jdobbs softworks - DVD Rebuilder

October 7th, 2007 (v1.26.3)

CHANGES MADE TO VERSION ONLY

Added a REDISTRIBUTION threshold test that limits the amount of low-side deviation allowed in the calculation of redistribution. The default value of .5 limits a bitrate reduction (in redistribution) to half what would have been given in a standard DVD-RB encode. This dramatically reduces the likelihood of getting values that are too low in dark scenes. The threshold can be adjusted via a hidden setting in the OPTIONS area of REBUILDER.INI. The value (REDIST_LOW_THRESHOLD=) must fall in the range of 0 to 1. Any other value results in the default of .5
Added a "hidden" setting called "REDIST_USE_FINAL_Q". If set to 1 (REDIST_USE_FINAL_Q=1) in the "[Options]" area of REBUILDER.INI, a set of prediction passes are run on the main-movie VTS (largest) to determine a Final_Q value that is used for REDISTRIBUTION rather than the standard Base_Q. This will add a little time to the PREPARE phase and some reports have been made of improved quality based upon subjective analysis.
Corrected an error in which pushing the ABORT button could, under certain circumstances, leave an encoder executing in the background until it completes its current task. It might also result in a "Could not clear output..." error if an attempt to restart encoding happens too soon.
Updated "Batch Mode" so that it will, when appropriate, write to blank disc. Note that you must (obviously) change discs between writes in order to write more than one during the batch process.
Added a separator bar to the FILE menu to distinguish the "Shutdown on REBUILD" functions from those related to Batch.
Added code to limit the sample size to 1% when performing REDISTRIBUTE_FINAL_Q analysis. Any more is simply a waste of time. Note this does NOT affect the percentage used for determining REDISTRIBUTION -- only determining FINAL_Q.
Corrected two bugs that were introduced in v1.26.4 (which was released as a beta only).
Other minor and cosmetic changes.

September 4th, 2007 (v1.26.3)

CHANGES MADE TO VERSION ONLY

Fixed an error in which the REDIST_ALL parameter was not being set correctly when selected. In the previous version any change to the setting was not recognized until the next program load.
Added Beta support for command line oriented encodes (e.g. Mencoder or FFMPEG). DVD-RB will call a preconfigured .BAT file that can be setup for the calls. An example .BAT file (for mencoder) is included as an example. In order to use it, you must edit it (it is normally found in the "c:\Program Files\DVD-RB Pro\Encoders" directory) and point ensure the path properly points to MENCODER.EXE. You must also add the line "cmdline=" to the "[Paths]" area of the REBUILDER.INI file. This new option should be considered in Beta test until it has been used more. My encodes (using M encoder) so far tend to be undersize -- but very good quality. Try the "Good (fast)" mode, it gives very good quality and is exceptionally fast. Be careful with "Highest Quality" mode -- it can be slow.
Added an option to the MODE menu in which you can choose to always use HC as the encoder for REDISTRIBUTION. This prevents a rare CCE problem that can happen when high bitrate matrices are in use.
Updated REDISTRIBUTION so that any cell with 500 or fewer frames would redistribute using 100% sample. This prevents lower-than-required bitrates on small segments that have blackness or fade-ins that might undervalue the need.
Moved "Shutdown at REBUILD Completion" and "Close DVD-RB at REBUILD" completion from the MODE menu to the FILE menu. This makes it possible to change the state of these options while DVD-RB is executing.
Corrected a bug in which, under certain circumstances, it is possible to receive a "Runtime Error 53" message during REDISTRIBUTION.
Corrected an minor bug in which bitrates for single frame segments were incorrectly REDISTRIBUTED.
Corrected an error in which attempting to use the "No Compression" encoder option with REDISTRIBUTION enabled could cause DVD-RB to abort with errors (87/13)
Updated the response to errors resulting from a corrupt source (VOBID/CELLID not found errors) so you have the option to continue as opposed to a forced exit. Note however that it is not usually a good idea -- as this is an indicator of a pretty serious corruption in the source IFO/VOB combination.
Other minor and cosmetic changes..

