVD]
[ROTS Theatrical DVD]

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"Some if what they're talking about is way over my head"

//reads thread

Holy SHIT! Hell yes, it is! I'm happy enough with my third-party drivers, thank you very much. //whew

<span class=“Italics”>MeBeJedi: Sadly, I believe the prequels are beyond repair.
<span class=“Bold”>JediRandy: They’re certainly beyond any repair you’re capable of making.</span></span>

<span class=“Italics”>MeBeJedi: You aren’t one of us.
<span class=“Bold”>Go-Mer-Tonic: I can’t say I find that very disappointing.</span></span>

<span class=“Italics”>JediRandy: I won’t suck as much as a fan edit.</span>

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Originally posted by: zion
And as soon as I finish, um, acquiring a visual basic compiler.


any compiler in particular?

PM me if you still need one

-Darth Simon
Why Anakin really turned to the dark side:
"Anakin, You're father I am" - Yoda
"No. No. That's not true! That's impossible!" - Anakin

0100111001101001011011100110101001100001

*touchy people disclaimer*
some or all of the above comments are partially exaggerated to convey a point, none of the comments are meant as personal attacks on anyone mentioned or reference in the above post
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Wow, I actually figured this out.

Long story short, the code in that thread creates a mini program that allows you to input values for the capture card's advanced settings. The only thing is, the values have to be entered in hexidecimal format. Took me a while to figure that out, but I've got it tweaked so that I'm not clipping off the sides anymore. (yay me)

My Projects:
[Holiday Special Hybrid DVD v2]
[X0 Project]
[Backstroke of the West DVD]
[ROTS Theatrical DVD]

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//group cheer

<span class=“Italics”>MeBeJedi: Sadly, I believe the prequels are beyond repair.
<span class=“Bold”>JediRandy: They’re certainly beyond any repair you’re capable of making.</span></span>

<span class=“Italics”>MeBeJedi: You aren’t one of us.
<span class=“Bold”>Go-Mer-Tonic: I can’t say I find that very disappointing.</span></span>

<span class=“Italics”>JediRandy: I won’t suck as much as a fan edit.</span>

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Originally posted by: tellan
but then you have the issue of getting Vdubsync to work in 2000 or XP with its strange vfw workaround because vfw was not designed to work under a 32bit OS environment.

I used vdubsync for mine under windows 98 but I don't think for Zion that is going to be an option.


I was able to get Vdubsync to work flawlessly in XP, but then again I wasn't using the card Zion is.
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what I meant was, getting vdubsync to capture. in win2k it just wouldn't have it for me. but I've got a new card now that captures with it's own software and I'm going to give virtualvcr a go too.
When a woman says yes, she means no - when she says maybe, she means no.

http://www.auky37.dsl.pipex.com/falconlogo_web.jpg
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Vegas will capture as well.

<span class=“Italics”>MeBeJedi: Sadly, I believe the prequels are beyond repair.
<span class=“Bold”>JediRandy: They’re certainly beyond any repair you’re capable of making.</span></span>

<span class=“Italics”>MeBeJedi: You aren’t one of us.
<span class=“Bold”>Go-Mer-Tonic: I can’t say I find that very disappointing.</span></span>

<span class=“Italics”>JediRandy: I won’t suck as much as a fan edit.</span>

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Time
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Originally posted by: zion
Wow, I actually figured this out.

Long story short, the code in that thread creates a mini program that allows you to input values for the capture card's advanced settings. The only thing is, the values have to be entered in hexidecimal format. Took me a while to figure that out, but I've got it tweaked so that I'm not clipping off the sides anymore. (yay me)


zion would you like to help me out with that program? I also have a CX23881 based card, the Leadtek Winfast TV2000 Expert. The one you had before you got your new one...

I am doing a VHS-rip of "the unauthorised star wars story" and would like to caputre thoose missing pixels so I dont need to resize at all.

Is it possible?

Thanks in advance!
Do, or do not. There is no try.