Encoding cuts of first 0.5-1.5 seconds

[TM2-Megatron]

I've gone through a couple e-mails with the Slysoft tech support team about this a few weeks ago, but haven't heard back about my most recent reply in a bit... so now that these forums are open and Slysoft representatives post here I figured I'd try here; perhaps also see if anyone else has experienced this.

Basically, the problem is this: I'm encoding files for my iPod video (late 2006 model), or what CloneDVD mobile refers to as "5. gen (hires)". Originally, I was encoding the videos at the highest resolution (generally 640xsomething, depending on the original video's aspect ratio) and with the highest quality setting. I'm running the most recent versions of AnyDVD and CloneDVD mobile. I've tried encoding the video through various methods... straight from the original DVD... ripped to the hard drive, alternatively with CloneDVD and DVDShrink and then encoded... and every time, I had the same issue.

Essentially, the encoding seems to cut off the first 0.5-1.5 seconds of the video... I haven't measured it precisely. I'm not even sure whether or not it occurs on every video that I encode, since some of them begin with enough of a black lead-in to make it impossible to tell. Also, sometimes when it does this and the video begins on an actual frame instead of just black, the first frame or two (literally only the very first frame or two) of the video has a slight pixelation which then immediately vanishes and the video plays normally.

The real kicker is that I've since tried the same tests on my grandfather's computer (a newer system than mine), and the same thing occurs... so it's hard for me to believe it's an isolated problem with my system alone. I've also done a clean windows install in the time since first noticing the issue, and took advantage of that to re-test... and it still occurs.

The last e-mail from Slysoft asked me to try encoding the videos with lower quality settings, which I did, and it still occured. I replied back to tell them this, but haven't heard back in about a week; so I decided to try here. Some of the titles I've noticed it on so far have been:

"Jack-Jack Attack" (from 'The Incredibles' 2-disc set, region 1)
"Crazy" music video (from Deluxe Ed. of 'St. Elsewhere' album)
"Luxo Jr." (from 'Toy Story 2', region 1)

As I've said, it may occur on everything and just be difficult to detect on many. I'm also not sure whether or not it occurs when encoding in other formats, for other types of devices than the iPod. Also, around half a second (or even a full second) isn't the kind of thing everyone would notice. However, it does seem to be happening. I'm hoping others will be able to post here if they've noticed this as well (or noticed it after reading this post). And perhaps Slysoft can come up with some kind of resolution.

[Scarpad]

Happens to me as well I do alot of TV DVD's and if the episodes star faitly quickly you'll get what appears to be a frozen pixelly frame and then the show starts. It does'nt happen on all encodes, but most of them.

[TM2-Megatron]

It's good to know that I'm not the only person having this trouble, and that I'm not just going crazy.

I hope someone from Slysoft has noticed this thread, and put this issue on the agenda to be dealt with.

[Matt]

Happens to me as well I do alot of TV DVD's and if the episodes star faitly quickly you'll get what appears to be a frozen pixelly frame and then the show starts.Snap, I get that too.

[pawtracks]

I see this same issue:

Working right now on converting my season 1 Prison Break from DVD to iPod.
-Ripped each episode using AnyDVD 6.1.1.4 & DVD Shrink to a folder (Video_TS)
-If I play the ripped episode it shows 100% of the file (just like on the DVD)

When I shrink the file for my iPod using CloneDVD mobile it cuts off the first second (maybe even more) of each file

Dvd file is nice looking, starts with a black screen
CloneDVD mobile just jumps right in to a blurry image :mad:
Hopefully this issue can be addressed.

If the developer needs more data, please let us know how we can help.

[leigh]

I do get that too..I have nothing worry about it

[TM2-Megatron]

This is a pretty good result so far... if all of us have noticed this, the odds are the issue exists on most (if not all) systems, but most people simply haven't noticed it.

Could anyone from Slysoft possibly post in this thread, and say whether there's been some investigation into this problem; or plans to look into it in the near future?

