Howdy,

I'd like to be able to build a DVD menu where it would play a chapter, and then just return to the chapter menu rather than moving automatically from one chapter to the next. Is this possible?

Here's my situation: My wife is a school teacher and her students make videos for various projects. I would like to be able to create a DVD with different titles, or tracks, for each project. For example, one project might be "commercials", another might be "South American Counties". So my top menu would display each project as a different track.

Within each track I might have 6-12 or so different small clips, each clip being one group's video. These would so up as separate chapters. But I want to play just one chapter, then return to the menu. I don't want to play all the chapters at once.

Is there a way to do this? I love what I see so far, but I need this feature, or this software won't work for me.

Hi all, I've tried the spurs engine plugin and it works very well with my firecoder blu card, but I ask more settings/optimizations like better scene change detection scene and better bitrate accuracy. Constant quality or quantization like x264.
The encoder is very fast but in some fast scenes, it produce some visible "block".
Maybe the problem is solvible with "slow" analisys picture per second, slow performances, using slice process, intra or bidirectional encoding. Editable matrix like JTV is not bad idea.
I ask a bit more quality with lower bitrates.

Thanks in advances.

have a Blackgold PCI TV tuner card. I have been recording Freeview HD (DVB-2T) files using windows media centre to wtv format. When I import them into the program for editing and conversion, it says that there is no audio in the file, although it plays perfectly on the computer, so somehow the audio format is not being recognised.

Any ideas

I believe TVMW5 can only import WTV files encoded with MPEG-2 video and MP2 audio. I'm guessing yours is MPEG-4 AVC video and AAC or Dolby Digital Plus audio. I'm not sure why TVMW5 can only import MPEG-2 WTV files. If you can somehow take the video and audio streams out of the WTV container, you should be able to import them into TVMW5.

Is there any way you can post a short sample recording for me to try? All of my WTV files are MPEG-2 encoded, so if yours are indeed MPEG-4 AVC encoded, I'd like to see what I can do with it.

As the title suggests, Is it possible to cut sections of a dvd and save without re-encoding?
I find that i never get thats same "pop" when i save wmv's from original dvds and the quality is never what i think is as good - i even encode at 8000k

Ideally I'd like to use the source wizard to import the dvd and the timeline to crap the part i want and then to save that part without re-encoding

Unfortunately, no. TVMW5 doesn't have smart rendering. TMPGEnc Authoring Works 4 and TMPGEnc MPEG Editor 3 can cut DVD-Video without re-encoding though.

Spent so much money on this product, and some basic things are still missing.
I am very disappointed by its processing speed, and x264 encoding is much, much slower than other implementations like the free handbrake.

secondly, I cannot understand not implementing smart rendering. Why? Can't be that hard.

I am trying to encode a blu-ray folder that has DTS audio as its audio format. TVMW doesn't support this. A Pegasys support person told me to disable the MPEG file reader in the input plug-ins as this defaults TVMW to use directshow to read the files.

However, files loaded up still contain no decodable audio, and the support person said I should find an appropriate codec. Windows Media Player can play the audio fine, so I assume directshow has the right plug-in available.

Can anyone help with the import of the DTS or DTS-HD MA audio?

Install CCCP Codec Pack.
http://www.cccp-project.net/

Set DTS zu FFDShow
Set FFDShow Audio Setting zu 3:0:2+LFE 5.1 Channel
Deselect Compression

Video Mastering Support Only one Audio Track. Strip unwanted Streams with mkvtoolnix (mmg)

http://www.bunkus.org/videotools/mkvtoolnix/

Video mastering not Support Framerate Conversion. Video will jerky.

Take a Pal Speedup Avisynth Script
Install Avisynth
Install & Extract http://code.google.com/p/ffmpegsource/

make a Scrip called HD.AVS

LoadPlugin("D:\Tools\DVD Tools\FFmpegSource2\ffmpeg-mt\ffms2.dll")

A=FFVideoSource("E:\Film.mkv")
B=FFAudioSource("E:\Film.mkv")
AudioDub(A, B)
AssumeFPS(25.000, true)
ConvertToYUY2()

Import in Video mastering.
Path musst be your paths.

Thanks for this. So I understand what I'm doing:

The preparation work is being done by mkvtoolnix - it will strip the other audio files and use FFDSHOW to decompress the DTS audio stream.

The AVIsynth step only applies if I want to change the framerate.

