DVD Reauthoring Discussion

SonGokuGT · Post by **SonGokuGT** » Tue Dec 23, 2008 11:39 pm

Hello all,

I wanted to start a thread dedicated to something that I'm interested in learning. That, of course is DVD re-authoring.

I have just acquired the first Spanish Dragon Box Set and wanted to Frankenstein my on discs. I'm looking for guidance and software recommendation as well as opening an open discussion about this for other fans that might want to do the same.

My personal plan:

Video Source
==========
-Spanish Dragon Box

Audio Sources:
==========
-Japanese [Spanish Dragon Box]
-English w/ Japanese BGM [Season Sets]
-Castilian Spanish [Spanish Dragon Box]
-Latin American Spanish [???]

Subtitle Sources:
============
-English [Season Sets]
-Castilian Spanish [Spanish Dragon Box]

So please give pointers, share your own creations/experiences, etc.!

Krycek7o2 · Post by **Krycek7o2** » Wed Dec 24, 2008 1:35 am

The spanish Dragon Box is PAL, isn't it? That will be a problem with synching. I can help you, but you will need a lot of programs.

SonGokuGT · Post by **SonGokuGT** » Wed Dec 24, 2008 1:37 am

Krycek7o2 wrote:The spanish Dragon Box is PAL, isn't it? That will be a problem with synching. I can help you, but you will need a lot of programs.

Yes, it is PAL. So what are we looking at in terms of difficulties along the way?

johnboy1 · Post by **johnboy1** » Wed Dec 24, 2008 1:50 am

Look at the discussions in this forum. I'm sure you'll find your answers. And if not, join and make a topic of your own!

http://originaltrilogy.com/forum/forum. ... /forum/12/

Krycek7o2 · Post by **Krycek7o2** » Wed Dec 24, 2008 2:16 am

SonGokuGT wrote:
Krycek7o2 wrote:The spanish Dragon Box is PAL, isn't it? That will be a problem with synching. I can help you, but you will need a lot of programs.
Yes, it is PAL. So what are we looking at in terms of difficulties along the way?

Not all that difficult , all you have to do is speed-up the audio to NTSC, which is rather easy. Do you have any experience with any type of DVD authoring or the DVD structure? I'd like to know that, so I know how to put terms out for you.

SonGokuGT · Post by **SonGokuGT** » Wed Dec 24, 2008 2:51 am

Krycek7o2 wrote:
SonGokuGT wrote:
Krycek7o2 wrote:The spanish Dragon Box is PAL, isn't it? That will be a problem with synching. I can help you, but you will need a lot of programs.
Yes, it is PAL. So what are we looking at in terms of difficulties along the way?
Not all that difficult , all you have to do is speed-up the audio to NTSC, which is rather easy. Do you have any experience with any type of DVD authoring or the DVD structure? I'd like to know that, so I know how to put terms out for you.

I'm afraid that my knowledge goes only as far as DVD Shrink and CloneDVD2... *sweatdrop*

Acid_Reign · Post by **Acid_Reign** » Wed Dec 24, 2008 3:23 am

Krycek7o2 wrote:Not all that difficult , all you have to do is speed-up the audio to NTSC, which is rather easy. Do you have any experience with any type of DVD authoring or the DVD structure? I'd like to know that, so I know how to put terms out for you.

That’s one way of doing it, but it isn’t always necessary. It really all depends on how the Spanish D.Boxes were originally authored. They could have been hard-telecined to 25fps using the speedup method or soft-telecined to 25fps with pulldown flags to play back at 24fps. It would require an investigation of the source material first before anyone could instruct you on how to do it properly.

You should understand that what you are trying to do is a huge undertaking, and it will get pretty technical. I can tell you right now the FUNi subtitle timings do not directly match up to the JP D.Box without applying offsets at several points. I imagine the same issue will occur with the ES D.Boxes. You’ll also want to create menus for all this stuff. And there’s no guarantee it’ll all fit on one disc; you may need to employ compression.