July 7th, 2007 (v1.26.2)

CHANGES MADE TO VERSION ONLY

Added additional routines to the REDISTRIBUTION code that corrects possible undersizing. Now, when a segment has been redistributed too many sectors(making it larger than the original) the size is adjusted and recovered sectors are reallocated to other segments.
Turned off HC VBV and scene detection (except for a 100% setting) during REDISTRIBUTION. This appears to have been slowing down the speed of HC redist on some systems. Also set HC to fast mode during the REDISTRIBUTION pass as it gives the same results.
Updated the REDISTRIBUTION menu options. You can now turn "Redist_All" on or off from the mode menu (formerly hidden).
Added code to perform REDISTRIBUTION for ProCoder and CCE Basic. HC (if installed) will be used for determining the bitrate redistribution pass.
Corrected an bug in which CCE SP2 could encode with the incorrect field order on BFF sources.
Other minor and cosmetic changes.

June 24th, 2007 (v1.26.1)

CHANGES MADE TO VERSION ONLY

Added a hidden setting in which you can instruct DVD-RB to redistribute bits across the entire DVD (including any parts considered to be extras and/or the feature). This can be useful for applying redistribution to episodic or series discs. You can enable the setting by adding "redist_all=1" to the "[Options]" area of REBUILDER.INI.
Updated the redistribution module so it follows the proper rules associated with PEAK_BITRATE
Added direct Luminance Gain adjustment to the HC Settings menu.
Added new code to the OPV prediction routines that should improve further improve Q selection and sizing.
Corrected a bug in which performing redistribution on ILVU sections could result in an error message.
Other minor and cosmetic changes.

June 10th, 2007 (v1.26.0)

CHANGES MADE TO VERSION ONLY

Added a new MODE called "Enable Bitrate Redistribution." It should be considered to be in Beta status (meaning it's there for testing -- bugs are possible). This feature is especially useful on sources that were not optimally encoded (such as CBR or on-the-fly broadcast encoding. It will perform an initial first pass using the OPV feature of CCE SP, HC, QuEnc, or AutoQMatEnc to redistribute bits across all segments using a constant base Q value, before doing the standard encode. This mode may also improve picture quality on sources that use a less than perfect bitrate distribution on the original source. Results of the redistribution can be reviewed by reading "REDISTRIBUTION.TXT" in the D2VAVS directory after PREPARE.
Added a hidden value for adjusting the size of the redistribution pass by setting the option "Redist_Percent=" in the "[Options]" section of the REBUILDER.INI file. The default value is 10.
Corrected a bug related to the implementation of matrices when using OPV and CCE SP2.
Updated several routines to better handle error conditions.
Enhanced the OPV routines to better select Q values under certain specific conditions.
Updated the multiplexing engine to better integrate audio when certain anomalies are encountered.
Fixed a rarely occurring bug related to closed captioning.
Other minor and cosmetic changes..

May 2nd, 2007 (v1.25.0)

CHANGES MADE TO VERSION ONLY

Added additional code to the OPV single pass prediction routines to increase sizing accuracy. This should reduce the probability of over/undersizing in OPV.
Added two more "hidden" options to REBUILDER.INI for adjusting OPV actions related to HC encoding. The values "HC_CQ_BFACTOR=" and "HC_CQ_PFACTOR=" allow you to set the related HC settings for one pass VBR encoding. More information can be obtained in the HC documentation.
Updated the "Close DVD-RB at REBUILD Completion" option in the MODE menu. It is now persistent and the setting will carry-over between sessions.
Added a popup window to show status when DVD-RB scans at startup or after source selection. This is necessary to show progress when encountering an exceptionally large VIDEO_TS.VOB.
Corrected an issue in which, under certain circumstances, when colorimetry changes between two segements, the flag ("c:") in the filter editor might get incorrectly tripped.
Corrected a bug in which under very rare circumstances the last GOP of a cell could be flagged with incorrect colorimetry information.
Updated the Installer to include ECLPRO v1.00 Final, which fixes some "exit" related issues.
Modified colorimetry interpretation so that receiving a "2" (unspecified) as the matrix_coefficient would default to actions for Rec.709.
Added code to clean up the temporary encoder directories that are created for muliple encoder processes.
Updated OPV processing to allow an alternate matrix. Now OPV will use the specified as "Main Feature Matrix." In OPV the matrix will not change based upon bitrate -- as it is necessary for predictions to be made using a single matrix and quantizer/Q value.
Added HC v0.21 to the standard installation package. This corrects a rare "hang" issue and can now encode slightly faster in BEST mode. Also added support for the new luminance gain (LUMGAIN) parameter. You can now set the value using "HC_LUMGAIN=" in the REBUILDER.INI file.
Other minor and cosmetic changes.

