I'Ve converted a few DV-AVI files produced with MGI VideoWave 5 to SuperVCD using TMPGEnc (with default settings). It looked fine on the preview window but not through Media Player. The few first minutes of video are pretty good but then it get worst and worst over time up to a point (after 1/3 of the video) where I see only garbage (big red and white squares).

I've also tried Nero's SuperVCD plug-in and it works pretty fine but I'd like to see if TMPGEnc could provide better quality. How can I make it work?

It could be that you are watching your movies with Media player it sucks for mpeg2 viewing try useing dvd playing software like Power dvd, I haven"t heard of a mpeg that starts out good and then gets worse as it goes, can"t help you there.

I upgraded my VideoWave 5 with the latest patch and it fixed the problem. It seems that VideoWave didnt produce standard DV-AVI files before the patch... BTW TMPGEnc rocks! The quality is far superior from what the Nero plug-in can do. The highest quality mode is worth the loooong wait!

What happens to an MPEG1 file with a high bit rate, a bigger frame size and re-compressed it to MPEG1-VCD standard bit rate?

VCD standard bitrate (1150 I think) will generate an mpeg file that has noticeably more macro blocks than the source file.

One option is to create an XVCD (non standard VCD) where you have a bitrate somewhere between the source file and VCD standard. This would improve the quality. You didnt say whether you would be using standard VCD resolution. If you increase the resolution (and bitrate) you will have a non standard VCD but it should look better than standard VCD assuming your DVD player will play it.

VCD standard bitrate (1150 I think) will generate an mpeg file that has noticeably more macro blocks than the source file but with a smaller filesize.

One option is to create an XVCD (non standard VCD) where you have a bitrate somewhere between the source file and VCD standard. This would improve the quality. You didnt say whether you would be using standard VCD resolution. If you increase the resolution (and bitrate) you will have a non standard VCD but it should look better than standard VCD assuming your DVD player will play it.

When you have a video on regular original size it looks awesome. Then when you maximize the window or burn it to vcd and play it on a dvd player the picture gets stretched out and has worse quality. Is there a way of preventing this?

It all depends on the resolution and bitrate of the original.
Resizing to a resolution bigger than the source resolution will always result in a blockier image - there is no way round this.

If your source file is relatively low res you may want to stick with standard VCD resolution for encoding - just choose a standard VCD template. You could of course increase the bitrate as well to ensure that you are not losing quality , but then you would be creating an XVCD ; not that that is a bad thing, you just have to make sure your DVD player will play XVCD. Go to www.vcdhelp.com and search for your player in the player list.

My avi wont convert cause it comes up with a "decimal error" or somfin like that!!!!! please HELP!!!!!!!!!!!

Thanx

If you type 'floating' (without the 's) in the search box you will get a variety of solutions to this problem

I have recently started using windows xp os and it works the same as 98 when encoding to mpeg from avi, but when trying to de-multiplex the created file it does it within a few seconds and generates a much smaller useless file.
I didn´t have any trouble with win98, does anyone know how to fix this?
I use the latest version of Tmpgenc

The easiest solution is to use a different program to de-mux the file, as you have noticed there are no real settings in the mpeg tools that would correct problems like this or any problem so if it don"t work then there is nothing you can do to get it to work ,no special tricks or settings that are hidden from view.. you can download a muxer and de-muxer called Xmuxer from here :http://moonlight.co.il/products/Xmux.shtml

i ripped a dvd using smartripper & dvd2avi and everything went as planned until i got to tmpgenc. when asked to browse to the video file, it gave the error "****.d2v can not open, or unsupported". can anyone help me?
thanx in advance.

First check and see if you have the "dvd2avi.vfp" plugin installed, go to "options" to "enviromental settings" to "vfapi plugins" and check and see if there is a dvd2avi plugin in the list and if there is change the priority to "1" or "2", and if it isnt then copy and paste the "dvd2avi.vfp" file in the dvd2avi folder into the folder that Tmpgenc is in..and if none of these are the problem then you have to make sure that you didn"t move or delete or re-name any of the vob files or the d2v files in the path between dvd2avi and tmpgenc...

I tried this but no luck. This happened arter a refomat. Older version was working fine. now no version will work. I changed enviromental settings also. Any other ideas?

I compressed a one hour video in one Cd using KVCD template(VCD-NTSC), i was satisfied with the result and it worked well with my DVD player. Wanting to improve the quality i compressed it in two cd's. I increased the min. to 3000 and max. to 4000, quality to 100% and motion setting to highest(slowest). When i played it back in my DVD the video has improved but the whole file was stutered.

Did i exceeded the bit rate for VCD? or would it make a difference if i stayed at 1.856 mbps and max the quality to 100%. Any advice will help thanks.

That is what it seems like,you have gone over the max bitrate allowed by your dvd player, or there is a small chance it could be those Crappy KVCD templates..If you go to "Vcdhelp.com" you might be able to find out what the max bitrate of your dvd player is in there DVD player review section, if you dropped the minimum down to say 1500kbs and the quality to 85 you will get simular quality but might not screw up your Player, if you are going to use 2 cd-r"s anyway why use those Kvcd templates, there GOP structure makes it very hard to edit or add chapters or even fast forward through the movie cuz of the Lack of I frames......

