I used tmpgenc v 2.513 to get a mpeg2 video and a wav file.
The original sound is 44 khz and the wav being outputed is 48 khz.
The problem is that the outputted wav sounds distorted. I didnt notice it at
first but when i listen to some high parts i immediately heard there was something wrong. My guess is that the upsampling isn't going correctly.....
I would like to see this problem resolved, or in the meantime a possibiity to output the original wav of the movie without any upsampling or someting.
This way i can use other programs for the upsampling

a happy user of an almost perfect program

PS if i output mpg sound the same problem occurs (obviously),
so to all of u who are converting a movie with 44khz sound:
LISTEN CAREFULLY TO THE SOUND, cause it probabely is distorted

I'm a beginner and this is just my opinion, but what not try to convert it to 44khz instead of 48? You can just go to Audio and then switch it back to 44.

to Sakuya :
I want linear PCM audio output.... this is only possible at 48 khz, and since the upsampling isn't going to well, i prever not to use any of tmpeg's audio options since i dont know if the other options work ok. I would rather see that tmpenc would just leave the sound alone and give a direct copy of the original sound.

Did you check the "Sampling Frequency Convertor" setting under Option -> Environmental Setting -> Audio Engine.

By default it's set to "Low Quality", switching it to "High Quality" will result in a great improvement, at least for the tests I made.

Thx trance for helping a noob, i didnt know it was possible to choose bad quality :), so i didnt looke at the extra features.
It seems like a useless feature to create bad sound, and even stranger is to choose bad quality as the default.
Does someone now how to pass the sound without modifying it. It is possible to let an extern programm handle the sound, so i need a dummy program that doesnt do anythin with the sound.

If you are a noob with TMPG then please refrain from posting problems as Bug reports until you have substantiated by asking questions on this BBS that it is indeed a bug.

As for converting the sound without modifying it, what do you mean buy not modifying it?

Many audio programs will convert the sample rate of the audio in your file. All you need to do is demux it. Even then with many programs you don't even need to demux it.
Virtualdubmod will quite happily accept most formats and extract the audio to a wav with resampling. If use TMPG you can output any audio to a wav and acheive any sample rate from 8Khz to 48Khz, 16bit or 8bit.

to ashy:
how would U call it when u get sucky sound??? an extra feature?!
i think nobody has problems when this "option" is omited. Maybe i didnt know how to solve it (thanks to a great UNintuitive GUI) but i think when u get bad sound its still a bug, escpecialy when it is the default value. Maybe its better to change the name from "bad quality" to "useless quality" and give a warning like "you are totaly screwing the sound in this mode, are you shure u want to get useless sound? "

"As for converting the sound without modifying it, what do you mean buy not modifying it?"

what i mean (and what i said) is that i want to get an exact copy from the sound out of the avi. I know it is possible to extract the sound with other programs, but when i cut scenes in tmpegenc this isn't an option.
If i got 44khz wav i want to keep the original 44khz wav. strangely this isnt an option.

i know u dont like it if "noobs" post bugs that arent bugs, but when u have encoded a 22 GB movie and thrown away the original cause the mpeg2 version is seamingly ok, and u find out the sound just sucks, its a bit frustrating (understatement).

maybe this isn't a real "bug" but it certanly is a "bug" in the GUI.

to ashy:

u said "If use TMPG you can output any audio to a wav and acheive any sample rate from 8Khz to 48Khz, 16bit or 8bit." if i choose Linear PCM i can only choose 48000, do u got a diffeerent verion than me ?(i got v2.513.53.162)

>how would U call it when u get sucky sound??? an extra feature?!

Hmm... yes actually.
Look, what does it say about the option and why is it there? It says 'Low quality(high speed)'...get it?
Which is precisely what it is. It is entirely your own fault that you do not check your settings before encoding or check the output before doing something as stupid as deleting the source.
Also the low quality option is NOT useless as you say.
The option is there for creating low quality output at higher speed. Not every body has the need to create a perfect high quality output.
If you are such a perfectionist why did you not check your settings before encoding?