If I don't want to change the framerate I just import the file that mkvtoolnix outputs straight into Video Mastering?

Is that correct?

Thanks again.

OK. I tried what you said and it does work - you get the audio presented as 5.1 sound. However, by using .mkv as the container format the subtitles are not presented. The real reason for using TMPGEnc for this encode was to get the DTS sound and also to keep the subtitles as the film is a foreign language film.

Is there any way to make the workaround work with subtitles?

Thanks in advance for any help.

Nö. Video Mastering no Support Import DTS and subtitle Streams from MKV.

You can demux and Convert Suptitle to SRT Format and Add under Filter Suptitle.

The FFShow DTS Decoding dont work. Channel mapping not correct. To convert DTS to AC3 take The FilmMachine Audio.

http://members.home.nl/thefilmmachine/

Remux MKV with MKVToolnix.

I like the software, but having no way to put the watermark or logo to the video makes it even souls are burning editing software
hopefully one day bring that option

You CAN put a watermark on your video if you use the timeline editing mode.

Once in the timeline editor, create a layer above your video layer and add a clip. Instead of adding a video file, add your logo image. Make sure it has a transparent background to make it look extra good. Once it's in the timeline, resize it and position to your liking. You can also change the opacity so that it's transparent. Add fade-in/fade-out effects if you want it to disappear/appear.

First Page. Just a Play button and a special features button. Press play and the clip should play. When I press special features it should go to page 2 and there will be three buttons there to play three clips. After each play it should come back to page 2. How can this be done. It perplexing when you put each clip in a separate track, you get 4 different track menus. I want them all on one page. If I gang the three clips into one track then all of them play instead of playing separately and then coming back to the menu. I don't need a thousand track pages just trying to get one.

Any ideas.

While not a specific answere to your question, to my mind, AW4 behaves differently from other authoring products. Instead of adding things to a menu, you start with a maxed out menu and remove the things you do not want. Once I internalized that concept, it became easier to build projects quickly, but it takes practice.

>When I press special features it should go to page 2 and there will be three buttons there to play three clips. After each play it should come back to page 2.

This sounds similar to what I'm looking to do with chapters playing, then returning to menu. Most DVD programs that I've found just can't do this. For things like feature films this makes sense. Who would want to just watch one chapter of a movie? But for a lot of us who fiddle around with making DVDs for personal use or (in my case) for a school, having this ability is very important.

The funny thing is, I've got an old, old version of Power Producer from Cyberlink. It has the option of playing a clip, then returning to menu, or to play continuously (clip, after clip, after clip).

It's odd to find a feature in just an old product that doesn't seem to be available in any new software. If anyone knows of a current program that can do this, I'd love to hear about it.

Clip and chapter are differnt things. Every clip has at least one chapter - at the start of the clip. You can add more chapter points in the clip. Chapter points allow one to navigate/jump within a clip. To automatically navigate back to the menu from the end of a chapter you probably need to make the chapter correspond to a clip, not just a piece of a clip.

I want to do a similar thing.

I film a lot of dance concerts and want to have a main menu that has 3 options that says

ACT A ACT B HIGHLIGHTS

Track 1 is ACT A
Track 2 is ACT B

Trouble is the project I am working on has the highlights as the last chapter point of ACT B.

Q. How do I make the highlights play via its own dedicated button via the main menu.

I have only just got the program and haven't dived into the manual yet.

Please tell me this is possible.

Hi.
Recently installed a clear qam tuner card and Beyond TV creates an MPEG-2 transport stream when recording. How do I re-encode this to either an MPEG1 or Mpeg2 file? Mastering works 5 doesn't find any usable files in any mode, From files, recorded TV etc. Thanks for any help
Doug

What's the extension of the recorded file? If the video is MPEG-2 TS, it should be able to import into TVMW5.

Looking for Constant Quanitization settings, Appear only to be found under Advanced MPEG settings that are so complex as to be completly alien. I spent weeks finding and testing my AVC settings, I don't intend on tring to figure out all the garbage under Advanced. TMPGEnc VMW5 needs a way to import or at least replicate the settings in Xpress 4.

All that development, and you couldn't add a disable to the "copy titles to hard drive" option, most of the littel free apps out there offer iso image files as a supported source now days, will your new program support that anytime soon?

Unfortunatly you've gone down the path of other popular programs, instead of simply updating and streamlining, you went for bloat, any chance you will bring back Xpress 4 with updated x264 and iso support?

