I've searched through the archive for people's comparisons between motion estimate search, normal and high quality motion search precisions.

I just accidentally encoded a vid using "motion estimate", normally using "high quality", but I noticed very good results and am comparing them with the same vid encoded with "high quality". The source is captured from VHS home movies, and I'm comparing scenese that actually have some nauseating camera motion.

My question is: does anyone have a definite opinion these days that one is better than the other? Is there a general consensus on what to use? I would love to use the faster precision if it got me the same or better, but am also kind of fanatical.

I don't need an explanation of what the various methods do, thanks.
I'll post my comparison results in, oh, a couple hours...

It depents on your Source, the used Bitrate and the Encode Mode (progressive or interlaced).

Here a couple of simple Rules:

Highest: Only for interlaced Source, interlaced encoding

High: Progressive and interlaced Source/Encoding at low/medium Bitrates

Normal: Progressive at low, interlaced at high Bitrates

Motion Estimate: Progressive only at high Bitrates

But like i said: It depents on your Source and Settings.

I read this tutorial on converting video files to MPEG-2 for DVD. They say that if the source AVI has 23.976 fps, then I should set the framerate as 23.976 fps (internally 29.97 fps) in TMPGEnc Plus and then set the Encode Mode to 3:2 Pulldown When Playback. Is there a reason for this? Because TMPGEnc's default DVD (NTSC) template has automatically set it at 29.97 fps. Just wondering the reason for this.

Yes there is, but the reason will take far too long to explain here. Try a search on google for 3:2 pulldown.

Basically pulldown makes a 23.976 fps MPEG into a 29.97 fps without changing the actual framerate by using flags within the MPEG to tell the DVD player to repeat certain frames or to be more exact certain fields.
Simply just altering the frame rate would cause all sorts of problems. Such as play back artifacts and even A/V desync.

I Encoded some of my children videos using the wizard option:
DVD->PAL->CBR Mpeg-1 Layer II Audio (mp2)
This gave me a single mpeg file in DVD format (Audio & Video inside).
Unfortunately #1 : my DVD player can not directly read mpeg files.
Unfortunately #2 : I donÃÕ have the source movies files.
Can I (How?) make from those mpeg files a compatible DVD disc?

You have to author the mpeg-2 files.

Download TMPGEnc DVD Author. (Banner on the bottom of this page). This program will also burn the files to dvd for you.

There is a trial, if you like it you can purchase it.

Revision:

You said you used CBR Mpeg-1 Layer II Audio.
This is not DVD, it is VCD.

My suggestion above is for mpeg-2 files.

You can try to use a program like Nero 6 to create the VCD for you.

MPEG1 layer2 or Mp2 as it is called is a valid audio format for DVD if your DVD is PAL. However most if not all NTSC DVD players will have no problem playing back Mp2 audio.

I read the question too quickly. I thought it said mpeg-1 video. My first posting was correct that you need to author with a program like TMPGEnc DVD Author.

David is correct you will need to author the MPEG with TMPG DVD author.

I get the following message:
"Write error occured at adress 77F83AED of module 'ntdll.dll" at 00000000"
What can possibly be wrong here?

Is it possible your AVI is XVID?
This problem can usually be solved by uninstalling the XVID codec and then installing FFDSHOW.

ASF/wmv files keep crashing TMPGEnc plus. PLease Help!

Mani

I have dozens of AVI files i would like to burn onto a DVD.
I am very new with the whole process, and i'm unfamiliar with even the basics.
My avi's are 24 minutes long and 190 megs in size, 640x480 in dimensions.
When creating a VCD with a standard CD-R, i'm able to fit 3 episodes onto 1 cd.
How many episodes can i fit onto a DVD with near/better quality then that of a VCD?

All i know is that i have to encode the AVI into DVD format? I'm using TMPGenc to do this; however my files end up turning out to over a gig. When i decrease the bit rate, the lowest it will go is 500 mb.

Other then what i've listed above... i don't know what other steps are involved in the task that i'm trying to accomplish.

Any suggestions? help would be really appreciated thanks!

p.s i've searched all over google, forums, and faq's and i can't find any information that could help with my situation, since i am trying to burn multiple avi files instead of 1 huge one,
thanks again

If you are burning to DVD then you have almost 4.5 Gb to play with. A DVDR will take up to 4.37GB, so your 1GB file will fit quite comfortably.

The number of AVI's you will be able to fit will depend on the bitrate you choose, but if you use the wizard and just set the output for DVD you should be fine.

In addition to above.
It may be better if you were to number the AVI's in the order you wish to burn them like so...file001.avi...file002.avi...file003.avi and so on and then in TMPG goto Option>Enviromental setting>General and then put a check in the 'Open sequence files as a movie' box.
Then just load your first AVI and the rest will follow in sequence.