>maybe this isn't a real "bug" but it certanly is a "bug" in the GUI.
In reality what you are saying with your statements is that if TMPG's default settings aren't to *YOUR* liking then they are all bugs!
Come on get real man.
If that was the case then almost every setting in TMPG would be a bug to me as far as the settings are concerned.

>what i mean (and what i said) is that i want to get an exact copy from the sound out of the avi. I know it is possible to extract the sound with other programs, but when i cut scenes in tmpegenc this isn't an option.
>If i got 44khz wav i want to keep the original 44khz wav. strangely this isnt an option.

Well obviously it isn't an option. If you are creating a DVD from these files you CANNOT use 44.1khz audio. It MUST be resampled to 48khz.
If you do not want TMPG to resample the audio then simply extract the wav and resample it to 48khz with another program then use that as your audio source.

>u said "If use TMPG you can output any audio to a wav and acheive any sample rate from 8Khz to 48Khz, 16bit or 8bit." if i choose Linear PCM i can only choose 48000, do u got a diffeerent verion than me ?(i got v2.513.53.162)

What I meant is you can use TMPG to convert any audio to a wav file with these options when creating just a wav file. File>Output to file>WAVE file

Hi,

This was discused previously, concerning DV encoding, but I can no longer reply to the tread.
I experienced problems trying to encode a 50 fps progressive video to 25 fps interlaced, and just find the solution.

My source video is a computer animation, the 1993 Amiga's "Desert Dream" demo, if you ever heard about it :-) I recorded it using WinUAE.

This video is made of very fast animations scene, where each of the 50 fps is different.
My concern was to keep the animations as smooth as the original, because this is precisely the smoothness of the animations that made those demo so striking.

My source video was 720 * 576 at 50 fps.

The original resolution is actually 720 * 288, at 50 fps, but on my video, each field have been doubled (even field is the same as odd field), giving the progessive 720*576 source.

What I wanted is a 25 fps interlaced video using odd field of frame 1, and even field of frame 2, to keep the animation as smooth of the original when watching on TV (I don't care of watching it on PC).

My first try was the open the 50 fps AVI file in TMPGEnc, with source type "Non-Interlaced (progressive)" and target format 25 fps "Interlaced".

I though TMPEGEnc would render the interlaced fields using odd field of source frame 1 (at 1/50th second) and even field of source frame 2 (at 2/50th second).
This would recreate the original smoothness of the video, but this is not what TMPEGEnc made.
It simply skipped even frames from the source video, and encoded odd frames as interlaced. :-(

I finally resolved my problem using AVISynth and the following AVS file:
==============
AVISource("DesertDream.avi")
AssumeFieldBased
VerticalReduceBy2
Weave
==============
It produce a 25 fps interlaced stream from my 50 fps progressive video.
If the source video was 720*288, "VerticalReduceBy2" would be unnecessary.

I opened the AVS file on TMPEGEnc, with the source type as "Interlaced (Bottom Field first)", and target type as "Interlaced"

I checked the result on my TV, and it was perfect. :-)

Ashy was true concerning the preview of the result using TMPEGEnc.
If the result is interlaced, TMPEGEnc preview use a "Smoth Deinterlace" methode, preventing to check whether result is correclty interlaced.

I finally used "Womble Multimedia Mpeg-VCR" to check whether the result was correctly interlaced or progressive, as it dont't use any filter to display the video.

I hope this will help you, because I searched myself 2 days to find the solution, mainly because I checked the result inside TMPEGEnc.
During 2 days, I though my (correct) result was wrong...