Hey Minion, thanks for the tip...the thing is i only learned about KVCD from this forum and it was highly recommended. I have your or Ashy's? template but i load all of them in the folder and there were tons of templates i dont know anymore which templates is who's except KVCD's.

Going back i already check VCDHelp re: bitrate for DVD player and it only indicates there for SVCD/XVCD? no info for VCD bit rate. Also, i tend to go to the max with this, if i use 1.856mbps and 100% quality whats the equivalent of that? Lastly, if you find KVCD's templates crappy which one would you recommend.

Thanks Again.

The templates I would recomed is to make your own or don"t use any..I have never used a template cuz every movie has differant characteristics so there for needs differant settings..If you do your settings manually then you will learn what works and what doesn"t instead of relying on a template that might or might not give you the best results.I don"t understand the question about what is the equivelent of 1.856hbs at 100% quality...

thanks.... as for the 1.856mbps at 100% quality whats the equivalent? what i meant is...if i use 100% "quality" will the result of my MPEG1 file, as far as quality is concern, will be the same like encoding the file at 3000 or 4000mbps at 50% or whatever "quality"...(i hope this makes more sense).

When i try to convert movie files with .avi extensions i keep getting number errors such as -537403781 0 does this have to do with my hard drive space or something else?
thanks

I am trying to convert an AVI file to VCD. It works fine except that there is no sound. What could be the problem? Thanks a million.

--takumi

Your audio is an unsupported Format, you need to extract the audio to a wav file and use that as your audio source........

I am trying to encode a avi file to vcd...usually i can encode about 60 min which usually only ends up to be around 650 to 700 meg file...but now i am encoding 65 min VCD at CQ..max 4000 min 1800 quality 100, and audio @ 224 i get 830meg file. The file specs are 14 fps, data rate 44kps, video compression ms-mpeg4 v3. I have tried turning the audio down to 192 or 196 which ever it is with only about 20 megs different in size as well as turning down the quality to 80, with not much luck. I am under the impression you can only fit about 830megs on a 80min cd...its coming up 850...why is this avi coming up so big?
Another question is if you overburn with nero will they still work on my dvd player? I can play vcd svcd and xvcd fine but does it change anything when you overburn...and if so what is the limit in size for overburning for them to still work?

Thanks a bunch
Jules

There is probably no way you can get 830mb on a 80min cd-r, the max I have ever gotten(without overburning) is 807mb, and the reason your file is so big is your minimum bitrate is too high, with 65 minutes of NTSC movie the max bitrate you can fit on a 80min cd-r is 1557kbs with 128kbs audio , this is a bit higher if you are useing NTSC Film,or the Pal template, but you will probably experience very Choppy playback on your dvd player cuz you are encodeing a non-standard frame rate, 14fps is a VERY non-standard frame rate, which means that if you are useing the NTSC Template then Tmpgenc has to make up more than half of the frames of the mpeg out of nothing so you will have a massive ammount of frame duplication which will give you a extremely choppy playback, it might not look as bad on your monitor but on your TV you will definately notice it...Overburnt CD-R"s should play fine on most DVD players but burning them can ruin your CD burner...You should get a Bitrate Calculator so you have an idea what your bitrate should be set at.......

ok so how should i encode it then as a ntsc? How do i change the framerate so that i can encode to a ntsc 29 fps?

thanks
Jules

You can"t...I used to TRY to encode movies that i download off places like Kaaza but the results were allmost allways the same, jumpy playback, and out of sync audio....You can try to encode these movies they are watchable but there will usually be parts in the movie that just look bad..Poeple put these movies out for download with these wierd frame rates cuz the files are half as big as they would be if they would use the proper frame rate, so they can be downloaded quicker.I quickly learned that if I wanted trouble free and high quality vcd/svcd"s then I needed a DVD-Rom and start ripping..they are super Cheap like $70 or less......

Agreed ... if you want perfect results all the time you have to rip the DVD yourself, but for me for instance, the reason why I started encoding to VCD was because I had downloaded films which I didnt necessarily want to rent or buy. I only ever use DVD rip DivX sources,

As for the weird framerates ... I used to use Kazaa, but you never know what you are downloading so for the past year or so I have been using edonkey and couldnt be happier.

The reason why I like edonkey is because there are websites with links to movies on them, so you know the movies have been tried and tested and are good quality. I never use search functionality, just website links.

So if you dont want to rip yourself I would recommend edonkey for getting good quality DivX's

Hi. i am trying to convert a avi file to mpg, and nothing wrong so far. But when im done i just have pictures, no sound. Look like it drops the sound during converting.
I am using only a avi file to convert from, but shouldnt that be enough.
Can anyone plx help me out with it?????

An AVI file is good enough for the Video but not good enough for the audio, Tmpgenc only supports certain audio formats, actually it seems to only Fully support Wav files, you need to extract the audio from your avi file to a wav file with "Virtual Dub" then use that as your audio source, you should do this most times too be safe......

hey, i wanted to record a 233 vcd file into a 70 minutes cd but obviously its not possible. how can i record it in two cds? it doesnt seem to shwo that option!

I guess the odvious way would be to encode the movie and then split it into 3 Parts, sound right to you?? go to "file" to "mpeg tools" to "merge and cut" here you can cut it in half...OR you can use the "Source Range" in the advanced settings to encode your movie in 3 parts, yes 3 parts, there is no way you are going to get 233 minutes of VCD on 2 cd-r"s, ......