Inclined to agree with other posts that TMPGEnc VMW5 has missed the mark, brought nothing new of significance to your replacement, but changed enough to alienate your existing customers. Any chance you can acknowledge this and bring your program in line?

The reason the MPEG settings are different is because they have switched from the Main Concept encoder to the x264 encoder. I'm guessing you're looking for the Constant Quality settings. If so, select "VBR (Constant quality)" as the Rate control mode in the "Video" tab. Then click the "Settings" button to change the settings.

Copy title to hard drive option can be disabled. There is a checkbox, just uncheck it. Not sure how you're missing it.
http://i53.tinypic.com/2rh8qk2.png

If you have a lot of iso files, I suggest downloading Daemon Tools; it lets you create a virtual DVD/BD drive and mount your iso as if it were an actual disc. You can use it to easily import iso's into TVMW5 like any other DVD. Daemon Tools is a good program to have if you have a lot of iso files in any case.

Not sure what's bloated about this program. The timeline editing? Extremely useful. CUDA encoding? That was highly requested. Sandy Bridge encoding? Also requested. The detailed MPEG parameter settings? Very useful in the right hands and the switch to the x264 encoder was the right move as it is regarded as the best H.264 encoder at the moment. If anything, they could've added MORE things that people requested. If you don't know what a setting is, don't touch it and you'll be fine.

Thanks for the response, I was very frustrated when I posted, still am, but I'll try to be more tactful.

I am not looking for constant quality, Looking for Constant Quanitization. This was an upfront option when doing MPEG4-AVC format files.

The Copy to Hard drive is not so much a disable as an option for that source. The next source you add will by default prompt for it again. As I am already using virtual drives to mount iso files, It's a matter that having to repetedly uncheck, and then confirm for each source. In the absence of direct from iso support, a preferance option to by pass this would have been nice.

As to bloat, yes, that was the wrong word, In honesty, there is very little new in 5, from Xpress 4. It's implementation that i have a problem with. I looked forward to x264 & Sandy Bridge support, new 2nd i7 sitting on top of this PC as i type. If your going to "remake" your application, why not impliment simple streamlining options as mentioned above. Things like having to constantly provide setting and preferance option for each job, I mean we can save templates, why can't we have an option to "use last" template?

There are other high-end and powerfull solutions out there, this is simular to what nero and others have done by making a simple and reliable program into something overly "rebust" and losing itself in the translation.

I have a very large library of DVDs that I've been converting to MPEG4 AVC to read from a USB on my Sony BluRay. I just wanted VMW 5 to be able to simply do what xpress 4 did but with the updated support. I can find a few of my setting locations "i think" but what i seeing is very different and I don't want to change midway to new settings. e.g.

MPEG-4 AVC 1 Pass Constant Quanitization

Motion Search Range = 256
Video System = Automatic

GOP Length = 198
B Frame Count = 1
Reference Frame Count = 9

I Picture = 19
P Picture = 20
B Picture = 22

Entopy Coding Method = CABAC
Motion Estimation Subpel = Quarter Pixel

Relativley simply settings and as stated I can see some of those options under VMW 5 but others or their new counterparts and not. I as much I'm getting the exact results I want with these settings I'm not looking to again spend weeks to understand the new options in the hope I can replicate what i already have. It would have been nice if they would have acknowledged their existing user base by providing some way of importing or replicating Xpress 4 settings.

Unless that happens, I'll muttle through with Xpress 4, then seek a new solution with x264 & sandy bridge, and direct iso support. I think from what I've seen in my VMW5 trial, They could have kept it simply and made improvments to Xpress 4 and better served they're customers, offering an alternative program like VMW5.

Constant Quality and Constant Quantization are the same thing, they just have different ways to get the same results. For constant quality, the higher the number, the better the quality; for constant quantization, the lower the quantization level, the better the quality. What is the correlation between the two numbers? No idea. I guess that's the holy grail for this discussion.

In any case, even if the setting options were the same as 4.0 XPress, the output results might be different because of the inherent differences between x264's encoder and Main Concept's encoder.

This has been an interesting topic though, and it's made me look at the constant quantization and constant quality settings in more detail. In fact, I've been trying to get a similar output result in TVMW5 compared to a clip outputted with the settings you gave for 4.0 XPress.

