Can anyone teach me how to check if my video is correctly proportioned? I can't really tell. Here is what GSpot says:

AVI Resolution: 704x480 (1.47:1) [~16:11]

I want to put it on a DVD. What Video Arrange Method should I select if it's out of proportioned?

If the Movie is 4:3 and your Target is DVD at 704x480 or 720x480, just use Center, nothing else.

Is that Center or Center (keep aspect ratio)? Sorry, I'm dumb. :)

Also, my other files don't have the correct proportion either. Here's what GSpot says:

Resolution: 634x464 (1.34:1) [~16:12]

Should I still do the Center like above? Also, the audio codec is MPEG-1 Layer 3. It plays in Windows Media Player but in Virtualdub and VDubMOD, it said it could not decompress the audio. Why is that? Should I just convert it normally in TMPGEnc?

Center (without anything) is the best choice if TMPGEnc has not to do any resizing. If the Input size is the same than the Output size, always use Center.

Your second Movie seams to be 4:3 (something like that...).

For a propper fit i suggest to clip it to 628x464.
Use Center (Custom size) 688,464
Target size is 704x480 (NOT 720x480)!

Thanks. Is there a difference between Center and Full Screen? I thought the output size is 720x480 because that's the standard? Then the input size (704x480) is not the same as the output size...?

704x480 is also standard-DVD-Size.

Full Screen always trys to fit the Video to full size (resizing). But in this case, this will lower the Quality (and the Conversion-Speed).

Center takes the Video as is and does nothing to it.

Center (custom size) does a resizing to the given size - that's what you want.

BTW: It is better to do the Resizings in AVISynth and use always Center in TMPGEnc, because the Resizers of AVISynth are much better.

I agree I have recently been trying out the new LANCZOS4 resizer in AVISYNTH with excellent results.
Reduces mice teeth and stair stepping to a minimum and are hardly noticible when compared to some other resizing methods.

Trialling DVD Author at the moment with CD-RW and Nero's miniDVD option. All works well on my PC with PowerDVD -- the menu is the first thing shown (as I requested), but on my standalone DVD player (LG) there is no menu at all and the first track is played... and it won't let me press the Menu button to go to the menu. PowerDVD does all this just fine, so I doubt it's the miniDVD's fault... probably just my standalone LG player? Thoughts?

In the Menu configuration screen in TDA, at the top right, make sure the drop down menu is at "Display Main Menu." Also, this happened to me whenever I use TDA author. My DVD remote has 2 buttons: Title and Menu. For TDA DVDs, I can return to the menu using Title. Menu doesn't work for me for some reason. It might be because I'm only using a main menu and no chapter selection menus. Why don't you try that on your remote as well to see if it would work?

Yes, it is set to "Display Main menu" in all options for it.
Also, pressing Title does nothing -- it doesn't go to the menu.
Further, pressing Next Chapter from the playing clip doesn't go
to the menu either. Either my player is bad (doubt it) or TDA
has a few issues at this time.

Seems to be an LG thing.
My LG won't display menus made with TMPGeng DVD Author but my Toshiba will.

My DVD player is the LG DVR 4810 player/recorder, and I have exactly the same problems..Any disc I create using TMPGEnc DVD Author, the menu's will simply not play on the LG, but are fine on three other brands I've tried them on.

Just downloaded v1.6 trial and created a DVD, and what do you know, the menu's work on the LG player....

Are there any websites that contain sample avi's and their corresponding TMPGenc encoded mpeg2 files (along with settings used to encode) so that we could use them for comparison? I have been tinkering with video for over a year now and I have yet to produce an mpeg2 file that I am satisfied with the quality. It would be nice to see compare my encoded video with others.

What is the hell is going on? It keeps saying 'There is no quoted number of Character-string '%.2f'

The issue you have is a space problem.. You'll find tha the destinbation disk is not large enough .. or, alternatively that your file system is FAT32 when you need for it to be BTFS before this fella will work... Jon

typo NTFS

I also have gotten this error, on a NTSF volume with plenty of room.

Hello,

This also happens if the app found there are no room enough for the encode cache. See the cache dsettings in the preferences panel.

RGB

He estado probando con la configuracion de la cache y no hay forma de quitar el error.

>What is the hell is going on? It keeps saying 'There is no quoted number of Character-string '%.2f'

im havin this problem too. where are the dcache settings in preferences. i went and couldnt find them. if someone knows how to fix the problem, please halep ,and if u can, give step by step instructions. thanks

Hi there

I had the same problem and solved it by changing the following option:

-> 'set output' / 'output streamtype' and then select 'ES (Video + Audio)' instead of 'System (Video + Audio)'

What ever that means - it worked for me. Can anybody explain that for me ...?

