I just tried the new version of Cinemacraft Basic, which sells for $58.

The encoding function is very fast and it might do a better job at low bitrates, but managing your work is FAR less efficient.

There are no status bars or reports after encoding (I had to time jobs with a stopwatch!). There is no computer shutdown feature. I don't think there is even a pause and continue. A preview window to catch mistakes (filter errors, wrong file, etc.) during encoding was not evident. Lining up filter frameservering for multiple job runs is extremely cumbersome.

Maybe theses features are all buried, but that would indicate a poor design.

TMPG is only slower on the step that runs overnight, while I am sleeping. The CCE user interface would increase my actual work time and then burn more power by not shutting down the system after running its batch job. The best news: TMPG saved me the $58 I was itching to spend after seeing the CCE Basic announcement.

P.S. CCE Basic does not do 4:2:2P@ML format.

I haven"t tried the New "Basic" Version yet But from what I have read it is Just a Knock off of the CCE 2.64 Lite version which came out over a year ago and retailed for about $250 accept that it has a GUI and a Few new features but still useing the same Encodeing engine as the Lite version and it wasn"t a very good Encoder and it seems that CinemaCraft doesn"t have much faith in it either cuz they are only chargeing $58 for it when there next product up the line is $2000, but I"ll probably give it a Try at some point..The New version of CCE SP that just came out(CCE SP 2.67)Has a Slightly Differant encodeing engine with a Bunch of new encodeing Options Like Multi-Pass CBR and One Pass CBR, and Now it has a Setting were it just encodes the First pass and makes a VAF File then stops so you can make changes in the Bitrate and the Q Matrix, you can even change the Bitrate from Frame to Frame if So Inclined, but it can come in Handy when encodeing Low bitrate movies cuz in action parts of the Movie you can set it so the bitrate is raised for just the Parts you want like Action and Movement Parts so this way you can avoid the BlockyNess that happens with Really low bitrate movies when there is any Action..and CCE Now Judges the Field Order for you and they have taken the Field order setting away, the New encoder engine seems about 5-10% faster than before and has slightly improved Quality, and with this little program called ECL-CCE you can now Save ECL Files in the new Demo versions of CCE, It is still My Favorite Mpeg2 encoder even though it is not very versitile like Tmpgenc but it sure has it"s advantages.....

I am working on archiving large numbers of small clips so monitoring and versatility features are key. Now that DVD-Rs are $1, I just use 15Mbs for all archiving and have a very streamlined process.

Maybe the $58 competition will help focus some effort on speed improvements to TMGPEnc.

Well the Main reason why Tmpgenc is so slow is Because of the Code that it is written in, It is written in Delfi code, They could get Much better speed by useing the Newer and Faster MMX and SSE Routines that are supported in C++, But that would mean rewriteing the whole Program and haveing to speend a Lot of time working out all the Bugs of a New program, i guess they will eventually have to rewrite the whole program if the Competition gets to hot But i guess they are sticking with what works for now, There are supposed to be a Lot of improvements in the Up Comeing Tmpgenc version 3.0, But who knows when that is going to be out, probably within a Year, They are supposedly working with Dolby Labrotories to Put a AC3 audio encoder in Tmpgenc some time in the Future, and a real Frame Rate/ NTSC/Pal converter and Multi-Pass encodeing and Beter Editing..But So Far it just seems to be Talk...The Future will tell...

And also hopefully TMPG will accept do direct YUV decoding which will speed up the encoding even further, but never the less until TMPG can match the quality of CCE I will stick to the unmatched quality of CCE for MPEG2.

ASHY

>And also hopefully TMPG will accept do direct YUV decoding which will speed up the encoding even further, but never the less until TMPG can match the quality of CCE I will stick to the unmatched quality of CCE for MPEG2.

And also hopefully TMPG will accept and do direct YUV decoding which will speed up the encoding even further, but never the less until TMPG can match the quality of CCE I will stick to the unmatched quality of CCE for MPEG2.

ASHY

Can somebody please help me with the meaning of the following phrase - "Index of scan is out of range" By the way, I'm trying to convert an Avi file to SVCD and after 56% of completion it just stops...

