Maggie's Farm

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This is, alas, a PC-only program.  For Macs, a commenter suggested this little gem.

To start at the beginning, MKV is a very popular format when it comes to posting high-quality TV episodes.  It allows for subtitles and alternate language tracks, something you don't get with standard AVI and MPEG videos.  The weekly 'NCIS' and 'House MD' episodes I download are all in MKV format.  I eventually shuffle these to DVD, three episodes per disc, which takes about two hours of processing per episode and involves seven tools.

VOB files are what you end up with when you rip a DVD to the hard drive, like should you want to clip out a favorite movie scene for your personal collection, or put something online.  They take the same amount of time and number of tools as MKV files if you want to retain the high quality.

The problem is that none of the big video programs will import MKV and VOB files.  MKV, because it's a 'renegade' format (like OGM), and VOBs because they're 'raw' video files without any subcoding and aren't viewed as a regular video format.

As such, we have to jump through all kinds of hoops just to get the MKV and VOB files into a standard format like AVI so that they, in turn, can be loaded into some specialized program like Adobe Flash to make streaming online FLV files, or a DVD authoring program like Sony's DVD Architect.

So it's a major time-consuming pain overridden by the ever-present threat of the audio/video going out of sync because the two tracks have been split apart.

And there are two secondary problems:

1.  Every time you render a video, you lose a little something in quality.  So having to render twice, first into AVI and then into FLV or DVD (MPEG-2), is something we'd ultimately like to avoid, but haven't been able to.  Until now.

2.  It takes over an hour to render a 43-minute (length of a TV show) MKV or VOB to AVI, then another hour in the DVD-maker or another two hours in the ultra-slow Adobe Flash for FLV files.  Plus, there's five minutes here and ten minutes there for the demuxing, frameserving, transcoding, and whatever other small, in-between processes are required.  The amazing AVS Video Encoder will knock the whole project out in about 50 minutes.

The home site is here.  There's a trial demo if you want to test it out.  It'll put a big watermark in the middle of your test, but it'll be enough to tell if it works or not.

Setup

Fire up AVS.  Click on 'Settings'.  Set the 'Thread Priority' to 'Below Normal'.  Like most video rendering programs, this thing sucks up some real CPU power and will make other programs feel sluggish unless the priority is lowered.  (they'll still feel a bit sluggish, just not as much)

Converting To AVI

While AVI is the generic format, raw AVI video is way too huge to deal with, so we need to use a compression tool.  We'll use one of the best and most popular, DivX.

The newer versions of DivX are now commercialware, so we'll use an older, free version.  Download it here.  It's just a Next-Next-Next install.  You can delete the entry it makes in the Start Menu.

Fire up AVS.  Browse to the file to be converted.  Change the output file name and/or folder if you want.

We're first going to set up a 'profile' of settings which we can use again in the future.  In the 'Profile' box, skip all the way down to the last entry, 'Video, Uncompressed'.

Click 'Edit Profile' over to the right.  In the 'Video Codec' box, find the entry for 'DivX'.  Click 'Advanced' next to it.

Over to the left is a big slider that goes from 0 to 6,000.  If this is the final product, set it to 1,000 if the quality of the original isn't very good, 2,000 if it is.  If the video is going to be imported into another program, crank it all the way up.  OK to get back to AVS.

Over to the right are the audio settings.  If this is your final product, set the top box to 'MP3' and the 'Bitrate' box to '160'.  If the file is going to be imported into another program, don't touch a thing.

As far as the 'Frame Size' goes, this depends on what you're doing with the file.  Normally, you wouldn't touch it, but if you're dealing with hi-def stuff with a huge resolution, you'll want to pare it down for computer or web use.  The standard for web vids is 640-wide for the good stuff.  Any wider than that and they may not stream properly.  If you don't know how to adjust the resolution and maintain the aspect ratio, see the Appendix.

Click on 'Save as Profile', enter a name.  OK back to the main program.

Click on 'Convert Now' to begin the process.

Note: If you're dumping the rendered file into another program, want to maintain the highest quality and you have gobs of spare hard drive space, use 'Uncompressed' instead of 'DivX'.  Plan on it gobbling up about 2 gigs per minute of show time.

Converting To FLV

Note: If you want true high-quality FLV renders, see the note on Adobe Flash in the Appendix.  AVS is "okay", but Flash is (unfortunately) the only way to go if you want the best results.

Fire up AVS.  Click on 'To FLV' at the top.

Browse to the file to be converted.  Change the output file name and/or folder if you want.

We're first going to set up a 'profile' of settings which we can use again in the future.  By default, the 'Profile' box should be set to 'FLV - High Quality'.  Click 'Edit Profile' over to the right.

If the quality of the original video isn't very good, leave the 'Bitrate' at 1,200.  If it's a high-quality vid, raise it to 2,500.