I took a 3-minute section from a standard NTSC DVD-Video track and passed it through 4.0 XPress with your settings. Then I took the same source file and passed it through TVMW5 at various Constant Quality settings to see if I could get a similar result. So far, setting the quality level to around 64 gave a very similar quality level and video bitrate.

However, on a second, completely different DVD-Video source, the results were much different. The TVMW5 video bitrate differed from the 4.0 XPress output by about 600 Kbps. Watching the video, you'd hardly be able to tell the difference, but freeze-framing showed very minute differences.

I tried to set as many settings as I could to the same as those in 4.0 XPress, but it's not entirely possible as you've said. I'm not sure if you absolutely have to have 19 I Pictures, etc. but once I got the quality level to a similar level, I could barely tell the two apart and the file sizes were pretty much the same.

The good thing about the settings in TVMW5 is that you can cap the max bitrate; I don't see a way to do that with 4.0 XPress' constant quantization mode.

Anyway, those are just some thoughts and results. Maybe I'll post some screencaps of the two encodes.

Thanks again for your response, It is very interesting to work through the various options under CQ in Xpress 4. To give a bit more background, about 5 of 6 years back I started looking for a digital format for my DVD collection approx 500-600 DVDs at the time, (to have instant access to them on my Media Center PC, and my notebook when I travel), and settled on MPEG2 at a 2000 bit rate, I wanted native Windows (and Media Center) support, and predictable size, as storage was much more of a limitation at the time. Last winter, as a project, I decided to re-digitize my collection which is now approx 1200 DVDs not counting TV series. I was now not concerned about size so much as quality. After tring several formats including wmv and others, I decided on the MPEG4 format, I ran several dozen replications at various settings to achieve what I finally decided on, and with the number of movies I was looking to do, speed was also a factor.

The articles that i read on Constant Quantization, provided me with the insight as to why it was able to achieve such great quality and still get typically smaller files. i.e. the function of I,P and B frames. I've completed 592 non-animated movies so far, not counting series. The files range in size from 438MB to 3.88GB but maintain a very high quality level. Quanitization settings in Xpress 4 allowed me to concider what quality elements I was most looking to preserve and find setting to achieve them, e.g as a heavy fan of SciFi and adventure movies, that tend to have a lot of dark scenes, I was very concerned about shades of black or shadow being overly blocky, and with I,P,B frame control and such I found I could directly effect that aspect.

Needless to say size varies greatly, but it's based on the length AND complexity of the movie frame by frame. The Social Network @ 2 hours of movie comes in at 675MB - Avatar @ 2 hours and 41 Minites comes in at 3.88GB because its a much more complex movie with lots of color and motion in every scene. The Road @ 1 hour and 51 Minutes comes in at 496MB but that movie is just so many shades of grey & brown, with very little color or action. All the movies have the same quality, and I don't htink I could achive that with a Constant Quality and maintain my 1.45GB size average (across the whole collection so far.

I was trying to look for the Constant Quantization article that led me to utimately choose it for my transcoding and foound this article that talks about Constant Rate Factor of x264, (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constant_rate_factor) and it mentions the pitfall of Constant Quality. This Constant Rate Factor is what I think I'm looking for in VMW5, I just need a much simpler translation (implemetation) then I've seen in the trial so far.

I appreciate your investigation into CQ, if you find parallel settings in VMW5 to what I'm using in Xpress 4 I'd love to try them.

P.S - My complete settings for Transcoding a DVD are inclusive of these.

Filters include:
Deinterlace = 24 fps (Prioritize Motion)- Inverse Pulldown
Picture Crop = To Remove Black Bars or Borders - I then let Xpress 4 recreate the top & bottom border mask.

I also do a 125% Volume Adjust.

Picture Resize = Full Screen (no margin) Method = BiCubic

Under the format - Normal Container & Main Profile Level is 4.1 and Less

Audio is AAC Encoder and 48000 rate Stereo 160 Bit rate Low Complexity / RAW

Everything else you have. I'll look to do more research on this Constant Rate Factor & see if I can find it in VMW5 before the trail runs out.

Thanks Again.

Hello,

I´m looking at "upgrading" my TmpgEnc Authoring Works to VM 5.

I looked at the trial but found no way to import the projects I created with Authoring Works.

Also trying to export and re-import the keyfram ist it only "dumbly" imports the chapters, but does not take into account the cutlist.

Is there any way to re-use the projects from Authoring Works? I know the products are different - but I don´t want to recreate all cutlists ...