If you would have just Posted here Me or Ashy could have told you how to do it with AVISynth, As most poeple Know Tmpgenc doesn"t do correct Frame rate conversions and in this Case it would throw away every second Frame to make up the 25fps...Cheers

Actually, I first tryed to find a solution by myslef, because I don't like to flood forums with Newbies question. :-)

As I am not very familiar with TMPEGEnc, I though I was doing something wrong.
The problem actually lies on the TMPEGEnc field rendering routine.

Thanks anyway for your support offer. :-)

The script you wrote can be improved.

Try this experiment. Take some interlaced broadcast video and perform SeperateFields. Play the result and notice the video has a slight frame to frame vertical jitter.

If you Weave back together you get an exact match of the original proving that Weave is the inverse of SeparateFields (as documented) and requires shifted fields.

A Weave performed on native progressive video that has only been resized will result in each line being out of position by 1/2 pixel.

The solution is simple. Do the following to shift each field either up or down:

vid_50 = vid_src.BiLinearResize(720, 575)

v_ff = vid_50.SelectEven().AddBorders(0,1,0,0).VerticalReduceBy2()
v_sf = vid_50.SelectOdd().AddBorders(0,0,0,1).VerticalReduceBy2()

# Generate top-field-first video
Interleave(v_ff, v_sf).AssumeFieldBased().AssumeTFF().Weave()

SmoothDeinterlace(Doublerate = true) will do the same...

I am trying to encode to .m2v (DVD NTSC) and TMPGEnc keeps outputting 2 files the video and the audio. Am i doing something wrong? Or does it always output the two files?

Tmpgenc can only output a Single Mpeg file with audio and video in it when you choose "Mpeg1 Layer 2 audio" as the Audio format for your DVD..If you are trying to Make a DVD then your DVD authoring Program should be able to accept seperate Video and audio files ,Most good DVD authoring Programs will accept seperate audio and video files....

Its better to have seperate audio and video files. All the authoring software i know accept seperate audio and video files. I dont know if they would be accepted if they were merged (multiplexed).

Also u can output a single file if u choose System(video+audio) or multiplex them after it with de multiplextool INSIDE tmpegenc

BTW i dont use tmpegenc to convert my audio, havent had much succes (quality) with it.

Hi,
if the file (avi) that needs to be copied is too big to fit on a cd is there a way of breaking up the file into 600mb or 700mb pieces?? if not is there a program that can????

Thanks,
BaluXP

I know if you use "Source" in the wizard that you can cut it into pieces. I also know of a nifty program called "AVI Chop" that does the job well.

Use the Merge&Cut feature in the TMPG MPEGtools and split your file into 800mb parts.
TMPG uses time coding to split mpegs so you will have to guess.

I've set a sepperate audio source via .wav and everything, but every time I get this error at the end of the process before it starts conversion. Does anybody have some idea what might be wrong? I'm pretty sure I have all my xvid, divx, dvd, etc. codecs installed.

An ACM error indicates a codec problem.

Any idea what codec? I can't seem to find what to replace/update...

Actually, I found that I converted it to wav the wrong way, but now that I have corrected that error, I get another:

"Write error occured at address 77F83AED of module 'ntdll.dll' with 00000000."

ACM means "Audio compression Manager" and if the File is a XViD file then the Problem is Probably because the audio is either AC3 or VBR Mp3 which Tmpgenc doesn"t Natively support as an audio source format..You will probably have to extract the audio from the XviD file to Wav format then use the Wav file as the audio source, I usually do this with "AVI-Mux"..

The NTDLL.Dll error is usually caused By the XViD codec, you should maybe try installing the "FFDShow Mpeg-4 Decoder" and use it instead of the XviD codec to decode the file, This will usually stop the error...

Thanks a bunch. I downloaded fddshow, but how do I tell it which decoder to use?

After installing FFDShow it will have a Configuration Page were you set up all of it"s settings, Make sure that you set it up to Decode XviD files, and you Might want to delete the XviD codec if you do not use it for Compression Because FFDShow can decode most AVI Formats...