If you would rather have each movie as a seperate track on the DVD then you will have to encode each one individually.

Ohhh i figured my last question out too
sorry for the trouble

I'm not sure what i should do with the settings...
Rate Control Mode,
a good Bit rate that provides vcd quality, but isnt higher then it has to be..
DC component precision?
motion search precision?

thanks for the help :)

I encoded the video, and i have it the size i want etc.

The problem is that the outputted MPG file has no audio?
i checked the box Video (Audio + video)

What's wrong?

Thanks~

Have you checked in Virtualdub whether or not your source AVIs have AC3 audio? If it does, TMPGEnc mostly likely will not be able to read it.

No, i haven't...
what should i do in order for TMPGENC to read it if that is the case?

There are usually 2 reasons why there may n ot be any audio in the ouput.
One is because the audio is AC3 and the other is because it is VBR mp3.
If it's the first then you need to install the AC3 ACM decompressor.
If it's the second then raising the priority of the 'Directshow file reader' to 2 usually solves it.

I've used VirtualDub and i've found out that the video is a VBR MP3.
For that, Ashy, you've suggested that i change the directshow file reader to 2.
I was looking around on an FAQ for how to go about doing this and on the TMPGENC FAQ it says...
"The file is probably Type-1 DV format. The format is not supported by TMPGEnc. Type-1format has different structure from AVI format. TMPGEnc can not read the format since TMPGEnc does not support DirectShow."

does this mean that i have to find another encoding program?

-Thank you for your time

Hi Jonny.

Open your avi file in VirtualDub. Go to the menu under "File" then click on "Save wav...". This will convert the vbr mp3 into a regular wav file that TMPGEnc can handle.

Now open TMPGEnc and open your avi file. Instead of using the audio from the avi file, use the wav file that you just made using VirtualDub.

So the two boxes on the bottom left of TMPGEnc should look something like:

Video Source: C:myFile.avi
Audio Source: C:myFile.wav

This should solve your audio problems.

Let us know how it goes.

Ohhh its working great, thanks a lot guys

No problems now ;p
at least until i get to the burning phase.... anways ;p

take care!

It is usually not advisable to convert VBR mp3 to a wav with Virtualdub as it will usually add some skew to the output file and therefore cause A/V desync.

TMPG will handle VBR mp3 just fine if you raise the priority of the Directshow file reader.
You can find it at Options>Enviromental settings>VFAPI plugins

I have dozens of AVI files i would like to burn onto a DVD.
I am very new with the whole process, and i'm unfamiliar with even the basics.
My avi's are 24 minutes long and 190 megs in size, 640x480 in dimensions.
When creating a VCD with a standard CD-R, i'm able to fit 3 episodes onto 1 cd.
How many episodes can i fit onto a DVD with near/better quality then that of a VCD?

All i know is that i have to encode the AVI into DVD format? I'm using TMPGenc to do this; however my files end up turning out to over a gig. When i decrease the bit rate, the lowest it will go is 500 mb.

Other then what i've listed above... i don't know what other steps are involved in the task that i'm trying to accomplish.

Any suggestions? help would be really appreciated thanks!

By using Half-D1 (352x576/352x480), you can store up to 14 Episodes on one DVD, i suggest to store only 12 Episodes.

By using Full-D1 (704x576/704x480) you have enough Space to store up to 10 Episodes on a DVD.

I'm running Win2k Pro sp4 with 768MB physical RAM, so you'd think that memory problems would be the least of my worries...

Updated to 2.521 and found that about 20 minutes into encoding (mpeg-1 to smaller bitrate mpeg-1) I'd suddenly get endless disk thrashing and the system would slow to a crawl. Did some checking and found that available physical memory starts out at over 500MB but slowly shrinks down to <5MB at which time the disk thrashing starts. Processing speed goes way down and estimated time just keeps going up. Also, total memory used goes from about 200MB to over 1000MB as soon as I start encoding.

After I figured this out, I suddenly realized why cut editing the mpeg-1 files was taking so long. Lots of disk thrashing during that, too.

Went back to 2.56 and found that available physical memory stays pretty much constant as I encode and total memory stays at about 250MB. Processing time was about what I remember from before and cut editing is snappy.

According to the revision history, just after 2.56 there was a change in how mpeg-1 files were read, now using decoder by Microsoft through directshow. I'm assuming that's the cause of the problem.

My questions are: Has anybody else noticed this problem? Does anybody know of a VFAPI or other method that can let me use some other mpeg-1 decoder with 2.512? Or should I just stick with 2.56?

I like to use the CRI Sofdec that is built into TMPGEnc to decode MPEG-1. To make sure TMPGEnc uses it, go into "Environmental Settings" from the options menu and raise it to the top prioriy. This will prevent any directshow mpeg-1 decoders from being used.