Over to the right are the audio settings.  Set the top box to 'MP3' and the 'Bitrate' box to '160'.

As far as the 'Frame Size' goes, it depends on the resolution of the source file.  If it's a small web vid, like a standard 320 x 240, don't touch a thing. If you just want it to display larger on the web page, use the adjustments in the page's player code.  It's better to do that than lose the quality in a render.

If it's larger than 640-wide, you'll need to squeeze it down.  If you don't know how to adjust the resolution and maintain the aspect ratio, see the Appendix.

Click on 'Save as Profile', enter a name.  OK back to the main program.

Click on 'Convert Now' to begin the process.

The 'Edit' Panel

This puppy can do a lot more than just convert formats.  In the 'Edit' area you can crop out parts of the clip, make color and brightness adjustments, and put cute 'transitions' between clips.

Some quick notes:

— To darken or brighten a clip, grab the 'Brightness' icon and d-r-a-g it down to one of the 'Video Effects' timelines and drop it in. You move the general placement of the effect by grabbing it with the mouse, and you adjust the duration by grabbing the ends.

Double-click on it to open the edit panel and play with the slider.  You can test it over to the right.

If the brightness doesn't seem to correct the problem, try the 'Contrast' icon.  You can actually drag it to the second 'Video Effects' timeline and use them both.  Also try the 'Gamma' icon.

If the clip's a little blurry, try the 'Sharpen' effect.  There are lots of interesting ones to check out.

— To insert a transition between clips, grab the icon and drag it down to the 'Effects' bar.  Grab the right side and squeeze it down until it's about 2 seconds long.  Slide it between the two clips.  Click on the top of the timeline just before it starts, then hit the 'Play' button in the player to test it out.  If you're dealing with long clips, click on the 'magnify' button on the far left until the timeline numbers are about a second apart.

— To crop out a piece, use the 'Trim Start' and 'Trim End' buttons to mark off the parts you don't want.  What's left is what will be rendered.  Use the main slide gadget in the player to get near, then the left and right arrow keys to zero in on the exact frame.

— By clicking on the 'Audio Effects' tab, you can raise or lower the volume, fade it in or out, and some other tricks.

— If you want to save the audio track by itself or break a clip down into pictures, use the buttons on the lower-left.

Getting Vids DVD-Ready

First off, Sony's DVD Architect is my personal DVD authoring program of choice.  It's been discontinued and, at $39, is a real steal.  Highly recommended.

DVD-makers will import all of the standard formats, but probably not MKV, FLV, SWF, OGM, and a few others.  For those, we use AVS to get them DVD-compliant so the menuing program won't take any longer than necessary.  And the rendering algorithms used by dedicated conversion programs like AVS are almost always better than some do-all, end-all, DVD authoring program, so we'd just as soon use it for the rendering, regardless.

Load the file.  Click on 'To MPEG' at the top.  The proper preset will already be in place.  Hit 'Convert' and that does it.

That'll save the video part of the file with complete DVD compliancy so the DVD-making program won't have to do anything except convert the audio track.

Note 1: If the aspect ratio of the rendered video looks fine, but it's too tall when it comes out of the DVD-making program (the black borders at the top and bottom are narrower than they should be), go into 'Advanced', select 'Custom' and try lowering the second number until it looks right in the preview box and make another test.  You might actually have to lower it in the preview box past the correct point in order for the aspect ratio to be correct in the final DVD.

Note 2: DVD-compliant MPEG-2 videos sometimes play a little sluggishly on the computer, but will look fine after the DVD authoring program gets finished with them.

Note 3: Another terrific feature AVS offers is the ability — with a little outside help — to put four 1-hour TV episodes on a disc, rather than the three that our usual routine gives us.  See the Appendix for details.

Batch Encoding

If you want to join files, just load them up and hit the 'Convert' button.  If you want to do individual jobs, click on the 'Advanced' button and select 'Split', 'Batch Mode'.

You'll notice that it doesn't let you put in a file name for each converted file, it just renames them with the new file extension.  It prefers an empty folder so there's no confusion when it comes to overwriting existing files, but it's not necessary.

If you're batch encoding VOB files, each one will (most likely) need to have its aspect ratio settings taken care of individually.

VOB Files

Because of their lack of internal coding, VOBs — in the few programs that will import them — are notorious for both going out of sync and having problems with the aspect ratio.  That's why most programs don't load them directly.

As far as sync problems go, my one FLV conversion had a very slight a/v sync problem, but the AVI and MPEG renders were fine.

As for the aspect ratio, it will almost always need adjusting.  Open 'Advanced', click 'Custom', play around with the second number.  Ideally, you want the edges to just touch the frame, but if you can get them close and even, you can use the slide gadget down below to squeeze them out to the frame.

