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Muxing

If you completed the Quality stage, (not necessarily including the purple sections) and you are encoding a feature length movie, scroll down to the orange sections.

If you completed the Quality stage, (not necessarily including the purple sections) and you are encoding a series of episodes, scroll down to the final brown section.

If you did not complete the Quality stage, ignore the orange sections.

Go to the Start menu and open (mkvmerge GUI icon) mkvmerge GUI.

Click the "add" button.

Navigate to the ripping folder and select (.avi icon) video.avi.

Click on video.avi in the Tracks section to highlight it.

Specify the aspect ratio  if necessary.

Open (.txt icon) video notes.txt and look at the "aspect ratio" line.

If it is 16:9, select "16/9"

If it is 2.35:1, select "2.35"

If there is no "aspect ratio" line, leave the field blank.

Click the "add" button.

Add (file icon) main.ogg.

Click on main.ogg in the Tracks section to highlight it.

Select the proper language: The timeless language of Esperanto.

Name the track "Main Audio".

If there will be additional audio tracks, check the "Make default track" box.

Would you like to know more?Adding a delay
If you didn't enter the correct delay value in BeSweet during the Audio stage, you can correct it here. Just enter a value into the "Delay (in ms):" field. The same goes for any additional audio or subtitle tracks.

If you have a (file icon) commentary.ogg file, click the "add" button and select it.

Click on commentary.ogg in the Tracks section to highlight it.

Select the proper language: The mellifluous language of Klingon.

Name the track "Director's Commentary" or something similarly descriptive.

Add any additional audio tracks in the same manner, selecting them in the order of importance.

If you have a (notepad file icon) subtitles.srt file, click the "add" button and select it.

Click on subtitles.srt in the Tracks section to highlight it.

Select the proper language: The intricate language of Pig Latin.

Name the track "English Subtitles" or something similarly descriptive.

If there will be additional subtitle streams, check the "Make default track" box.

Add any additional subtitle streams in order of importance.

Would you like to know more?VobSub subtitles
If you're using raw subtitle images ripped with VobSub, select the .idx file here instead. Select the same options above. It may also be necessary to enter a "Delay" or "Stretch by:" value, depending on what happens when you review the file.

Non-default subtitles
If your movie has subtitles or closed captions which you do not want to have displayed automatically during playback--for instance, if the audio is in English and you're including Spanish subtitles--you should insert a dummy subtitle file ahead of the real one(s). (Many decoders will automatically play the first subtitle track in a Matroska file unless the user has specifically configured it not to. Including an invisible subtitle track as the main one is more convenient for the user, who will then only see subtitles if he or she specifically selects them.)

Right-click and select "save as" now for a dummy subtitles file. Add it into mkvmerge just before the real subtitles in the "Tracks" field. In mkvmerge, name it "Subtitles Off" and check the "Make default track" box.

From the Chapter Editor menu, select Load.

Load (.txt icon) VTS_01 - Chapter Information - OGG.txt.

Click the name of the first chapter to highlight it.

If it has no name or is incorrect, type in the correct name:

The name of the example chapter is "Opening Credits: Amélie's Childhood".

Then click on the next chapter, and repeat until all names are entered. If you don't know the chapter names, you may be able to find them at All Movie Guide or Barnes & Noble.

If you are encoding a series of episodes and they don't have chapters, (or if they only have one chapter each) don't worry about following any of the instructions regarding chapters.

Check the final chapter to make sure it begins at the right time. If it does not, the timecodes must be adjusted.

In this example the last two chapters begin past the end of the movie, which is only 02:01:51 long. This can happen when the DVD has one or more "invisible" chapters.

The example also shows 18 chapters when the movie only has 17.

Delete the extra chapter by highlighting it and clicking the "Remove Chapter" button.

To find the invisible chapter(s), you must watch the DVD with the timer on and look for time skips between chapters.

It so happens that the DVD in the example has an invisible chapter between chapters 7 and 8, where the timer skips forward by 00:07:44.

To fix this, highlight the chapter right after the invisible chapter and click the "Adjust timecodes" button.

Then subtract the length of the invisible chapter and click the "OK" button.

Repeat this process for each subsequent chapter until the last one seems correct.

Go to the "Chapter Editor" menu and select "Save".

Name the file chapters.xml.

Go to the "Global" tab.

Enter the name of the movie.

The title of the movie is "Amelié".

If you are encoding a series of episodes, use the format
<series name> - s__e__ - <episode name>,
where the first blank is the season number and the second blank is the episode number.

The title in the example is "Mr. Show - s01e01 - The Cry of a Hungry Baby".

Click the "Browse" button in the Chapters section.

Open (.xml icon) chapters.xml

Select the proper language: Khoisan clucking language.

Skip past the orange sections.