TMPGEnc starts processing a rather large (2.1Gig) mpeg file but only gets about 17 to 29% into it before it quits responding and locks up. I check the task manager and it goes from using 99% processing power to 0. When it gets to 0 the program becomes unresponsive. Infact the only way to stop it is to "End Task" using windows Task Manager.
I have downloaded a TV show from my replayTV (this isthe large MPEG file 2.1gig) I have a bit rate error when I try to have DVDit try to write it directly to DVD. So I am trying to processs the file to reduce the bit rate. I have sucessfully accomplished this with MainConcepts MPEG Encoder however I want to use the cliping ability of TMPGEnc to make it the 16x9 size. I have not even started on that yet, I can't get TMPGEnc to even process this file with the default settings. Help!

Are you Loading the Mpeg2 file directly into Tmpgenc??? if so this isn"t the Best way to encode a Mpeg2 file with Tmpgenc, You should use "DVD2AVI" to Frameserve the Mpeg2 file to Tmpgenc, this is the Best and Fastest way to encode Mpeg2 files with Tmpgenc...

Hi

I experienced the problem with TMPGEnc freezing (even using frameserve) with all version later than 2.5.10.
Never had this proplem with 2.5.10 and before. I would recommend you try with version 2.5.10.

msp

>I have downloaded a TV show from my replayTV (this isthe large MPEG file 2.1gig) I have a bit rate error when I try to have DVDit try to write it directly to DVD

What bitrate error? Is DVD telling you the bitrate is too high? If so this can easily be corrected with DVDpatcher.

I also forgot to mention you can also correct the aspect ratio too with DVDpatcher.

Thanks for the Comments.
I will try DVD2AVI, I have heard of this but did not realize this was needed for TMPGEnc to work with MPEG2 files. (and I will look for version 2.5.10.
Ashy Any help you can give me to get the replay TV shows to DVD will be appreciated. I have ususally get a bit rate error unless I process the file with something like TMPGEnc or Mainconcepts MEPG encoder before I try to burn it. I have met with limited success 2 DVD's that work, 3 coasters, and about 6 DVD-RW that also failed. Nothing consistant. I will look for DVDpatcher and try it. Thanks again.

What is the error you are receiving?

Im tryin to convert a movie and cut it but comes up with:

Read error occurred at address 77F8381B of module 'ntdll.dll' with 016618ED

Write error occurred at address 77F83AED of module 'ntdll.dll' with 00000000

How do i fix this problem?

Sounds like you are encodeing a XviD file?? If so then Install the FFDShow Decoder and use it to decode the file with Tmpgenc instead of useing the XviD codec, this should stop the error...

I have been using Author to chop the beginning and ends off captured video from a WinTv PVR 250 capture card. Normally the end result is as expected, however occasionally when playing the resulting vob files (either direct from the hard disk or after burning to DVD), there is a high pitched audio click as the film starts to play, followed by silence and the video appearing slightly fast.

Pressing fastforward/rewind or skipping chapters causes the audio to start and the video to run as normal, in sync.

If you reproduce the authoring process except cut one master frame less or more from the beginning of the file and the error doesn't occur.

This is repeatable on the affected input files.

I am having trouble with my second half of a pcm_avi film I am encoding. The first half is ok and the sound in sync, but I start the second half of the film on the last frame of the first half I've encoded ( as I have always done) but, on checking, the audio is out of sync with the film. The sound is in front of the frames and I can't seem to match them up together. I also get the purplish aura as I am encoding now. What am I doing wrong as my films have always turned out perfect before using TMPGEnc

Why are you doing it in halves. Are you using the source range?
This method has been known to cause this problem before. I would encode the whole thing then split the movie in half.
The purplish aura is usually due to the angel potion codec and was probably installed with one of those ridiculous pain in the ass codec packs which cause nothing but problems.
Bloating your system and installing every codec known to man with these crazy codec packs is not the way to go.