April 10th, 2007 (v1.24.0)

CHANGES MADE TO VERSION ONLY

Added an additional filter prefix "C:". If the "C:" is present as a prefix in the filter line, the line will be added only when the colorimetry of any part of the original source is anything other than Rec.709.
Added an additional "M:" filter prefix. If the "M:" is present the filter line will only be added for segments associated with a menu.
Changed algorithm so that filters are now also applied to menus. Please note, though, that filters using the "E:" or "F:" prefix will (naturally) not be applied to menus.
Added a new hidden option. Now you can add additional parameters to all MPEG2SOURCE() entries in the AVS files by adding a "MPEG2SOURCE_OPTS=" to the "[Options]" area of REBUILDER.INI. For example:
MPEG2SOURCE_OPTS=info=3
This entry will tell the option to output hints that might, for example, be used by the ColorMatrix() filter.
Updated Q prediction routines (OPV) to prevent an odd condition in which the Q value may jump strangely causing a need for additional prediction passes.
Other minor and cosmetic changes.

March 31st, 2007 (v1.23.3)

CHANGES MADE TO VERSION ONLY

Optimized code to reduce the startup scanning time on discs that have large numbers of VTSs.
Fixed a bug that could cause "Runtime Error 55" on a small number of sources that contained unreferenced material.
Corrected a bug in which setting or resetting the "Menu Encoding" option did not refresh the Selection Settings. As a result, a "Runtime Error 9" could occur under certain circumstances.
Updated error handling routines, making them more robust.
Other minor and cosmetic changes.

March 25th, 2007 (v1.23.2)

CHANGES MADE TO VERSION ONLY

Added code to further enhance unreferenced VTS removal. This should correct remaining problems with certain types of source oddities.
Corrected a condition in which creation of ISO images may fail when unreferenced material was removed.
Corrected a bug in which, under certain circumstances on oddly formatted discs, titles be executed incorrectly.
Note: The new unreferenced removal routines can be disabled by adding "DISABLE_COMMAND_REFERENCE_CHECK=1" to the "[Options]" area of REBUILDER.INI.
Corrected a bug in which some VTSs may not show as referenced when the reference was in VIDEO_TS.VOB.
Other minor and cosmetic changes.

March 17th, 2007 (v1.23.1)

CHANGES MADE TO VERSION ONLY

Corrected a bug in which a few certain oddly formatted source discs could cause "...ISO Write Error" and"... ISO Image was NOT successfully created" errors. The output IFO files could be corrupted. Note: this error would result in no files being written to disc -- so it is unlikely a "bad disc" could be created.
Added code to check and correct VIDEO_TS.IFO files that incorrectly count/list unreferenced title sets.
Added code to make DVD-RB accept certain sources that are output by AnyDVD without a need for preprocessing with 3rd party packages.
Corrected an error in which the "CCE SP" option under "SETTINGS/CCE SETTINGS" can be incorrectly checked during the encode phase. This can, under certain circumstances, cause an error related to "incorrect ECL file format".
Added routines to look at source structure and adapt to inconsistencies.
Other minor and cosmetic changes.