Thank you very much

have u tried raising the direct show,go on tmpg enc without the wizard.go on the options and raise the direct show.but u do not use the wizard becouse that uses the default settings works

This error is caused By a Corrupted frame usually from Downloaded Movies, there isn"t much you can do about it Accept Find out at which frame the error happens then use the "Source Range" setting to set up Tmpgenc to start encodeing again a few frames after were the error happens, then after encodeing the last part just join the 2 parts together with the Merge & cut or with an Mpeg editing program like Mpeg2VCR, if done correctly you will hardly be able to see the Part were the 2 parts are joined....

what do I do when I author, or burn, the DVD? For instance, with MySonic, do I placed both files in the project before I burn?

When Authoring a DVD useing Wav as the audio format you are required to Add the Audio and video into the Authoring program seperately, But make sure your Authoring Program supports Wav as an audio format cuz some of the Older and/or cheaper authoring programs only support Mpeg files with Mpeg audio..I"m sure if you looked through the help files for whatever dvd authoring Program you are useing there will be info on how to load seperate audio and video files into it....

Minion: you really seem knowledgeable about all this, so I hope you're OK with me posing a couple of additional questions to you:

1. MyDVD-4, when it comes time to burn, gives an error message that the data rate is too fast for DVD. I adjusted the bit rate down to 5000 and I still got this error message. Any suggestions?

2. Also, do you agree that TMPG Enc. is the best software encoder? If I were to encode the video and audio together in TMPG, would that be a tragedy? I am doing home movies only.

Any idea's?

I ripped xxx using "DVD Decrypter" and have 4 .vob files and the ifo file in my "video_ts directory as well as a text document. Power DVD plays all these vob's OK & I can see all the Film on the PC. I used the Mpegtools in Tmpge and succesfully split & converted to Mpeg the first vob file, but when I do the same steps for the 2nd, 3rd, or 4th vob file it gives me an "illegal Mpeg file" error message.

I got the DVD2AVI software and tried to convert 4 .vob's into a single file. This gave me .d2v file and .ac3 files, I then couldn't get TMPGE to open these files. How do you use TMPGE to re-encode these files? I tried simple multiplex but it couldn't read the .d2v file - it kept saying the file wasn't a vaild mpeg format? I tried to open the project as well but still the same reply

Any idea's what I am doing wrong?


Please help!!!

Thanks

What are you doing wrong??!!
Absolutely everything! You need some serious advice.
Firstly you don't load the Vobs into the MPEG tools.
Secondly you don't use DVD2AVI to create an Ac3 file. It should be a wav.

Neither do you load any of these files into the simple multiplexer.

I think it would take me far to long to post any help for you so I will direct you somewhere that you can get some.

http://www.dvdrhelp.com/sefy/?id=frameserv1.html

If you can't get your d2v loaded then consult the trouble shooting link on the above page.

ASHY

I´m using windows XP. I download the lastest tmpgenc and i want to encode a matrox avi dv (about 40 minutes = 8 gigabytes). It works fine but only encode 9 minutes, then the frame still and the encoding continues to the end, but the image freeze. The preview is the same, the DV file is cut. Why?

It sounds like the 2GB file size limitation. 2GB is a bit over 9 minutes, so there you go :) You can try to create an AVISynth script file where you would join all your files together and then frameserve it to TMPGEnc through VirtualDub.
Hope that helps.

Thanks! but i have windows XP. It was working fine, but...i format disk c and since then all was wrong!
¿How i could configure the disk to avoid that limitation? i have one disk, with 3 partitions, C: (NTFS) E: (FAT32) f: (NTFS) and an external disk fireware.
Thanks!

You would need to encode to a NTFS Partition or Format your Fat32 to NTFS, But that Might not be your Problem, try this and see if it helps go to "File" to "Enviromental settings" to "Vfapi Plugins" and raise the "OpenDML(AVI2)File Reader" to "1" or "2" and then see if the File still stops at the same spot when encodeing..But if it does then reformat the Fat32 partition to NTFS and see if that helps....

When I finish encoding a avi file, there is no sound. This doesnt happen to every movie but some movies dont have sound.

And I would just like to add that before encoding the avi (divx) plays sound.

u need to extract the sound from avi to wav form ...seperatly using virtualdub
then insert the extracted sound in tmpg along with avi

Ok im gonna try that , thank you.