[pawtracks]

I posted a tech support question about this last week and I DID get an email response from someone. He asked me what quality settings I was using. Before I responded I tried encoding the same original file 3 times using 3 different quality settings on 2 different computers.

It didn't matter, all three cut off the same amount from the front end of the file.

No other response from anyone yet. No official acknowledgement that the bug exists (from our posts here I would say it definitely does)

I'm sure they are busy working on ANYDVD HD.
Hopefully we will see some fixes soon 8)

[gianluca]

I see this problem as well.
I use all the default quality settings, and the first 1/2 sec, or so, gets chopped off, and the first frame is always a badly pixellated.
-Gianluca.

[TM2-Megatron]

Hopefully someone from Slysoft will post in here eventually, to at least let us know the issue is being looked into... perhaps after they're finished perfecting AnyDVD HD.

It's good to know it isn't just a problem isolated to my own videos, though.

[gianluca]

Hmmmm... The more I look at this problem the more I think this is a bug in a the 3rd party software encoder (called mencoder.exe) that us ysed by CloneDVD Mobile, so I suspect this may take quite a while longer to fix.
Just a thought.

[TM2-Megatron]

Hmmmm... The more I look at this problem the more I think this is a bug in a the 3rd party software encoder (called mencoder.exe) that us ysed by CloneDVD Mobile, so I suspect this may take quite a while longer to fix.
Just a thought.

That's definately a possibility, and in that case I'm not sure how it would ever be resolved. I suppose the developers of mencoder (the guys who do MPlayer, I think) would have to be the ones to fix the issue. It's odd that it hasn't been noticed before, though.

[gianluca]

I'm resurrecting this thread to show just how old this problem is.
Is there anyone from SlySoft that posts on these forums and can give us an answer?
Thank you,
-Gianluca.

[TM2-Megatron]

Yes indeed. It's unfortunate that this is still an issue. Of all SlySoft's products, CloneDVD mobile is the most neglected; and the only example of somewhat lacking customer support on their part.

I can understand why it wouldn't be a priority at the moment, with the new AACS key almost totally cracked, and BD+ on the horizen. However it's been a pretty long time since I first made this post. It would be nice if someone from Slysoft could post in here and let us know of any possible future updates to address this issue, as well as adding things like H.264 support for iPods and profiles for the newest iPod line.

[Webslinger]

Slysoft representatives do not read every single thread on the forums.

Perhaps you should send Slysoft another email and ask for an update to your question.

Unfortunately, while I bought Clonedvd mobile, it's a program I rarely use, as I do not enjoy watching movies on portable devices (I suppose my 17" widescreen laptop is one exception, but that doesn't really qualify). I apologize for not being able to assist further.

[gianluca]

I sent a message to SlySoft last week.
A tech support person answered and asked me for specific log file, which I provided to them. I haven't got an answer back yet.
I'll let you know what happens.

Funny thing is that he asked me for an AnyDVD log file, and not a CloneDVDmobile log file.

[gianluca]

Got this reply from SlySoft tech support:
Sorry, we cannot reproduce the described software behaviour in our test
department with any of our movies. The movie is recognized correctly by
AnyDVD. Maybe there is an issue with you itunes while transporting the movie
to the ipod.
Best regards,
SlySoft Support
And this was my reply to them:
I am playing these MPEG4 files on my computer with QuickTime before they get loaded onto my iPod.
I have posted a small MPEG4 (3.5MB) here, here, please take a look:
http://www.gianluca.net/mtm.mp4
You can see how the first frame is highly pixellated and the first second is cut off.
I have tried this using three different DVD drives.
Please don't tell me this is my problem, because there are other people with this
same issue in your forums; you can read here:
http://forum.slysoft.com/showthread.php?t=979

And then this additional reply (always from me to them):
I have one more piece of information for you: if I re-encode the output (to any format) then I have the problem I've described to you; but if I output to a VOB file (the passthrough option) then the output VOB is perfect, with nothing truncated from the beginning and no pixellated frame.
This probably isolates the fact that the encoding is messing up the video and probably excludes AnyDVD as well.
Thanks;
I'll keep you posted on what happens.