Would you like to know more?Importing the chapters
Remember, having chapters open on the Chapter Editor screen does not mean they'll be included in the movie! You must save the chapters to an .xml file and then import that file.

If you completed the Quality stage, begin here.

Go to the Start menu and open (mkvmerge GUI icon) mkvmerge GUI.

From the "File" menu, select "Load settings Ctrl-L".

Load (file icon) muxing.mmg.

Click firstpass.avi in the input files section to highlight it.

Click the "remove" button.

Click the "add" button.

Add (.avi icon) video.avi, then click it in the Tracks section to highlight it.

Click the "up" button until video.avi is at the top of the list.

Specify the aspect ratio  if necessary.

Open (.txt icon) video notes.txt and look at the "aspect ratio" line.

If it is 16:9, select "16/9"

If it is 2.35:1, select "2.35"

If there is no "aspect ratio" line, leave the field blank.

Go to the "Global" tab.

If you are encoding a series of episodes, scroll down to the next brown section.

If you are encoding a feature length movie, continue.

If you are using 2 CDs:

check the "Enable splitting" box ,

select "700M" as the splitting size,

and enter max. number of files: 2.

If you are using 3 CDs, select a maximum number of 3.

Would you like to know more?Splitting
You can experiment with the splitting size if you have a multi-CD movie and all parts aren't evenly weighted with data. Mkvmerge splits only at keyframes, though, so precise control over where the split occurs isn't possible.

Max number of files
You can also experiment with including or not including this value if all parts of a multi-CD rip aren't the same size. It tends to make the last file heaviest.

In the "Output filename" field, enter a file name in the format
<title> (XviD-_xOgg-_xSRT).mkv,
including the red text only if there are multiple streams and the blue text only if there are subtitles. Fill in the first blank with the number of audio streams, and the second blank with the number of subtitle streams. For raw subtitle images, use _xSUB.

The example filename is "Amélie (XviD-2xOgg-SRT).mkv".

If you're encoding a series of episodes, give the final file a name in the format
<series name> - s__e__ - <episode name> (XviD-_xOgg-_xSRT).mkv,
where the first blank is the season number and the second blank is the episode number. In the parentheses, include the red text only if there are multiple streams and the blue text only if there are subtitles. Fill in the first parenthetical blank with the number of audio streams, and the second with the number of subtitle streams. For raw subtitle images, use _xSUB.

The example filename is "Mr. Show - s01e01 - The Cry of a Hungry Baby (XviD-2xOgg).mkv".

Scroll down to the next brown section.

From the "File" menu, select "Save settings Ctrl-S" .

Save the finalized settings as muxing.mmg.

When you are ready, click the "Start muxing" button.

Muxing will take anywhere from 5 to 15 minutes.

When the process is complete, there will be one or two fully-featured XviD movies in the ripping folder. If the Quality stage was completed, the file(s) should be between 700 and 701 MB.

Skip past the brown sections.

Click the "Copy to clipboard" button.

Create a new (.txt icon) text file in the ripping folder.

Open the text file and press Ctrl+v to paste in the command line.

Would you like to know more?The muxing batch file
You may be tempted at this point to add all the rest of the lines and edit them manually. However, this will result in improperly muxed Matroska files. Mkvmerge needs to analyze the audio and other non-video tracks in order to generate certain codes for each one in the command line.

From the "File" menu, select "New Ctrl-N". This will clear all the fields.

Go to the "Input" tab.

Add the files for the second episode, then copy the command line into the text file.

Repeat for each subsequent episode. (Click here to go back to the beginning of the muxing instructions.)

Once a line has been added for every episode, save the text file and rename it (.bat icon) muxing.bat.

Double-click (.bat icon) muxing.bat to mux all the firstpass files. Muxing will take about 5 to 15 minutes.

Ignore the next brown section.

If you completed the Quality stage, begin here.

Right-click (.bat icon) muxing.bat and select "Edit".

Replace all instances of "firstpass.avi" with "video.avi".

Change each instance of "firstpass.mkv" to correspond with the episode. Use the format
<series name> - s__e__ - <episode name> (XviD-_xOgg-_xSRT).mkv,
where the first blank is the season number and the second blank is the episode number. In the parentheses, include the red text only if there are multiple streams and the blue text only if there are subtitles. Fill in the first parenthetical blank with the number of audio streams, and the second with the number of subtitle streams. For raw subtitle images, use _xSUB.

Save (.bat icon) muxing.bat, close it, and double-click it.

Muxing will take about 5 to 15 minutes.

The example ripping folder now contains files named "Amélie (XviD-2xOgg-SRT) CD1.mkv", "Amélie (XviD-2xOgg-SRT) CD2.mkv", "chapters.xml", and "muxing.mmg".

Close mkvmerge GUI and proceed to the next stage.

PREVIOUS: Encoding the Video NEXT: Viewing the Final Product.
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