February 24th, 2007 (v1.22)

CHANGES MADE TO VERSION ONLY

Improved program robustness in several areas, it now recognizes more oddities in the source and compensates to reduce likelihood of output glitches.
Added detection and auto configuration for multiple core processing.
Now the "Multiple Encoder Processes" setting is automatically set to match the number of processors at startup or when clicking on the "Multiple Encoder Processes" option.
If you only have one processor and select the option, DVD-RB will assume a "fast" system and will set the process count to 2. You can, however, manually override the setting by changing the "Encode_Processes=" parameter in REBUILDER.INI (for instance if you want to use only 2 processors for encoding on a 4 processor system).
Made the new style editor the default.
Updated code to make DVD-RB less likely to run into security issue when running under Windows Vista.
Added an "Auto" setting to the MOBILE settings dialog for "GOP Size" -- this will let FFMPEG decide the size.
Added parameters to hold constant Q when used with H264 for MOBILE encoding. The parameter wasn't being honored with previous versins. Constant Q is enabled by entering a video bitrate of less than 32 (interpreted to be a Q value).
Corrected "Runtime Error 461" that can occur when attempting to drag entries in the "Batch" list box.
Changed the way in which rate control parameters are passed to FFMPEG when doing MOBILE encoding.
Corrected "Error attempting to close DVD" that occured when MOBILE encoding attempted on a source that wasn't PREPARED with MOBILE options.
Faster HC encoding speed (especially SSE2 supporting processors). Updated the installer to include HC Encoder v0.20
Improved rate control on QuEnc. Updated the installer to include QuEnc v0.72
Other minor and cosmetic changes.

January 20th, 2007 (v1.21)

CHANGES MADE TO VERSION ONLY

Made several improvements to the authoring engine that should improve accuracy and hold more robustly to standards when sources have oddities detected.
Per request from several users, modified the browsing routines for source, working, and destination paths so that browsing starts at the last selected (legal) path.
Updated the IMGBURN calling routine for direct disc writes to explicitly specify the type of file system.
Corrected a bug in which, under certain circumstances the NAVPACK of a still menu may not be updated with the correct "End PTM of VOBU if Sequence_End_Code" value. This could result in odd behaviour and/or response to menu items on some players. Many thanks to Geekman and Zeul for some great support in capturing this very elusive bug. Thanks also to abysas, kbello, Geekman, and Sharc for assisting in testing.
Corrected a bug in which the ISO burning options may not save/load correctly from project files.
Other minor and cosmetic changes.

January 6th, 2007 (v1.20.5)

CHANGES MADE TO VERSION ONLY

Added a menu item to the "Mode" menu for selecting the audio stream desired for MOBILE encoding.
Added code to accept non-AC3 audio sources as selections using the "Substream=" command. They can also now be selected from the "Mobile Audio Source" menu item. This feature should be used with the understanding that the new formats (LPCM, MPA, and DTS) are in beta status.
Added code to recognize out-of-sequence playback in a PGC during MOBILE encoding and correct audio. This should prevent out-of-sync playback on certain titles.
Optimized routines used for MOBILE audio extraction during the PREPARE phase. This should improve PREPARE speed slightly when MOBILE is selected.
Corrected an error in MOBILE encoding in which the second pass of XviD encodings (when selected) was not being properly executed.
Added a PRESET parameter to the MOBILE.INI file. Now those familiar with FFMPEG can pass additional command line parameters to the encode with "cmdline=".
Added a PRESET parameter to the MOBILE.INI file. The "ConvertFPS=" setting will convert the framerate to that specified. Note that this can result in some degradation in the fluidity of the picture.
Added several more parameters to the custom settings listboxes for MOBILE encoding.
Corrected a calculation in resizing (for aspect ratio) during MOBILE encoding might result in a "Not a multiple of 4" AVISYNTH error message.
Corrected an issue in MOBILE encoding in which odd RFF patterns (resulting from hybrid sources) might cause a frame to be lost between segments.
Corrected a "testing" issue in which the second pass for MOBILE encodes was never executed when "FrameLimit=" was set in the REBUILDER.INI file.
Modified the MOBILE code so that the output path is not cleared before writing. This now makes it possible to use the same output path for more than one encode.
Other minor and cosmetic changes.