Cheers

Markus

I'm trying to convert a movie of mine (XVID... yes I have the codec), it's 2:02:12 long. Unfortunately, TMPGEnc thinks its 330+ mins long. Last I checked, 2 * 60 + 2 = 122 minutes. Is it me screwing up, or is this a known isssue?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Why can't I convert avi to mepg? It used to work fine until I rebooted my computer because of a virus. It say (File C:AnimeNaruto77.avi can not open, or unsupported). Any Suggestion?

Look at my answer to the post "cannot open, or unsupported", it might help. Sounds that you might have lost your mpeg2 codec.

>Look at my answer to the post "cannot open, or unsupported", it might help. Sounds that you might have lost your mpeg2 codec.

It's an AVI.....

I'm trying to convert a movie of mine (XVID... yes I have the codec), it's 2:02:12 long. Unfortunately, TMPGEnc thinks its 330+ mins long. Last I checked, 2 * 60 + 2 = 122 minutes. Is it me screwing up, or is this a known isssue?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Try applying a Source Range to the video, such that the final frame isn't -1, but an actual positive number.

On panel 3/5 of the wizard, click on the Source range checkbox. The source range window appears.

Click the Move to end frame button. Note that the End frame value is -1.

Press the Set end frame button. The value of End frame is now a large number.

Press Ok. Now continue with the wizard and perhaps the video length will be correct.

Cheers
Nic

Hi Nic. The file I'm converting (well, trying to) is a 22-min episode, with file size 177, 238 KB, which when I played using realplayer was ok. When I tried converting, the file size as noted in the counter was 600+ MB (63 min), when normally a file size that small would only be 200+ MB. Ok, I've tried the source range thing which you have advised but after converting, there was no sound. What steps should I do now? Thanks for your help.

I have exactly the same problem...
When encoding a 1hr30'ish movie TMPG wants to make it huge with about 8Gb of data rather than about 3.5Gb (which is normal) - this is usually Particular DivX movies (you know, the ones you REALLY want to watch) Perhaps i will try the '-1' thing the last port mentioned

Well.. i tried the change the video size from '-1' to 'last frame' business... and all i got was a small box in the middle of the screen with an error... the more i clicked on 'ok' the more another one came back !! i had to abort in the end...
Bugger !

I have been running into the same problems, video legnth being doubled, and no sound when selecting the video length. I found this advice on a forum it seems to work on the problem files I had.

["This is usually caused by the compression on the audio of the source file. If it is an AVI file it is very common. With an AVI file the easiest things to do here are set DirectShow Multimedia File Reader's priority to 2 or even better demcompress the audio!

To change the priority of DirectShow, this is done simply by clicking option - environmental setting. Click the VFAPI plug-in tab. You will see DirectShow in the list usually with a priority of -1. Right click on the NAME (not the priority) and click higher priority until the priority is 2 and it is at the top of the list. "]

can some1 plz help me here....

ive created some mpeg files with tmpgenc for vcd and i was wondering if its possible to make these file load as 1 or play as 1.

like not by file to file but all straight without pausing or requesting to load the other next file.

thanks a lot.

Name all the files in sequence like this for example: Movie001.MPG, Movie002.MPG, Movie003.MPG then open TMPG and goto Options>Enviromental settings>General then put a check in the box 'Open sequence files as a movie'
Now just load the first file in the sequence and the rest will automatically load.

I think I may have misread what you want.
It looks like you have already encoded the files.

You have 2 choices you can either join the MPEGs together with the merge and cut tool or just burn the MPEGs to VCD and just load each MPEG into your burning program in sequence then burn.

The files will play as one without pauses, but you must make sure that you instruct your burning program NOT to put pauses between file.
Most of them automatically put a 2sec pause between files, so make sure you set the pause length to 0

previously i had win2k and TMPGEnc-2.55.38.142-Free

i was able to import vob files without a problem after decrypting wit dvd decrypter.

i have just recently formatted and put WinXP in, i am still using the same version of TMPGE

now vob files wont read...

any help will be greatly appreciated..
[fyi...i do have WinDVD installed]

thanks in advance...