The way I sync my movies is with Virtualdub. Simply use the audio skew feature and check it until you get it synched then just frameserve it to TMPG or directly add that value in the source range in TMPG when encoding.
If the audio gradually gets out of sync then this is usually a sign of corrupt frames in the AVI. You would then need to find them and encode up to that pon it then change the skew setting again and encode the rest.
You can then join the files with merge&cut in TMPG after encoding.

Thanks Ashy, I have deleted the A P codec meg4 and my film is back to normal, and you were also right about the corrupt Avi file, I have spent weeks trying to do this film ( being fairly new to encoding) I will try the virtual dub as yes I use the source range which seems the easiest for me, Many thanks

Hi everyone! I was wondering if anyone out there can help me with this probem, I'm not an expert in encoding AVI files to MPEG files, but I know the baic. I have this little problem. I used VIRTUAL DUB Then THPGEnc to encode AVI file to MPEG, but my finish product always come out a noticeable color changes throughout the whole movie, theres a purplish or bluish cube like picture, but the avi files looks perfect color before convertion, is there any sofware out there that i can use to improve the color quality of my AVI before I convert them to MPEG using TMPGEnc, so I'll have the exact color/picture quality as the original AVI file? Pls. Help. Thanks so much to anyone who can give me advice.

Yancy

Sounds Like you Might Have the "Angel Potion Codec" installed, This codec causes Purple and Pink Color discoloration is Mpeg files encode by Tmpgenc, You should look for this Codec and delete it if you have it installed, The File might be listed as "apmpeg4v3.dll"....

Well, does video quality have anything to do with this? Also, with fps. I encoded a DVD-rip to 30fps and the color was pretty good. When I convert it to 29.97fps and viewed it on the computer, the gradients looked blocky. I swear it wasn't there before!

You can"t just decode to Encode it to 30fps or 29,97fps you have to encode it to the same Frame rate as the Source file and if you want to make a NTSC DVD out of the source file it has to be either 23.98fps or 29.97fps and it it is 23.98fps then you will have to use 3:2 pulldown or the "23.98fps(29.97fps internally)" setting to make it 29.97fps which is the NTSC DVD Standard Frame rate........

I'm encoding it onto 2 VCDs...so are the color changes normal?

I was wondering if opening other programs affect the speed of the encoding process? When I open an Internet browser (like now), the speed won't increase. But when I opened the DivX Player 2.0 to watch an AVI while encoding (it's not the same as the AVI that is encoding), TMPGEnc froze...or actually, it paused. When I stopped the AVI in the player, TMPGEnc resumed.

When I played an AVI in VDub, TMPGEnc slowed down and needed 16 hours to complete! I quickly closed VDub and the 16 hours dropped. Will the mplayer2.exe affect TMPGEnc? I have nothing to do while encoding a movie which takes a long time. So I want to at least what some other files I downloaded without increasing the encoding speed. Is this possible?

Also, I have a somewhat slow computer. 3D processor 400 MHz if that means anything to you. I have 288MB memory (42% utilized). And to encode the second half of a 52-minute movie, it takes me 10 hours! TMPGEnc and Vdub is messing around with me so I don't know the original source's fps. But I'm encoding it to 29.97fps. TMPGEnc says (at the bottom) 30fps when I open the AVI to encode. While VDub's File Information menu says it is 23.976fps. Is there a way to speed up the process? And which program provides the accurate information?

Well I think it is quite obvious that you can't really watch an AVI or do other things with your PC while encoding!
Encoding is very CPU intensive even more so on a slow dinosaur such as yours.
Why don't you do the sensible thing and just encode the movie while you sleep. It's what I used to do before I upgraded to a 2.8ghz P4.

How to speed up the process?
Your PC is now very slow by todays standards and with the price of CPU's nowadays it's worthwhile upgradeing if you intend to do a lot of encoding.
What used to take me 10 hours now takes me 1 hour.
You can pick up 1.5ghz p4's on ebay for something like $50.

