Odd problem when opening burned DVD VOBs in DGIindex

[Songbird21]

I really hope someone can help me with this because it's driving me nuts.

I have a DVDr which I use to dub my VHS tapes over to DVD.

I have a show on tape that I want to use. Smartripper grabs the files just fine. My computer's DVD player software plays it just fine. I open it up in DGIindex and it looks like it got hit on both sides by a pair of bulldozers. In other words, the video is squished into about half the vertical space it would use normally.

I don't understand what's going on. I get a warning pop-up that says: Opening GOP is not closed. The first few frames may not be dcoded correctly. The thing is, I know I closed the disk.

Someone help please!

[DJ_Izumi]

It could be a Half D1 DVD.

NTSC DVD's do -not- actually have to use 720x480 (Full D1), there's also entirely acceptable options to use 704x480 (D1), 352x480 (Half D1) or even 352x240. In most cases 480x480 will work as well but it's not written into the spec.

A Half D1 DVD would be encoded at 352x480 to have half the resolution of a Full D1 encode, generally to allow for higher bitrate In all honesty, on an NTSC TV few human beings could tell the difference. However the DVD is tagged with '4:3' as it's aspect ratio, so it would take that vertially tall image and stretch it out upon playback so it looked normal.

DGIndex wouldn't stretch it back in a preview though.

But that's just my guess...

[Willen]

If that DVD was recorded in a recorder's SLP/SEP mode to get 6+ hours onto the DVD, it may be at Half D1 res. DGIndex should show you the resolution of the video you are indexing at the top of the window:

DGIndex - VTS_01_1.VOB [720x480] [File 1/1] [Vob 2] [Cell 1].

You could load it into VDub/Mod and try to resize the video (if it is 352 x 480) to 640 x 480 (or 704/720 x 480) and hope that the quality is acceptable. Or re-record the VHS contents to another DVD at the recorder's 1 hour (HQ) or 2 hour (SP) mode, which should definitely output at D1 or Full D1.

[Qyot27]

I don't understand what's going on. I get a warning pop-up that says: Opening GOP is not closed. The first few frames may not be dcoded correctly. The thing is, I know I closed the disk.

That has to do with how the MPEG-2 stream is encoded (specifically, the way frames are dealt with), not whether the disc itself gets finalized/closed. It's the DVD recorder's encoder (as I'm assuming this is a DVD recorder/VHS combo deck we're talking about here).

The GOP warning occasionally shows up on commercial DVDs also (*cough* FLCL *cough*).

[Songbird21]

I've been recording on the 4 hour speed, so what you've said makes a lot of sense. I'll just resize my current footage and record in 2-hour from now on. Thank you very much for the help.