ffmpeg aborts due to non correct bitrate
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#31 ffmpeg aborts due to non correct bitrate
The problem is that any2dvd aborts when it tries to add the audio stream in the main menus. The reason in my case is that I haven't specified any specific audio sound for the menus so it took the silent branch.
So it creates a silent wav with ecasound. Then it tries to convert it to ac3 with ffmpeg. ffmpeg aborts because the bitrate argument is not right.
I am not knowledgable enough but I think that it is possible that ffmped may have changed its behaviour and any2dvd is very sensitive in such changes.
I have debian unstable here with ffmpeg 20070312-0.0.
The patch below fixes it. That means it prevents any2dvd from aborting. I do not know yet if it has any ill effects to the DVD itself
Here is the patch
ffmpeg bitrate patch
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Yes, you are right. FFmpeg have changed the way that audio bitrate ('-ab') is specified on the command line. '-ab' used to specify audio bitrate in kbits/s, now it is used to specify bitrate in bits/s (a similar thing was done to video bitrate recently also).
So in order to now encode a 224kbits/s audio file, you would need to specify '-ab 224000' or '-ab 224k'.
(Apart from breaking a hundred or so users scripts + fielding the many support questions from users every time small changes are made to key command-line components, I'm not sure what functionality this brings to the FFmpeg users).
Rightly or wrongly, due to FFmpeg not releasing anything except an SVN tree that changes daily, this kind of situation will keep occurring. At present there does not exist any other program for Linux (to my knowledge) that is capable of encoding 5.1 AC3 format.
This leaves us with two options:
1) Whenever a new version of any2dvd is released, only support up to a certain version of FFmpeg. While going some way to solving the problem, this would still be very labour intensive as it would involve attempting to track and cater for every single change that FFmpeg may have made between two any2dvd releases.
2) Release with any2dvd, a statically built binary of FFmpeg (suitably renamed so as not to interfere with a real FFmpeg installation) that is known to work with that version of any2dvd.
The latter seems to be the most sane way forward.
In the meantime, using the patch means the audio track will only have a 64kbits/s bitrate. Should be OK for a silent audio track, but if an audio track is chosen the sound quality will be poor.
Attached are patches for any2vob and any2dvd that change all instances of '-ab <bitrate>' to '-ab <bitrate>k'.
File Added: any2dvd-0.34_ffmpeg-bitrate.diff
any2dvd-0.34_ffmpeg-bitrate.diff
any2vob-0.34_ffmpeg-bitrate.diff
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File Added: any2vob-0.34_ffmpeg-bitrate.diff
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Same here, but instead of stopping ffmpeg produces incorrect mp2 files so finally mplex stalls, later.
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A fairly mature beta of 0.36 that addresses this issue can be found here:
http://mightylegends.org/downloads/any2vob-0.36_beta.sh
http://mightylegends.org/downloads/any2dvd-0.36_beta.sh