This is a real sales inhibitor for me.

Thanks and best regards - Peter

Video Mastering Works 5 and Authoring Works 4 are two completely different products, so you can't upgrade TAW4 to TVMW5. That is also why you can't use the TAW4 project file in TVMW5...which is also why you can't import the cut points. As you have found, the only thing you can transfer from TAW4 is the keyframe/chapter list.

What you could do is import the outputted file from TAW4 into TVMW5. Then you wouldn't have to worry about editing it again and you'd also be able to import the chapter list.

Thinking about it, it would be better to edit the video in TVMW5 and then output the video as DVD-compliant MPEG-2 to bring into TAW4. Since TAW4 has smart rendering, it won't need to re-encode the video. Going the other way around, from TAW4 to TVMW5, the video would be encoded twice.

I know you don't have both products yet, but if you do decide to get TVMW5, it would be best to start a multi-use project in TVMW5 first since it can output to a wider variety of formats.

I got the latest version but have a strange issue with screen size of clips. Some files always get widescreen and some standard 4:3 even if I set all as standard or all as wide in the settings. The source files are 4:3. Any help?

Can you describe what the clips look like when they are widescreen? Is the image stretched horizontally? Are there black bars encoded into the 4:3 video?

If they look stretched, you may need to correct the pixel aspect ratio in the clip properties.

Yes, they get stretched horizontally. Ive tried 4:3 on all and even 16:9 but I always get same result.
Ive tried different pixel displays under "aspect ratio" but with no luck.

Thank you for your help.

They display stretched within TAW4? or is it when you play it on a DVD player?

Can you download MediaInfo and get the video properties and post them here?

In TAW4 everything looks like I want. The issue appears when I try the outputed iso in VLC.

VLC has its own aspect ratio settings which are probably overriding the actual aspect ratio. In VLC, go to the video menu-->aspect ratio, and select "default". I have a feeling yours is set to "16:9".

Its set as standard not 16:9 but If I play along with the settings it get right. Thank you for your help :)
Another question. How do I get better quality on my projects? Ive choosen insane quality etc but still get only ok quality.

Thank you in advance.

Increase the bitrate in the track settings.

Do I need to activate the video chache function to be able to change bitrate?

No, just go to the track settings and change the bitrate. You may need to change the Encoder mode to "Re-encode all videos as below" instead of Smart rendering prioritized.

Trying to encode an mkv file to standard dvd format, mpg or m2v+ac3. I'd settle for anything right now.

It appears to be encoding okay but when it gets to 99% done, the error in the title pops up and it doesn't finish. Typically it's within 2 to 3 seconds of finishing when it happens.

Plus, if I try to start it again, I get a message that the file already exists but there's nothing there. The finished file does not exist.

Running W7 Pro, 64 bit, i7-920, 12GB of Corsair RAM.

I have both this program and 4.0 Xpress. And it's a total waste of money so far.

Personally, I don't know what's causing the error. Maybe someone else does.
Do you have the specs of your mkv file? Run it through MediaInfo and post the tree data if you can.

In the meantime, I would try contacting user support if you haven't already:
http://tmpgenc.pegasys-inc.com/en/support/support.html

If you're just using the trial version, use the pre-sales or general inquiries form:
http://tmpgenc.pegasys-inc.com/en/contact.html

I have a fully activated version, not the trial version.

Interesting discovery. Quite by accident I found out that it was actually creating a file, but the 'Hidden' attribute was turned on. Why it's doing that I don't know but I will check preferences and then contact support if needed.

I found out because I tried to save to a folder instead of the desktop and when I checked the properties of the folder it showed the folder size as 12GB when I could only see the original file that was 4.3GB.

Now I have the file but the audio is bad. Could be a codec thing, not sure. I'm not real savvy when it comes to that kind of stuff. I did get the MediaInfo program and below is the info. I don't see a way to attach a file here so this is just a copy and paste of the text file. Maybe you can offer a suggestion based on the info below.