[TM2-Megatron]

I never got anywhere when I was communicating with Slysoft about this issue back before I even started this thread... CloneDVD mobile seems to be the poor cousin of Slysoft's products, lol.

And yeah, I never believed this problem to be caused by AnyDVD. When I first encountered the issue, I tested it in various ways. One involved ripping the desired VOB to my HD using DVDShrink (w/ AnyDVD disabled from the beginning), and encoding with CloneDVD mobile from there... and the problem persisted.

If the issue is with the encoding, then, there might not be much Slysoft can do other than to completely rebuild the program around a different encoder. Currently, I believe it uses mencoder, which is your basic free command line thing released under the GNU General Public License. I suppose, though, if mencoder had such a serious flaw, there'd be complaints among users of the many other programs that use implementations of it as well. Since that's clearly not happening, perhaps there's something quirky in the specific way it's implemented in CloneDVD mobile. Or maybe the issue has been resolved in a later version of mencoder that has yet to be incorporated into CloneDVD mobile.

Whatever the issue, clearly more work on this has to be done. As I've said before, I wish someone from Slysoft like Peer or somebody would post in this topic, and perhaps try to communicate with the people supposed to be working on this in person; because our e-mails clearly aren't making an impression.

[Webslinger]

As I've said before, I wish someone from Slysoft like Peer or somebody would post in this topic, and perhaps try to communicate with the people supposed to be working on this in person; because our e-mails clearly aren't making an impression.

I am sympathetic to your complaints, and I wish there were something I could do to help. But unfortunately, I'm not a developer (nor do I work for the Slysoft support team). There's not much I can do. I'm just a mod.

[gianluca]

:) I've run a few tests and I discovered more information, which I passed to SlySoft's support. Let's see if it helps them fixing this bug.
Here's the latest message I sent:
I have even more information for you.
I am a computer programmer and I could not sit still anymore, so I started looking at mencoder.exe to see if it's the link in the chain that's causing the trouble I have.
I noticed that CloneDVDmobile passes the video and audio data to mencoder through the stanrard-in (stdin). So I created a VOB file using the VOB passthgourh method, end I've encoded it with mencoder to MPEG4, and I was glad to see that it was encoded correctly without cutting off anything at the beginning.
So I think the developers in your team should look at the data they pass to mencoder via the stdin, because they're truncating something at the beginning.
I hope my message is clear, but I'm sure it will be clear to the developers of CloneDVDmobile.
Thanks

[Peer]

I have even more information for you.
I am a computer programmer and I could not sit still anymore, so I started looking at mencoder.exe to see if it's the link in the chain that's causing the trouble I have.
I noticed that CloneDVDmobile passes the video and audio data to mencoder through the stanrard-in (stdin). So I created a VOB file using the VOB passthgourh method, end I've encoded it with mencoder to MPEG4, and I was glad to see that it was encoded correctly without cutting off anything at the beginning.
So I think the developers in your team should look at the data they pass to mencoder via the stdin, because they're truncating something at the beginning.


Well, thanks for testing that. But, nope, CloneDVD mobile doesn't truncate anything.
Actually when you generate a VOB (passthrough) file, CloneDVD mobile simply sends the exact same data it would pipe into mencoder into a file. That's the only difference. So when you're looking at the VOB file, you see precisely the same data that mencoder receives.

So it's a bug in the way mencoder handles input from stdin. My guess is that you'll get the same result if you stream the VOB file into mencoder from the cmdline.

I'm aware of this "problem" - honestly, I find it difficult to see it as such, after all it is hard to find source material, where cutting off the first second results in anything more than 2 seconds of blackness instead of 3. And even in the other cases, like when I'm transcoding a specific chapter, I'd hardly call it a show stopper to miss a second from the beginning.