JAG

Install the MPEG2 codec you had installed on your Win 2000 system prior to installing XP.

i didnt have a mpg2 codec, all i had was WinDVD installed and DVDx 2.0, gonna try that, but i doubt that will help...

is there any codec that you can recommend?
or one that will make it work?
just installled DVDx 2.0, didnt help none..

http://www.marumo.ne.jp/mpeg2/m2v_vfp-0.6.48.lzh

Hi,
I have been trying to convert a dv movie to a DVD. This is my first experience with this sort of thing. Firstly i captured the movie to a .avi file. That worked fine. Then i converted it to MPG2 with TMPGEnc. That also worked fine. However now when i try to author it to a dvd, using TMPGEnc DVD Author, the video comes out perfectly, but there is no sound (in the AUDIO_TS folder.) I have tried it using individual sound and video files (m2v and mp2 files), and i have also tried using the same mpg file for the sound and video but to no avail. any help would be greatly appreciated. thankyou.

The AUDIO_TS folder is for dvd audio recordings, normally this folder is empty or not even there on a Video Dvd.

I think I pretty much have the menus figured out in Author 1.5, with a few exceptions.

First I can't figure out anyway to delete text once it has been entered. I have even when to the advanced edit where you can move things around and resize things but still can't figure a way to delete the text.

Second I create a Main Menu page with the appropriate chapter and play buttons and then go to the track menu to setup menus for the tracks. When I come back to the Main Menu find it has changed to match the track menu. As I saved the main menu before going to the track menu I reload it from the drop down box and it is back as it was, only to find now the track menu has changed back, so once again edit it, and start all over.

I can't seem to make changes to the Main Menu without affecting the track menus and vice versa. I am sure I am missing something simple here but sure don't know what it is.

Thanks for any help.

1. Simply delete the text with the Delete key and move the frame off the safe area screen.

2. On the left hand pane whilst in full Edit Menu Mode right click on the menu you want to change and then select 'Create New Theme for The Track Menu' at the bottom.

>1. Simply delete the text with the Delete key and move the frame off the safe area screen.
>
>2. On the left hand pane whilst in full Edit Menu Mode right click on the menu you want to change and then select 'Create New Theme for The Track Menu' at the bottom.

Thanks for the response. Since posting this I have experimented a little more and have tried your suggestions. The problem I have is that I would like a very uncluttered main menu with no thumbnails. I have not been able to find a way to create a main menu that does not have thumbnails when in the create a new theme mode. Even if you drag the thumbnails outside the window you have no way to access the track menu without the thumbnails, at least that I can find. If you don't go into the create a new theme I can get a main menu the way I want. On the left panel there are several choices and the bottom one is blue. When you select this all it has is title on the top, and then two buttons or links on the bottom, play all tracks or track menu. That is exactly what I want however if you choose create new theme to design the track and chapter menus, the above main menu is no longer one of the choices and can't find a way to get the link for the track menu. The only button you get is play all.

If you have any other suggestinos or if I am missing something I would really appreciate knowing. I thought several times I had figured it out but everytime I end up losing the nice plain main menu.

Thanks again for the reply and suggestions.

Hi there,
I am using TMPGenc Plus 2.5 to encode from DV to MPEG2(for burning to dvd). I think I have all the best settings that I can possibly have for encoding to the Mpeg2 file. But the resultant MPEG file lacks the quality of the original DV, in that it is slightly more grainy and the colours are too bright. (I am using Windvd to compare quality) I have read in forums that the codec that tmpgenc uses for reading the DV file can effect the encoded output, if so does anyone know how I can check what codec that tmpgenc is using and also recommend the best codec to use?
Thanks in advance.

TMPGEnc uses the installed Codec, nothing special. But TMPGEnc always needs RGB24-Input and some DV-Codecs aren't able to provide a propper Colorspace-Conversion. Maybe you have to cange the settings from CCIR- to YCbCr-Mode (setting->advanced->Quantize Matrix) to get the correct colors.

You can't use such crappy Software like a Software-DVD-Player to compare quality because you can't be shure about the resulting Luma-Range and the Methode of Overlay-Video on your PC.

The Quality of the resulting Video depents on several factors, most important is Bitrate.

Also rememeber that Mpeg and NTSC DV use different color sampling (4:2:0 vs 4:1:1).

You will ALWAYS lose half of the original color samples when translating between the two.

This is why it is shocking that the DV standard has not been upgraded to 4:2:2. 25 Mbs is enough bandwidth to save virtually lossless production quality video (using mpeg2, 2 frame GOP, for example). If digital cameras kept the same technology curve as DV video, we'd still be using 0.5 megapixel cameras.