DVD

Overview

Recording with a DVD recorder will produce far superior quality than recording with a VCR, so it is well worth the investment. Also, being a digital format, it poses far less "traps" to deal with than VHS. When you record with a DVD recorder, be sure to use SP or better speed. See your DVD recorder's manual for more info about this. You will wreck the quality of your run if you record on a speed worse than SP. If you decide to mail your DVD(s) to me for processing, proceed to the submission guidelines for information about how to contact Radix. Otherwise, if you want to try to encode your run yourself, read here. However, there is one problem that needs to be taken care of: lag.

Lag

When recording with a VCR, you hook your console's video out into the VCR, and you hook the VCR to your TV. The signal travels from the TV to the VCR, which records it, then sends it to the TV to be displayed. Because of the way the VCR writes the data on the tape, there is no lag. However, when a DVD recorder is hooked up in this fashion, it must digitize the data and, in our case, record it before outputting it. Unfortunately, every DVD recorder out on the market is not able to do this instantaneously. Therefore, you will see and hear what was really happening about a half-second or so ago. Obviously, this can really mess with your ability to play the game well.

Reducing Lag

There are several ways to reduce lag and play normally.

1. Use a powered splitter. Basically, you plug in the video and audio from your console, and it sends it to two different places (your TV and your DVD recorder). This will completely eliminate lag, but costs about $45, and you won't be recording S-Video unless you use an S-Video cable to connect the console to the splitter AND the splitter to the DVD recorder.

2. Use an S-Video cable. This cable has four plugs-the three standard yellow, white, and red plugs and an S-Video plug. This lets you plug the S-Video plug and the two audio plugs (the white and red ones) into your DVD recorder and the composite video (yellow) plug into your TV. This eliminates video lag and lets you record S-Video, but you won't have audio on your TV unless you connect your DVD recorder and your TV with the white and red audio plugs. This will cause the audio on your TV to lag behind the video, which may or may not affect your playing ability. These cables are very inexpensive-they can be found for around $5.

Note: There are two kinds of S-Video cables-ones that connect your console to an S-Video in and ones that connect an S-Video out to an S-Video in. The former are inexpensive; the latter are quite spendy. Make sure you buy the correct kind.

3. Connect your console to a VCR, then use the RF out (a cable that sometimes has a screw on the end) of your VCR to connect it to your TV and the composite out (red, white, and yellow cables) to connect it to your DVD recorder. This won't cost anything, assuming you already own a VCR with composite in/out and RF out, but you will be recording composite video instead of S-Video.

Self Encoding

Make sure to finalize the DVD before continuing with this guide. Finalizing is done on the DVD recorder itself. DVD-RAM and DVD+RW are the only exceptions. For DVD+RW, you may need to create a top menu to process the video correctly-see your DVD recorder manual for information on this procedure.

You will need to install a large number of separate pieces of software to get your run off of the DVD and encode it to H.264 / DivX. All of this software only runs on Microsoft Windows, so you will need to have access to a computer running Windows to proceed.

DVD software installation

Download the latest version of DGMPGDec utilities by Donald Graft and extract the contents to "C:\Program Files\DGMPGDec". This folder contains the DGIndex.exe application and the important DGDecode.dll file. Leave this folder alone for the moment.

Extracting the DVD source files

Begin by inserting the Finalized DVD into the DVD drive in your computer (if the DVD has not been Finalized in the DVD recorder, it probably won't work). Navigate to your DVD drive and select all of the .VOB or .VRO files from the VIDEO_TS folder on the DVD you inserted. Copy them to a folder where you will do your video processing. For the purposes of this guide the video processing folder will be aptly named "C:\video processing".

Creating the project file (.d2v)

Open DGIndex.exe inside the DGMPGDec directory you unzipped during the software installation. Go to Audio -> Output Method and set it to demux all tracks. Now go to File -> Open, or just hit F2. Navigate to "C:\video processing" and select ALL of the .VOB (or .M2V) files. Hit OK twice to proceed to the main screen. From here, simply go to File -> Save Project and save the file with a name you can remember. For this guide it will be "C:\video processing\vob.d2v".

Note: If you load up your file and get static-like images, try loading the file called "VIDEO_TS.vob" into DGIndex BEFORE the other(s). If you don't have this file, look for an option called "create top menu" or something similar on your DVD recorder. This only seems to be an issue with DVD+RW's.

Important: If the audio file has a name like "vob T01 2_0ch 192Kbps DELAY -84ms.ac3" MAKE SURE you do not remove the audio delay information. Even if the delay is 0, it's good to be consistent.

DGIndex will do the work of demuxing your run and, after a time, will finish and beep.

You can now proceed to the Avisynth page.

Advanced tip: If you have a short segment and do not want to extract the whole vob file, you can load the vob files into DGIndex straight from your DVD drive, make a selection in DGIndex with the bracket buttons at the bottom right of the window, and then go to File -> Save Project and Demux Video. This will create a m2v file which you will have to re-index because the d2v file is still pointing to the vob files on your DVD drive. That means you'll have to load the m2v file into DGIndex and Save Project again.

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