Not to discourage you or anything, but I figure you deserve fair warning. I myself intend to construct a similar set at some point, when I have all of the sources/time to do it. I will definitely create a tutorial at that time, but until then I can probably give you pointers along the way if you decide to follow through with it.

SonGokuGT · Post by **SonGokuGT** » Wed Dec 24, 2008 3:57 am

Acid_Reign wrote:
Krycek7o2 wrote:Not all that difficult , all you have to do is speed-up the audio to NTSC, which is rather easy. Do you have any experience with any type of DVD authoring or the DVD structure? I'd like to know that, so I know how to put terms out for you.
That’s one way of doing it, but it isn’t always necessary. It really all depends on how the Spanish D.Boxes were originally authored. They could have been hard-telecined to 25fps using the speedup method or soft-telecined to 25fps with pulldown flags to play back at 24fps. It would require an investigation of the source material first before anyone could instruct you on how to do it properly.

You should understand that what you are trying to do is a huge undertaking, and it will get pretty technical. I can tell you right now the FUNi subtitle timings do not directly match up to the JP D.Box without applying offsets at several points. I imagine the same issue will occur with the ES D.Boxes. You’ll also want to create menus for all this stuff. And there’s no guarantee it’ll all fit on one disc; you may need to employ compression.

Not to discourage you or anything, but I figure you deserve fair warning. I myself intend to construct a similar set at some point, when I have all of the sources/time to do it. I will definitely create a tutorial at that time, but until then I can probably give you pointers along the way if you decide to follow through with it.

Wow, that does sound like a lot of work. I'm in the process of getting the series in its multiple incarnations so I can make this. What are you planning on doing with your sets?

Although it's a lot of work I'm very interested in learning how to author DVDs. So yeah... I'll be along for the ride when you decide to do this!

Acid_Reign · Post by **Acid_Reign** » Wed Dec 24, 2008 5:26 am

SonGokuGT wrote:Wow, that does sound like a lot of work. I'm in the process of getting the series in its multiple incarnations so I can make this. What are you planning on doing with your sets?

Although it's a lot of work I'm very interested in learning how to author DVDs. So yeah... I'll be along for the ride when you decide to do this!

I plan to create a Blu-ray compilation disc with the Japanese Dragon Box video, Japanese audio, English Dub audio (both Broadcast and Japanese BGM), as much of the Ocean Dub as I can find (with alternate scene play order to compensate for its edited nature), and Daimao’s subs.

Clearly, very big project, and one I don’t think I’ll complete any time soon, but that’s the ideal. I will probably create a simpler DVD version in the meantime consisting of only the essential elements and build on that as I go. The guide will most likely come along with it. Nice to know you’re along for the ride… it’s definitely a learning process but I think the end result will be worth it. Will also be looking forward to seeing how your version of it comes out!

nwoo_2002 · Post by **nwoo_2002** » Wed Dec 24, 2008 10:25 am

Acid_Reign wrote:
SonGokuGT wrote:Wow, that does sound like a lot of work. I'm in the process of getting the series in its multiple incarnations so I can make this. What are you planning on doing with your sets?

Although it's a lot of work I'm very interested in learning how to author DVDs. So yeah... I'll be along for the ride when you decide to do this!
I plan to create a Blu-ray compilation disc with the Japanese Dragon Box video, Japanese audio, English Dub audio (both Broadcast and Japanese BGM), as much of the Ocean Dub as I can find (with alternate scene play order to compensate for its edited nature), and Daimao’s subs.

Clearly, very big project, and one I don’t think I’ll complete any time soon, but that’s the ideal. I will probably create a simpler DVD version in the meantime consisting of only the essential elements and build on that as I go. The guide will most likely come along with it. Nice to know you’re along for the ride… it’s definitely a learning process but I think the end result will be worth it. Will also be looking forward to seeing how your version of it comes out!