To answer your other question. Virtualdub is probably correct. You have probably selected the NTSC template in TMPG which means that the framerate will show at the bottom will be the frame rate of the template not the AVI.
You need to unlock the settings then load your AVI before loading a template. TMPG should then correctly detect the frame rate.

I think It Is time for an Upgrade, You can do it For VERY Cheap these days, I just Upgraded a Friends CPU to a New Athlon XP 2000+ and a New ECS MotherBoard for Under $100 US on EBay and you can probably get it cheaper than this if you looked, I just upgraded to a New ASRock(ASUS) MotherBoard with a SIS-645DX ChipSet and a New P-4 2.53ghz CPU for $250 US(Intel P-4"s are Quite a Bit more expensive than Athlons)..It might be worth looking into Cuz encodeing on a 400MHZ PC is going to take a Lot of time you could spend doing something more constructive than waiting 24 hours to encode a movie.....

$100 is cheap?! :( But it would be very nice to encode 60-minute movies in 1 hour...would you prefer an upgrade or a whole new computer? I don't want to encode overnight because I worry that my hard drive will burn up, literally. :(

Also, last night, I didn't finish encoding. I encoded the second part of a movie and it took me 9 hours! At 10:30PM, I just couldn't keep the computer on and I was dying to go to sleep. So I aborted it. It still had 1 and a half hour to go! Just now, I used TMPGEnc's cutting function to cut out the bad parts at the end. Then, I tried to pinpoint the exact frame in which the encoded video ended and decided to pick up encoding right at that point using Source Range. Are you with me? Well, I can't pinpoint it exactly because the Source Range shows the entire movie file and my encoded sequence was only the second half so the times, and frame numbers don't match. What'll I do? :( I am currently encoding what I THINK is the correct frame. What if it isn't? :(

If you don't know what I'm trying to do by pinpointing the frame which the sequence I already encoded left off, it's so after I finish encoding the second sequence I can merge them together. So to make it seamless, I would want the exact frame in which the first sequence ended and then the next frame would be the start of the next sequence...@_@

Hmm.....I don't think you need worry about your hard drive. Hard drives are built to run continuously for years.

You didn't need to abort the encoding entirely either.
The next time you wish to stop the encoding to do something else with your PC, simply click the stop button, but don't abort. This will pause the program. When you are ready to begin encoding again just cancel the abort.
If you want to move TMPG out of the way while you do other things just drag TMPG over as far to the bottom as possible off your screen then press ENTER then move the abort box out of the way too.

If you wish to stop using your PC all together halfway through encoding then simply press stop to pause the process, but don't abort entirely then hibernate your machine. When you are ready to begin encoding again just boot your PC and cancel the abort.

To start encoding from where you left off it is easy to find the exact frame.
Just load the part you have already encoded into TMPG then click File>Preview then move the slider to the very end. Note the frame number. Then start the encoding from the next frame after that in the source range.

Thanks! What do you mean by hibernate the PC? I have never tried to put my computer to sleep because I fear that I don't know what to press to make it come back on. :(

Which operating system are you using?

Windows 2000

Can anyone tell me the best way to convert movies downloaded from the net to DVD's.

These are DivX movies. I currently use the default settings in TMPGEnc DVD format NTSC not 16x9. Then use the other program Tmpgenc DVD version.

Then Nero to burn the DVD.

Anyone have fine tuning or adjustments for me. I want the best standards. I use a highend computer with 1GB of ram......