Format : Matroska
File size : 4.37 GiB
Duration : 1h 38mn
Overall bit rate : 6 347 Kbps
Writing application : x264.exe
Writing library : mkv2rls v1.3 (date: 2010 aug 28)

Video
ID : 1
Format : AVC
Format/Info : Advanced Video Codec
Format profile : High@L4.1
Format settings, CABAC : Yes
Format settings, ReFrames : 5 frames
Codec ID : V_MPEG4/ISO/AVC
Duration : 1h 38mn
Bit rate : 4 838 Kbps
Width : 1 280 pixels
Height : 688 pixels
Display aspect ratio : 1.860
Frame rate : 23.976 fps
Color space : YUV
Chroma subsampling : 4:2:0
Bit depth : 8 bits
Scan type : Progressive
Bits/(Pixel*Frame) : 0.229
Stream size : 3.24 GiB (74%)
Writing library : x264 core 114 r1924 08d04a4
Encoding settings : cabac=1 / ref=5 / deblock=1:0:0 / analyse=0x3:0x113 / me=umh / subme=8 / psy=1 / psy_rd=1.00:0.00 / mixed_ref=1 / me_range=16 / chroma_me=1 / trellis=1 / 8x8dct=1 / cqm=0 / deadzone=21,11 / fast_pskip=1 / chroma_qp_offset=-2 / threads=12 / sliced_threads=0 / nr=0 / decimate=1 / interlaced=0 / constrained_intra=0 / bframes=3 / b_pyramid=2 / b_adapt=2 / b_bias=0 / direct=3 / weightb=1 / open_gop=0 / weightp=2 / keyint=240 / keyint_min=24 / scenecut=40 / intra_refresh=0 / rc_lookahead=50 / rc=2pass / mbtree=1 / bitrate=4838 / ratetol=1.0 / qcomp=0.60 / qpmin=0 / qpmax=69 / qpstep=4 / cplxblur=20.0 / qblur=0.5 / ip_ratio=1.40 / aq=1:1.00
Language : English

Audio
ID : 2
Format : DTS
Format/Info : Digital Theater Systems
Codec ID : A_DTS
Duration : 1h 38mn
Bit rate mode : Constant
Bit rate : 1 510 Kbps
Channel(s) : 2 channels
Channel positions : Front: L R
Sampling rate : 48.0 KHz
Bit depth : 24 bits
Compression mode : Lossy
Stream size : 1.04 GiB (24%)
Language : English

Text
ID : 3
Format : UTF-8
Codec ID : S_TEXT/UTF8
Codec ID/Info : UTF-8 Plain Text
Language : English

Menu
00:00:00.000 : en:00:00:00.000
00:04:35.275 : en:00:04:35.275
00:07:47.133 : en:00:07:47.133
00:11:58.718 : en:00:11:58.718
00:21:03.721 : en:00:21:03.721
00:26:04.813 : en:00:26:04.813
00:30:19.109 : en:00:30:19.109
00:42:06.858 : en:00:42:06.858
00:44:49.103 : en:00:44:49.103
00:54:36.398 : en:00:54:36.398
00:57:44.127 : en:00:57:44.127
01:02:43.426 : en:01:02:43.426
01:12:08.866 : en:01:12:08.866
01:19:30.599 : en:01:19:30.599
01:23:21.455 : en:01:23:21.455
01:33:44.744 : en:01:33:44.744

Joe

Wrote to support. Their suggested answer didn't work. Their reply, in part.

Go to... Options> Preferences > File input plug-in
then uncheck the MPEG file reader, import
your file in a new project and check how it go.
By this way Video Mastering Works 5 will use the codecs installed over
your PC through DirectShow.
If not good it means the DTS codec is not present or not compatible and
so Video Mastering Works 5 cannot decode it and then you need to install
a usable codec.

Since the file plays in Splash Pro and VLC, I know the proper codec is there.

I have done some checking and have come up with a work around of sorts. If I left the fps at 23.976 it seemed to cause the hidden attribute. By changing the fps to 29.97, the right fps for NTSC, the file does get to 100% and it appears correctly although the audio is still messed up.

To get around that problem I'm extracting the audio as an mp4 file using VLC. And encoding just the video with TVMW5. I can then import them into Encore and edit from there.

It's a pity I spent good money on this upgrade and have to jump through hoops to get what I need.

The fact that it is playable with VLC does not mean that you have the correct codecs. I'm not sure about Splash Pro, but I suspect it may be the same as VLC in that these programs use their own codecs and not the ones installed on your computer. Thus, you may still need a proper DTS codec.

I have a feeling the DTS audio might be the problem here since TVMW5 can't decode it natively. Since you've made a mp4 audio file with VLC, you can use that as the audio source in TVMW5 by selecting that file for the audio stream in the clip properties.