Nevertheless, I'll keep trying, but it is extremely hard to induce changes in mencoder. The developers have their own priorities.

[gianluca]

Hi Peer. Thank you for your reply!
I tried encoding the VOB with mencoder from the command line using the same parameters that CloneDVDmobile uses, and I that produced a file with no truncation.
Here it is: http://www.gianluca.net/mtm_cmdline.mp4
And here's the one with the first frames truncated: http://www.gianluca.net/mtm.mp4
I'm not saying that this proves anything, but I had done this test before you posted your message on this forum and I wanted to let you know.

I also want to let you know about one more test I did: I ripped and encoded that same chapter using mencoder. As you probably know mencoder can read straight from the DVD drive, so I selected that the drive/title/chapter and the encoded it with the same parameters from the command line, and the output MPEG4 was correct. Nothing was truncated. It’s interesting to see that mencoder does not truncate when reading directly from the source and encode to the same type of destination. Of course I understand that this does not pass data through stdin, but it’s interesting nonetheless.

I know I should not be telling you what do to, but as a fellow programmer I feel compelled to say that I would be willing to invest and order the DVD that causes this ("The Mary Tyler Moore Show" Season 4 – NTSC ) and run a tests with it. This is just my opinion.
The DVD is $14.99 USD + taxes and shipping on Amazon.com:
http://www.amazon.com/Mary-Tyler-Moore-Show-Complete/dp/B000EXDS02/ref=pd_bbs_sr_2/103-3818649-1732615

I know this is a minor problem to you, but it’s not minor to me. I ask you to respect my opinion regarding this point. If you then decide not to fix this because of time/resources reason, then it’s a different story and I’ll look somewhere else for the solution to my problem. Id rather be told you don’t have time than hear you say you don’t think my problem is important enough.

Thank you in advance for all the time and work you’re willing to spend on this.

-Gianluca.

[Peer]

Hi Peer. Thank you for your reply!
I tried encoding the VOB with mencoder from the command line using the same parameters that CloneDVDmobile uses, and I that produced a file with no truncation.
Here it is: http://www.gianluca.net/mtm_cmdline.mp4
And here's the one with the first frames truncated: http://www.gianluca.net/mtm.mp4
I'm not saying that this proves anything, but I had done this test before you posted your message on this forum and I wanted to let you know.

No proving required. I know that I can reproduce this effect with a variety of discs. But it is clearly a problem with mencoder and I have very limited possibilities to go ahead and solve it - I will file a report to the mencoder development team.
You can stream the VOB file into mencoder using the pipe symbol and using '-' (dash) as input file. This should simulate what CloneDVD mobile is doing.
Then, I'm pretty sure, you'll get the same missing second - without CloneDVD mobile involved. I didn't yet have the time to try this myself but I will as soon as I hit the office again and find the time...

I know this is a minor problem to you, but it’s not minor to me. I ask you to respect my opinion regarding this point. If you then decide not to fix this because of time/resources reason, then it’s a different story and I’ll look somewhere else for the solution to my problem. Id rather be told you don’t have time than hear you say you don’t think my problem is important enough.


I'm one of those unfortunate people who grew up with only two eyes and two hands (please don't pity me, I've learned to deal with it :) ).
But seriously: I understand it may sound harsh if I tell you that I consider that problem a - very - minor one (in terms of collective pain it causes to our overall customer base). But I have a huge list of problems to solve and I need to prioritize.
So mencoder cutting off a second is certainly not a top priority, but rest assured, it is on the list. You're just unlucky, that it most certainly (I'm leaving some room for doubt here) is a bug in mencoder.

[Peer]

Ok, just for the record:

type xy.vob | mencoder - -oac mp3lame -ovc xvid -xvidencopts bitrate=1000
-o xy.avishows the same result. So it's really mencoder.