majorsilence

Adding movie files to a title

To add a new file you have two options: first, you can drag and drop one or more files into the main window, so DeVeDe will give them some fine default values; or you can choose the "Add" button, so you will see this window:

First you choose the file you want to add (you can do it by drag and drop in this window too). After doing it, you can see its properties at the File info block. You can then choose the format (PAL or NTSC) and, if the movie has more than one audio track (like several languages), you can choose which one you want to use.

Maybe you ask why is here another PAL/NTSC option, when we already have chosen it in the main window.
The answer is: because this way you can create hybrid DVDs, with some films in PAL/SECAM format and others in NTSC. What is the utility of this? Simply: modern TV sets and DVD players can play both formats, so if you manually choose the one that fits better the original framerate of the file, you will have an smoother video. This is: if the original file has 25 fps, select PAL, and if it has 24 or 30 fps, select NTSC (the telecine option seems to work better with NTSC). Of course you can force one of them and DeVeDe will adjust the framerate to 25 or 30 fps, ensuring that the DVD will have the right framerate and will play fine in all TV sets, but maybe the motion won't be not as smooth as it could be.

If you are creating a VCD, sVCD or CVD, you can choose if you want to put the whole file, or only the first or the second half. This is specially useful when creating VCDs: you can cut a long film in two disks if it's too long to fit in a single disk. But if the length of the film is less than 60 seconds, you won't be able to choose them.

Remember that this option is applied to each file, so if you put two files in a xCD and choose in both the first half, you will have a xCD with the first half of the first file followed by the first half of the second file.

Finally, you can add up to 32 subtitle files, each one with one language. You can use the Add button or just drag&drop a file with subtitles (DeVeDe will check if the extension is .sub, .srt, .ssa, .smi, .txt, .aqt, .jss or .ass). These will be true DVD subtitles, in the sense that you can enable or disable them, and choose the language you want. When you do that, DeVeDe will show you this window:

In File you can choose the file with the subtitles. If you are using subtitle files coded with a codepage different than ISO-8859-1 (or pure ASCII) you will have to choose the right Codepage (UTF-8 is twice in the list to make it easier to find).

You must choose the language too. This allows the DVD player to show the language code when you enable
the subtitles.

Finally, the option "Put subtitles upper" makes DeVeDe to render the subtitles a little upper that normally.
This is fine when you have a 16:9 film in 3:4 format (with black bars up and down) and want to use the ZOOM option in your TV without loosing the subtitles, or when your TV is old and misses too many lines in bottom and cuts the ordinary subtitles.

Have in mind that if you preview a video from DeVeDe with subtitles, they will be shown in order to allow
you to ensure that the synchronization is fine (needs MPlayer 1.0rc1 or later, and not always works :( ).

Currently you can't add subtitles when creating DIVX files, so this block will be unavailable in that mode.
But if you put the subtitles in the same directory than your DIVX file, usually the player should show them.
Read the FAQ for details.

There's a Preview button that converts some seconds (you can choose how many), allowing you to check the audio/video quality and the audio sync. It will create the temporary file by default at /var/tmp, but you can choose other place if you prefer.

Finally there's an expansor named Advanced options. If you expand it, you will see that there are six tabs with new options, not needed normally but which can give much more control to advanced users:

In the General tab you can manually adjust the audio and video bitrate, if you are unhappy with
the values assigned by the Adjust disk usage button. You can choose if you want to split each file
in several chapters and its lenght too. This allows to jump forward in the movie and select scenes.

In the Video format tab you can choose the final resolution for this video and the aspect ratio (this is, if you want a classic, or a widescreen video). A bigger resolution will give you sharper pictures, but will need more bitrate to avoid the horrible MPEG artifacs. If you choose Default, DeVeDe will choose automagically the best resolution, based in the original video resolution and the disk format you wanted. For Video DVD, DeVeDe will use resolutions of 352x288 for PAL/SECAM, or 352x240 for NTSC, if the video's resolution is smaller or equal than that. If not, it will jump to 352x480 (NTSC) or 352x576 (PAL) if this way the video fits. If not, it will use 720x576 for PAL/SECAM or 720x480 for NTSC. For VCD, SuperVCD or CVD, DeVeDe will use, as default, the standard resolution of each format. Remember that you should click again the Adjust disk usage button after changing the final resolution, adding or removing subtitles or, in general, after doing any modification in these parameters, in order to assign a good video bit rate to each film.