Many DIVX movies now come with Ac3 audio which TMPG can't handle properly nor does Virtualdub.
You need to use AviMux 0.4 (Not AVImux GUI) to extract the audio to a wav.

ASHY

I'm trying to convert a file from avi to mpeg. The sound works ok, but the video is very distorted. There's movement but the picture doesn't fully play on screen and more than half of it is green. Any solution to this?

I use the project wizard. Here are the specs:

Video-CD, NTSC
Non-interlace
1:1 VGA

Thanks.

The Specs of your AVI File would have been Much more usefull..The Only thing I can think of without any other info is that you might try Raiseing the Priority of the "Direct show multi-Media file reader" in the "Vfapi Plugins" to "2"....

Sounds like you are encoding an XVID, make sure you have the correct Codecs installed and drop the Direct Draw down to 0

Should work after that

tiring_day

I just wanted to Let you know that there is a New Freeware Mpeg2 editor Based on DVD2AVI called "Mpeg2Cut", I tried it on a Couple Files and it seemd to work Pretty good for basic cutting files into parts, and it is Really Fast and doesn"t seem to go out of sync when cutting the second half of a file..You can get it here: http://www.digital-digest.com/dvd/downloads/mpeg2cut.html .. You also need to get Libmmd.dll and Mpalib.dll to enabe audio support, you can get them here :http://www.geocities.com/orbital_bearing/MPAlib.zip and http://www.geocities.com/orbital_bearing/libmmd.zip just put the Dll files in the Folder with the Mpeg2Cut exe file..It will come in Handy when you have problem editing with Tmpgenc"s Merge & cut....

This does seem to work pretty well. I can cut out chunks of Mpeg and load them into MediaStudio Pro with good audio sync (even on AIW captures).

The chunks can not be merged back together with TMPG, however. The audio timestamps are not updated and that seems to screw up the Merge tool (at least on the older version I use).

It would be ok if it had a resize option to half size for the preview.

I can't deal with any resolution higher than 800x600. Things are just too small.
At 800x600 you can't see the cut points to set them.

Also had no problem at all joining these MPEGs with TMPG again. Joined MPEG played perfectly.


ASHY

does anyone know how to merge 2 cd's into 1

i have the cd Pearl Harbor and i want to copy both cd's onto 1 DVD-R
does anyone have any ideas about how to do so.
thx much

When you say " I have the CD of Pearl Harbour" I guess you mean a VCD or Pearl Harbour??? what you Can do is after extracting the Mpeg files off of the VCD"s load them Into the Merge & Cut and Join them into One file then use the "Demultiplex" and Demux the audio from the Joined file and load the audio into Tmpgenc and set the Sample Rate Frequency to 48000hz and encode the audio,(To mpeg audio or Wav audio)then if you encoded it to Mpeg audio load the Video and audio into the "Multiplex" and Mux them together and then Author them with your Favorite DVD Authoring Program as 1/4 DVD format..You can probably find a Tutorial at http://www.dvdrhelp.com that will give you a step by step on how to do it....

I'm trying to get converted an AVI file, but at the very end, when just a few seconds left, TMPGEnc would just shut down itself with no messages at all and with seems to be no harm to the system. Here's what I've tried so far with no success:
- Logging the TMPGEnc session: the log file does not show any errors
- Changing different templates (VCD/SCVD): the same result
- Different files: doesn't happen to all of them, but to more then one
- Source format: tried both divx and uncompressed - the same result
- Tried 'healing'/checking programs including VirtualDub, DivxFix and others and they fail to find anything wrong with the files...
- Reinstalling codecs - no use
- Reinstalling TMPGEnc - right, there's no such thing for the free version

Anybody, please help!
Alex.

That happened to me too! It wasn't like that before. I used Source Range to encode a 1-minute clip from the AVI file and TMPGEnc didn't shut down or anything. But when I encoded the 25-minute file, it was almost done and when I went to check on it, the program had disappeared! The converted file was created though only that it can't be played in mplayer2.exe or any other players for some reason. I ran the file in VDub and used the scrolly thing to fast-forward the video and the scenes were fine.