I could not find anything like CRI Sofdec listed in my Environment Settings. I found another thread which says that the CRI selection does not come with the free version which is what I am using. I probably should have mentioned before that I was using the free version but the link I clicked to get here said "To the bulletin board of the free version of TMPGEnc" so I thought that would be assumed.

I have set the Microsoft MPEG-1 decoders to the lowest priority and am processing a test file now. I assume either/both the Ligos or Cyberlink MPEG-2 decoders (the only other MPEG decoders listed) are decoding the MPEG-1 file for me.

I had assumed that it was included in the free version. (I have not used the free version in such long time and as there is no forum for the plus version this is where most people post.)

If you don't want to use the Microsoft decoder then just install ffdshow and configure it to decode mpeg1 if you don't want to use ligos or cyberlink.

Seems strange that you are having this problem with memory hogging even when cutting MPEGs.
When cutting the MPEG decoder is not used (or so I believe). The MPEG is cut at binary level and therefore doesn't need a decoder.
The decoder is only used when placing the cut points.

You could try just raising the priority of the MPEG1 decoder to highest in the list.

Ashy: by "cut editing" I mean when I'm cutting commercials out of MPEG-1 files (640x480 24fps 4000, captured from cable TV with Asus Digital VCR software) using the Source Range filter under Settings, so that I don't see commercials or credits when I recode at a lower bitrate. I assume that the MPEG-1 decoder is used to show me the still pictures I use to determine where my cut points are, and that's where the slowdown is. What I mean to say is that with 2.56, I could drag the slide bar around and pick pretty much any point in a 3GB file and have it display in less than a second. With 2.521, such a move takes several seconds. With 2.56 I can hop forward 10 frames almost instantly and backwards 10 fairly quickly. With 2.521 both operations drag.

Recoding appears to be about the same speed until I run out of physical memory and the disk thrashing starts. Changing priorities and trying to use different codecs doesn't seem to have any effect on this problem. Nor did downloading an evaluation copy of 2.521plus and trying the CRI Sofdec that David suggested. (Thanks anyway, David!) My test runs from over the weekend turned out to be useless as they apparently the files weren't big enough to trigger the problem. (Size of the output file appears to be what sets it off, though at this point I'm not sure of much of anything.)

The fact that I still have the same problem even with the plus version seems to indicate I'm doing something really stupid with configuration or there's something really screwy with the codecs on my system.

I've gone back to using 2.56 for now. The only annoyance with 2.56 is that when I cut out commercials, the actual cut appears to be a few frames later than what I specify. So I just tell it to cut a few frames earlier than I would otherwise.

Just in case anyone is interested, I eventually discovered the source of the runaway memory problem. All my source mpeg-1 files were created by Asus Digital VCR v2.2 or so. I have since gotten a new video capture card with new software and am now creating mpeg-1 files with Intervideo's WinDVR. TMPGEnc 2.512 seems to have no trouble at all working with these files. I can only assume that there is something wrong with the mpeg-1 files that Asus Digital VCR creates, even though they seem to play or convert well enough with most other programs, including earlier versions of TMPGEnc.

Sorry,
i don't undertand (with TMPGEnc)how to convert in video source:two(or more) files AVI (file1.avi,file2.avi..);into output file name: one file MPEG filex.mpg.If is possibe what can i do? I try to search in BBS but I couldn't find anything about.

Thanks for your help.

Just name your files something like File001.avi, file002.avi...and so on then just load the first AVI in the list and the rest will automatically load in sequence.

You will have to enable the 'Open sequence files as a movie' option in the General settings first.

How to create MPEG Files which can be accepted by PHILIPS VideoCD 2.0 Tool Kit. Because when I tried to make a MPEG file using TMPGEnc and use it in the Authoring program it says It is not a valid MPEG File. the Same MPEG is accepted by Nero as well as WinOnCD.

What are you aiming to do just mux it?
If so you need to load seperate elementary Video and audio streams.

Had some bad clusters on my harddisk so TMPGEnc would not start. Moved files with scandisk /r and now when reinstalling I only get a message "can not remove old version, 1610 contact your support."
Removed all entries TMPGEnc in registry and made a search for files. Removed all files manually, but still, same message when I try to reinstall.
Any hints??

Disally

Just download the non install version.
It isn't really required to install TMPG. You can simply run it from the unzipped archive.

I've a problem with TMPGEnc! I want to convert a *.avi-file to a *.mpeg-file, but my problem is that when I preview my project the picture is up-side-down, why?!
This phenomenon only seems to happen with a *.avi-file, not with a *.mpg-file!!!

Why does this happend and what can you do about it???

//niclas

That's a problem with your Codec/DirectShow-Installation. Use ffdshow as Decoder for your AVIs. It has an Option to correct this.