Sounds like a very difficult project. It’s taken me 3 months to combine the Ocean and Funi Dubs to the first 8 Dragon Box 'Z' Movies (with subtitles of course). The biggest stumbling block I found was the audio, Movie 2 took me about 3 hours to sync the two dub tracks to the video.

I can only imagine that with a PAL source you're going to struggle more so, unless you start purchasing the Australian releases maybe. I'm curious as to how you're going to go about this so you might be able to give me some tips.

SonGokuGT · Post by **SonGokuGT** » Wed Dec 24, 2008 4:46 pm

Looks like we all have some great ideas for projects. Acid's idea to put the episodes on Blu-ray is outstanding in my opinion. You can have them at maximum quality and have many episodes with many dubs and subs...

ect5150 · Post by **ect5150** » Wed Dec 24, 2008 5:47 pm

Acid_Reign wrote:You should understand that what you are trying to do is a huge undertaking, and it will get pretty technical. I can tell you right now the FUNi subtitle timings do not directly match up to the JP D.Box without applying offsets at several points. I imagine the same issue will occur with the ES D.Boxes. You’ll also want to create menus for all this stuff. And there’s no guarantee it’ll all fit on one disc; you may need to employ compression.

Not to discourage you or anything, but I figure you deserve fair warning. I myself intend to construct a similar set at some point, when I have all of the sources/time to do it. I will definitely create a tutorial at that time, but until then I can probably give you pointers along the way if you decide to follow through with it.

I've done this myself and I want to reiterate what Acid_Reign has said above. I it was as easy as joining the audio and video from different sources, then several of us would have already done something like this.

What Acid_Reign says about the subtitles will also apply to each audio track. If you can reconstruct all progressive frames from the sources, you shouldn't need to speed up audio (as Krycek7o2 suggests), but you may have to insert time (or silence) due to the sources not being the same (applying offsets to the audio in different spots of the episodes, and calculate by how many milliseconds)

Also, if you truly want to do the, test a single episode in an ogg media or mkv file with all of the audio tracks and subtitles you want. Then learn how to burn it back to a DVD.

EDIT: Because I'm doing a similar project with just the subtitles and the DragonBox singles, I recommend using DBZ episode 120 for the subtitles (from the new season sets). It has a few issues with the subtitles, so if you get it right, you'll know you're handling the ripping of it correctly. Matching it to a different source is probably best handled with one of the movies in my opinion.

SatoSky · Post by **SatoSky** » Wed Dec 24, 2008 5:48 pm

I gave up on DVD's and am leaning towards high quality H.264/AAC rips. I saw what a user, I think it was ect5150, had done and liked the idea a lot. I won't have to be swapping discs in and out of the DVD player. I can just keep them on a HDD and watch them on my computer or stream them to a TV, or when I get one, hook up my PC to a projector and watch the episodes on a big wall.

ect5150 · Post by **ect5150** » Wed Dec 24, 2008 6:04 pm

SatoSky wrote:I gave up on DVD's and am leaning towards high quality H.264/AAC rips. I saw what a user, I think it was ect5150, had done and liked the idea a lot. I won't have to be swapping discs in and out of the DVD player. I can just keep them on a HDD and watch them on my computer or stream them to a TV, or when I get one, hook up my PC to a projector and watch the episodes on a big wall.

That's exactly what I'm doing. Here are two clips of the results I get (YouTube Quality ahead though).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_p2GRQ8piM8&fmt=18

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mzSrAQ_4jVM&fmt=18

And I'm currently using x264 for make the video using the following command line:

Code: Select all

--crf 19 --level 3.1 --min-keyint 1 --ref 8 --no-fast-pskip --bframes 3 --b-adapt 2 --weightb --deblock -3:-4 --subme 9 --psy-rd 1.2:0 --partitions p8x8,b8x8,i4x4,i8x8 --8x8dct --qpmin 1 --ipratio 1.0 --pbratio 1.0 --qcomp 0.7 --me tesa --threads auto --thread-input --progress --no-psnr --no-ssim --output "output" "input" --sar 4320:4739

And use 160 kbits AAC for the audio. Both sources from the DBox singles, and subtitles from the widescreen releases. Warning: Above command line creates HUGE file. But it does keep the video quality in-tact and I am very pleased with the quality on a nice flat screen TV.