Have in mind that the DVD standard only allows to create a 16:9 DVD with a width of 720 pixels, so
if you activate this option, DeVeDe will ensure that the final width will be 720. For the same reason, if
you choose a different width, the 16:9 option will be deactivated. This is not true for DivX files.

You can create 16:9 DVDs and DivX, but not 16:9 VCDs, SVCDs or CVDs because the formats don't allow it.

If you are creating a DivX file, you will be able to choose High Definition (1920x1080 and 1280x720) and Mobile Devices (160x128) resolutions too, as you can see in the above picture, but you must do it manually.

In the Video options tab you have:

• Rotation: allows you to rotate the video before converting. Useful when you filmed something with the camera rotated (example: movies filmed with the mobil phone).
• Mirror: allows to flip horizontally or vertically the video.
• Scaling mode: here you can choose the expand method to use when the aspect ratio of the original file is not 4/3. The first method is the preferred, and consists in adding the classic black bars up and down. It has the advantage of maintain the aspect ratio, so the faces will look natural. The alternative method consists in expand the film, so the faces will look enlarged. Of course, if you have a 16:9 TV you can put it to Full Screen, and enjoy a full-resolution panoramic film.

In the Quality tab you have:

• Trellis Searched Quantization: this option makes Mencoder to find the optimal encoding for each 8x8 block, giving more video quality at the cost of a little slower conversion.
• MacroBlock decision algorithm: allows to choose the MBD algorithm, so you can choose to have better quality at the cost of slower conversion.
• Deinterlacing: allows to apply a deinterlace algorithm to the video. Useful when creating a DVD from a TV program or TV camera. You have five different algorithms to choose.

In the Audio tab you will find:

Audio delay: it's used to adjust the audio/video sync, allowing to fix videos with audio out
of sync. You can set positive or negative values.

Create DVD with 5.1 channel sound: checking this will send to MENCODER the parameter -channels 6, so, if the source file has 5.1 sound, it will be preserved. But depending on the Mencoder version, is possible that the audio channels will be misordered.

This file already has AC3 sound: checking this will copy the audio tracks instead of recompressing them. This way, if the source file has a 5.1 sound track, it will be copied "as is", maintaining all the quality and the channel order (of course, if the original movie has 5.1 sound, the converted movie will have it too). If your file has AC3 sound is better to use this option instead of Create DVD with 5.1 channel sound.

In the Misc tab you have:

• This file is already a DVD/xCD-suitable MPEG-PS file option. When active, nearly all options will became insensitive because DeVeDe will not recompress that file, but will use it directly when creating the DVD/xCD structure. This option is useful when you have some already-compressed files (Eg. when you capture a TV signal and store it directly in MPEG2-PS format), because you will not need to wait the conversion time. Of course, you can mix MPEG-PS and non-MPEG-PS files in the same disc, because DeVeDe will recompress the non-MPEG-PS files, and use directly the MPEG-PS ones.
• Use a GOP of 12 frames: if this checkbox is active, DeVeDe will use 12-frame GOPs. Althoug the standard allows for up to 15-frame GOPs for PAL or up to 18-frame GOPs for NTSC, some DVD players dislikes GOPs bigger than 12. If you have problems to play DVDs created with the default option, check this.
• Extra parameters for Mencoder: allows you to add extra parameters to Mencoder, allowing you to add hardcoded subtitles, set picture quality, and much more. Is divided in three parts:
• Main: here you can add "classic" parameters to Mencoder, like -sub (to hard-render
  subtitles in the file). Each parameter is prepended with a dash, and uses blank space as separator. Remember to use '\ ' to put blank spaces. An example: -sub /home/raster/holidays\ at\ galicia.sub will hard render the subtitles from the file "holidays at galicia.sub".
• -VF: allows to add extra sub-parameters in the -vf parameter. Parameters uses comma as separator.
• -LAVCOPTS: allows to add extra sub-parameters in the -lavcopts parameter. Parameters uses colon as separator.