December 2nd, 2006 (v1.20.4)

CHANGES MADE TO VERSION ONLY

Added support for writing several new output formats. Generally for MOBILE encoding (such as iPod), DVD-RB can now output MP4, AVI, and other video and audio formats. A new "MOBILE (iPod) Output" option can now be set under the "Mode" menu. Currently DVD-RB Pro uses FFMPEG (included in the installer) to create the output using XviD, H264, and a large spectrum of other possible video/audio formats (via FFMPEG). FFMPEG is a fast and powerful video format encoder that is provided under the GNU Public License Agreement. Read the file "License.txt" for more information. Support for other encoders may be included in future versions. (v1.20.0)
Added a new feature for prefix recognition to the filter processor. These are meant to help descriminate on the usage of filters. Now you can add "E:", "F:", "I:", or "P:" as a prefix to a line added in the filter editor. The prefixes represent "Extras", "Feature", "Interlaced", and "Progressive" respectively. When specified, the prefix will limit that filter to usage only when the source to be encoded matches the prefix. For example, if specifying "E:filter1()" the filter "filter1()" would only be applied to segments that are determined to be extras. Setting "e:i:filter2()" limits use of "filter2()" to segments that are extras -- and are also interlaced. (v1.20.4)
Added text to the LOG that identifies the source being processed (v1.20.4)
Implemented code to save the summary line from PREPARE to the INF file. In prior versions the summary at the end of a batch encode set could be incorrectly reported when the PREPARE phase was skipped during batch. (v1.20.4)
Corrected an error in which the incorrect PRESET may be used when selecting "Custom" from the MOBILE encoding dialog. (v1.20.4)
Corrected a problem in rate control buffer sizing for MOBILE encoding. This may have caused "jerking" or other odd behaviour during playback. (v1.20.3)
Inhibited the "Already Small Enough" message when MOBILE encoding is the only thing being done. (v1.20.3)
Added a setting in the REBUILDER.INI file for setting the minimum PGC size when doing MOBILE encodes. This sets the minimum size (in frames) for a PGC to be encoded. This new "hidden" setting is called "PGC_Minimum_Frames=" and it can be added to the "[Mobile]" section. The default value (if none is set) is 22500. This comes out to about 12.5 minutes on NTSC and 15 minutes on PAL. (v1.20.3)
Corrected an issue in which the "Custom" settings under the MOBILE dialog were not being properly used at encode time. (v1.20.3)
Fixed an error in which BATCH encoding was not correctly applying selected PRESET to MOBILE encodes as they were saved in project files. Instead the "last selected preset" was being applied. (v1.20.3)
Corrected an error that would cause AVISYNTH errors in countries that use the "," as a decimal. (v1.20.2)
Added specification for the audio output format to the MOBILE settings dialog (v1.20.1)
Fixed a bug where no default PRESET was being selected the first time entering the MOBILE dialog. (v1.20.1)
Corrected a processing problem during the PREPARE phase for "Movie-Only" encodes. The problem could cause PREPARE to take significantly more time than is necessary. (v1.20.0)
Added code to test and correct for corrupt streams in which garbage are at the start of a cell, and are followed by the orphaned remains of a GOP. This condition has been seen to cause incorrect writes of frame flags and the error condition "Corrupt Stream Detected" during REBUILD. (v1.20.0)
Made adjustments to the sizing algorithm in order to prevent oversizing on oddly formatted DVDs that have huge numbers of very small segments. (v1.20.0)
Corrected a bug in which ILVU segments might receive a lessor bitrate than they should based upon the analysis.
Updated the calling/checking mechanisms used to invoke encoders. This should make the processing more robust as well as (slightly) improve encode times. (v1.20.0)
Made several changes to the way the PREPARE phase records information. (v1.20.0)
Other minor and cosmetic changes.

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