One thing an experienced videophile never does is actually believe a program's load requester when it comes to what formats it says it will load.  AVS does NOT list VOB files, but the intrepid Doc Murky persevered and demanded it load the damn thing — and load it, it did.  It then spun out a bee-yootiful AVI, even though — in theory — it wasn't supposed to.  Converting an MKV is special enough, but converting a VOB — and retaining the audio/video sync and aspect ratio — puts it in a league of its own.  Especially when it acts like it can't do the dang process in the first place.

Bad Aspect Ratio

If it's some web video, there's a chance the aspect ratio will be off.  Meaning, people and things will either look too tall and skinny or too short and fat.

To correct the problem, open 'Advanced'.  Use the slide gadget to find a spot in the vid of someone standing about ten feet away from the camera so you can get a feel for when they look normal.  The best thing would be to find something circular, like a wall clock.  If it's a commercial clip, there might be something circular in the opening or closing logo.

Click on 'Custom'.  Play with the second number until things look right.  In my limited tests, the ones that were off (like VOBs) ended up with a 2:1 ratio. To fine-tune it, make the two boxes '20' and '10', then change the '10' to '9' or '11'.  If you've introduced some black border area into the vid, you can eliminate it with the slider down below.

Summation

What makes AVS special is its ability to correctly render wayward formats such as MKV and VOB.  If you're wondering, here's my standard process to convert a high-def MKV download to DVD disc:

— MKV Extract to extract the H264 video track and AC3 audio track
— DGAVIndex to frameserve the H264 track to D2V
— BeSweet to convert the AC3 audio track to WAV
— SoundForge to raise the volume of the WAV track
— AviSynth script for D2V code
— VirtualDub to render script to AVI
— DVD Architect to make the DVD

As I said, seven programs.

Now it takes two steps; converting to DVD-compliant MPEG-2 with AVS, then quickly compiling the DVD.  No audio/video sync problems, and a number of processing hours saved.

Any questions, give a holler in the comments.

APPENDIX

Adobe Flash

From what I can tell, there are two FLV codecs in use; one that all of the second-party programs use, and one that the home company, Adobe, is hogging all to itself.  All of the FLV rendering programs I've tried have looked about the same, and all of them failed to compare to Adobe Flash.  There's a tiny jerkiness in the second-party renders that's missing in the Flash productions, which play smooth as silk.

So, for the odd online FLV, AVS should work fine.  If you're serious about it, then you should dig up an older version of Flash.  The current version lists for (cough!) $699, but here's an old version of Flash 8 (the one I use) for only $69, so it's around.

Quickie Instructions

This is a large, complicated program designed to make elaborate Flash presentations, but for a quick conversion, here's the routine:

— File Menu, Import, Import to Stage, load file
— Next, Next, Show Advanced Settings
— Quality to Custom, data rate to 2,000, audio data rate to 160, Next
— 'Skinning' panel to 'None', Next, Finish
— Select output folder, Save

To minimize the program while it's working, open Task Manager, 'Applications' panel, right-click on the program's name and 'Minimize'.

Four Episodes Per DVD

Using the default 'To MPEG' profile, three episodes takes up about 3.8 gigs, with 4.36 being the max.  Four episodes would be about 4.9 gigs.  So, most people burn three episodes to a disc.

We, however, will use a compression program called DVD Shrink to squeeze that 4.9 gigs down to a burnable 4.36 and put four episodes on a disc.  We're just that cool.  The program's now commercialware, but you can download the old freeware version here.

Here's the routine:

— First, make the DVD files.  In theory, the authoring program should be squawking at you that the project is too large to fit on a disc.

— Run DVD Shrink.  Click on 'Open Files', select the folder with the too-big DVD files.  A preview panel will flash through the vid.

— Over to the right, uncheck any audio tracks or subtitles you don't want.

— Click 'Backup'.  If you have Nero installed and want to burn the disc directly, click on the 'Burn Settings' tab, put in the disc name and let 'er go.  If you don't have Nero installed, you'll process the files for later burning, so select a target folder, presumably "VIDEO_TS" to follow DVD standards.

Changing The Resolution

Changing the resolution of a video while maintaining the aspect ratio is done with a simple algebraic formula:

 A        C (width)
---  =  ---
 B         x (height)

Cross-multiply the two numbers you do have and divide by the other.  If the source file has a resolution of 720 x 480 and you want it to be 640-wide, that would be:

720       640
----  =  ----
480        x

480 x 640 = 307,200, divided by 720 = 426 for the height.

In this case, you'd put '640' and '426' in the 'Width' and 'Height' boxes. The numbers are actually supposed to be a multiple of 8 to be video-compliant, so the program will make any small adjustments to the 'Height' number, in this case changing the '426' to '424'.

Note: Video is a funny thing and has both 'interior' and 'exterior' dimensions.  When dealing with a 720 x 480 DVD source file, you'll probably find 400 to be the correct height, rather than 426.