It had never happened to before too...
And in my case the MPEG is incomplete and cannot be played back by some players. Just in case that's relevant: I'm using an AMD based system with Win2K on it.
In addition, the first time I encountered the problem, I actually tried to locate the exact frame number that's causing the failure, and found out that if I shorten the clip legnth by 3 frames, then encoding will pass. BUT! If I set the range, say to 30 frames at the end of the clip including the 3 'bad' frames, then it will pass too! But if I set it to 100 last frames, then it will fail... So, maybe there is no bad frame in the clip? And if no, then what's the problem?

Alex.

That happened to me too! It wasn't like that before. I used Source Range to encode a 1-minute clip from the AVI file and TMPGEnc didn't shut down or anything. But when I encoded the 25-minute file, it was almost done and when I went to check on it, the program had disappeared! The converted file was created though only that it can't be played in mplayer2.exe or any other players for some reason. I ran the file in VDub and used the scrolly thing to fast-forward the video and the scenes were fine.

...and I've also tried both direct file load and frame serve it through VirtualDub, same thing...

Uh...sorry about that extra message, I don't know how that got there. Well, from reading past posts, there might be a chance that your audio is shorter than the video thus TMPGEnc shuts down when the audio runs out? Or, what I've just noticed is that my AVI file is different from all my other past AVI files. My other AVI files had 29.97 fps and I converted them to 29.97 fps. The AVI file I'm converting now had 23.967 fps (or something like that) which I just noticed and I was converting it to 29.97 so that could be a problem. So I'm re-encoding right now so I hope it works. It will be 4 hours before I can tell you the results...!

It doesn't work! The program still shuts down and the finished MPEG file still won't play! Help someone!

Billy, you were right!!! Thanks man for the idea!!!
The audio stream was shorter by a couple of seconds. This is how I fixed it:

1. Separated the audio stream in a separate uncompressed WAV. I had to do this, because for an unknown reason I couldn't get the audio directly from the AVI, otherwise you can use WAVSource(name.avi) command and save yourself some time and disk space.
2. Created a silent one-minute WAV. I figured that I might need this one later for other AVIs, so why not make it more then 2 seconds?
3. Wrote an AVISynth script to take the AVI for video and two WAV files for audio and return their mixture. In my case I was missing just a couple of seconds, so one-minute additional audio is more then enough, if it is not, simply add one or more one-minute WAVs to the mixture...
4. Serve the script to TMPGEnc through VirtualDub and be done!!!

I believe this is something that eventually has to be fixed in TMPGEnc, because obviously this is not good to disappear and cancel an overnight batch job just because of the missing 2 seconds of audio...

Regards,
Alex.

I'm glad I helped you. But the problem still isn't fixed for me. :( I extracted the WAV and the AVI. Both has a length of 24:04! I don't get it.

How big is the source AVI you're trying to convert?
Have you tried to scan for errors?
Are you sure you have ALL the frames you want in your result? It's likely that you're missing some of them.
If not all the frames are present, how far are you from the ending?
If you're trying to create an MPEG2 file, you can try to play it with Intervideo WinDVD - it works for me even if Windows Media Player refuses to play it.

The AVI file is about 174.2MB. How do I scan for errors?

VirtualDub can do that, also AVIFixed helped me once. You can also take a look at this:
http://www.divx-digest.com/software/index3.html#encoding_edit

I used Vdub to check for errors in the video and it says 0 bad frames. So what should I do now? I have never encountered this problem before! :(

I've had these problems too.. and only recently - so i have tried various versions of tmpgenc - all same result... yesterday i unticked the 'use 3D now' box and it seems to have done 3 conversions in a batch with no problems!

Try it.

ok heres one for u....after conversion in tmpg....the last 10 mins of sound are missing....this has happened on 2 diff avi files....any ideas

Make sure you actually specify the start/end frames, and see if that helps.
I've found that by not specifying them, the sound at the end goes missing.

ill try it ...cheers bud

First time I want to say is TMPGEnc are the best mpg 1/2 encoder. But maybe better if there's additional features like auto color, auto level, auto contrast (in adobe photoshop), so beginer like me and maybe many of amateur/beginer/home users with cheap camcorders can produce hollywood quality of film. And how about network rendering ? May be it can reduce the time needed to produce best quality video, because i think not many people have the best modern and expensive computer but maybe they have more than one computer and some of them are running idle. That's all thanks ...