Thanks,

As best I understand it, The movies you get won't fit on a DVD because once they are converted they are too big. Now I'm not sure if this is entirely true, because i've converted some AVI's to mpegs that, after conversion, are roughly 2.1 gig instead of the 7 or 8 you may commonly get. The reason I've been told that you can't burn feature films to DVD is because the movie industry can change the bitrate at different parts of the movie to keep the average bitrate down, and because they use DVD-9's which hold close to 9 gig of data. This as opposed to the DVD-5's that we use which only hold 4.7 gig. If i figure out how to convert them I'll let you know

>The reason I've been told that you can't burn feature films to DVD is because the movie industry can change the bitrate at different parts of the movie to keep the average bitrate down

There is no reason why you can't burn movies to DVD.
The bitrate of an original DVD or AVI movie for that matter has nothing whatsoever to do with being able to fit it on to another disk.
When encoding what matters is length of the source not it's bitrate.
All commercial DVD's use a VBR (Variable bit rate) method of encoding, usually using bitrates between 2kb/s and 9.8kb/s. Some of these may not fit on to a regular DVDr disk.
The simple solution is to simply lower the max bitrate when encoding.
You will most likely not even notice a difference even with a max bitrate as low as 5kb/s.

As for commercial DVD's holding 9 gigs of data. This is simply due to all the extras included on the disk such as extra languages, subs, commentarys, angles and menus, all of which are unecessary.
To be honest most movies will easily fit on to a regular DVDr without even re-encoding once all the above has been stripped.

As for converting AVI's to DVD. Like I said just simply set reasonable bitrates and it will easily fit on a DVDr with hardly any loss in quality.

Okay so I'll use the default setting under DVD encoding (2pass VBR.....)

But would it improve the movie if I set the "motion search prrecision" to highest quality. And are there any other tweeks to set to improve the over all movie.

Thanks,

Steven

Constant Quality(CQ) is actually the best method to use for encoding DVD it's much quicker than 2pass and is the method commercial DVD's use, but it is harder to define the final output size.

Don't use 'Highest quality' for motion search as it has no benefit over 'High' except for almost doubling the encode time.
Also setting the quantize matrix setting to 'MPEG standard' gives better results.
If your source is progressive then encode it to 'Non-interlace' in the 'encode mode'. Not only will this improve the output, but will save some filesize due to the fact that interlace lines are harder to compress and use more bitrate.
'DC component' precision should be set at 10.

Okay I understand. But what suggestions would you have for the CQ settings? Assume the file is about 700mb divx DVD rip. Min, max and quality setting under CQ.

Also how do I know if the movie is Non interlace or not?

Thanks

If you load your File into Tmpgenc useing the "Wizard" it analizes the File to see if it is Progressive or Interlaced and if it is Interlaced it judges the Correct Field order and sets it to the correct setting so if you use the Wizard you will find out these things about your file...

There is no point in telling me the size of the source file. This has no regard to the resulting file size of the encoded MPEG. It is the length of the source which is important NOT it's file size.

Okay so I set the rate to CQ. Asuming the movie is about 1 1/2 hours long can I set the quality to 100 and what about the min and max 8000-1000? With padding or without?

I also set the motion to high and component to 10 is this correct?

Lastly why would a movie that was with VBR = 4gb be 2.5gb at CQ =100 .... as above?

Thanks

If you are creating a DVD you cannot set your bitrate below 2000kb/s if you want to keep within standard limits and to be honest anything below 1800kb/s will start to show noticible blocks.
You don't say what resolution your AVI file is?

I doubt there would be any need to set your max bitrate as high as 8000kb/s.
6000kb/s should be more than adequate. Actually TMPG's standard DVD settings create quite good results, but reducing the max to 6000kb/s and upping the slider to 80 or so will probably improve the image overall.

Setting the motion search to 'high' and including all the other tweaks I previously mentioned should improve things.
Also if your audio is already compressed in your AVI or is in AC3 format then there is no point in creating a PCM wav from it. If it's Ac3 then simply leave it as it is and demux it.
Make sure your VBV buffer is set at 224 and detect scene change is ticked.
If it's some other compressed format then convert it to MP2.

About the padding this depends on your DVD player. If it's quite tolerant with lower than standard bitrates then there is no need to check it as this will save on file size. If you machine does have problems when the bitrate drops low then you need to check this option.