Yi Xing Long · Post by **Yi Xing Long** » Sat Jan 03, 2009 1:23 am

For the amount of time and effort that all of that would take, you could learn enough elementary Japanese to understand the episodes in their original audio language.

ect5150 · Post by **ect5150** » Mon Jan 05, 2009 12:13 pm

So I decided to take a shot at resynching the audio tracks with DragonBox video footage. It is tougher than the subtitles, and after trying and playing with 2 or 3 episodes, I think there are a few more issues/problems with it than people realize.

Anyways, here are my results:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F6WBUVMbXOE

Sources: All video is DragonBox
Clip 1 - English Voice - Japanese Audio
Clip 2 - English Voice - English Audio
Clip 3 - Japanese Voice - Japanese Audio

Note: The audio volume is a little inconsistent. This is most likely my fault. Please adjust your speakers.

SonGokuGT · Post by **SonGokuGT** » Mon Jan 05, 2009 3:32 pm

The sync seems perfect to me. Did Cell really say "Holy shit!" in the FUNi subs? Or am I that desensitized that I missed it back in the day?

ect5150 · Post by **ect5150** » Mon Jan 05, 2009 3:57 pm

SonGokuGT wrote:The sync seems perfect to me. Did Cell really say "Holy shit!" in the FUNi subs? Or am I that desensitized that I missed it back in the day?

I think Cell's subtitle for that line is "Holy Sh-" ... but listening to the Japanese, he doesn't stutter, or stop short. I assume its a FUNI edit.

On another note, I may decide to keep the scripts I'm using for resync the audio, so if you have the widescreen releases and the DBox versions, all you would need to do is rip the audio files (possibly video as well) and save the audio produced by the AVISynth script. A new script would need to be made for each ep though.

Acid_Reign · Post by **Acid_Reign** » Mon Jan 05, 2009 4:23 pm

ect5150 wrote:I think Cell's subtitle for that line is "Holy Sh-" ... but listening to the Japanese, he doesn't stutter, or stop short. I assume its a FUNI edit.

Man, would I like to have a list of all the edits FUNi made to the subs. That way I could revert them for my personal reauthors.

On another note, I may decide to keep the scripts I'm using for resync the audio, so if you have the widescreen releases and the DBox versions, all you would need to do is rip the audio files (possibly video as well) and save the audio produced by the AVISynth script. A new script would need to be made for each ep though.

Not with the help batch scripts!

I’ve used them to do just that on several videos. Maybe I can demonstrate later.

I’m curious as to the audio syncing process though, and how it differs from the subtitling.

ect5150 · Post by **ect5150** » Mon Jan 05, 2009 5:10 pm

Acid_Reign wrote:
On another note, I may decide to keep the scripts I'm using for resync the audio, so if you have the widescreen releases and the DBox versions, all you would need to do is rip the audio files (possibly video as well) and save the audio produced by the AVISynth script. A new script would need to be made for each ep though.
Not with the help batch scripts! I’ve used them to do just that on several videos. Maybe I can demonstrate later.

I’m curious as to the audio syncing process though, and how it differs from the subtitling.

What I meant here was each episode has different offsets, each requiring its own tweaking. It's not a 'one-size-fits-all' process.

I've done episodes 160 and 162. 162 wasn't bad at all, but 160 was a pain in the ass. Give me a bit and I'll post the AVISynth scripts I used. Ep 162 is near-perfect, but 160 contains a few places where the audio is technically off by a frame or two. But as I watched it, I couldn't tell the difference.