I'm not blaming any product for what it does and my apologies for going on about it, but I'm determined to derive a sensible solution to this without spending any more money which means no more buying new products to cover deficiencies in the ones I have already bought.

I have two questions which would help me if anyone knows the answers:

1) Can TMPGenc be configured to mask empty frames rather than ignoring them?

2) If not, is there a freeware product that will do so.

I can't leave the empty frames in the MPEG and avoid encoding it for two reasons. Firstly, I need to change the bitrate to get the finished MPEG to fit on a DVD and secondly any VOB encoding software will remove any empty frames and cause loss of audio sync.

Thanks,

Bob.

I have a clip in a project that is fully recognized by TDA (from start to finish, video and audio). And I have created a bunch of chapters in it. The chapters are recgonized and I can click to the last chapter and last frame in the editing screen.

However, when I author the clip to DVD, the last chapter is #50 and the title ends. The help file says 99 chapters are possible.

What could be the problem? I have started from scratch twice, there is nothing wrong with the orignal clip, TDA "sees" it ok, it's just the authoring that goes bad.

Thanks,
Owen

Maybe the problem comes from your DVD player...
What are you using?

I'm using my stand alone player, which plays every other disc I've authored using TDA. I must have re-authored this project 5 0r 6 times already, and I'm convinced it's the clip itself and not TDA.

Anyone know a good format checker for VCD files? Illegal frames, bit rates, etc?

Thanks,
Owen

Hello, I've seen folks say they were able to use TMPGEnc to create DIVX movies from a stack of bitmaps. Can anyone point me to tips on how to do this?

Thanks.

Once the Divx encoder is installed, it will appear in the compressor list for any application that uses Directshow compression plugins in a "Save As" dialog.

TMPGEnc is meant to control its own mpeg encoder. It has a "Save As AVI" mode but other apps are better. A good one is VirtualDub. It can load numbered BMP sequences directly.

Search for: VirtualDubMod_1_5_4_1_All_inclusive.zip

(There might be a newer version. The "mod" version reads mpeg files and has a better "Save As" dialog.)

I am also using TDA to make back up copies of DVDs for my friends. So this is what I did:

1.Create New Project
2.Add DVD Video
3.Select DVD drive; VIDEO_TS
4.Double-click on first title
5.Uncheck reading chapters
6.Check copy to HDD
7.Ok

For some reason, near the end of the progress, it said "Stream write error" or something like that. Last time I did this, it worked and there were 3 outputted MPEG-2 files in my folder. What I'm trying to do is extract the videos from the DVD, and then load them back into TDA to burn to a DVD+R. Last time it worked, but this time, I'm getting all sorts of errors.

Hello, I was wondering if there was any way to create your own menus in TDA? Or at least provide your own backgrounds?

Have you looked at the product at all? There's a lot of editing you can do with the menus. From the "Create Menu" screen, you click on "Edit Menu Theme" or the "Edit" button to specify background images, change buttons, etc.

No, I meant to make my own backgrounds in Photoshop and use it in TDA. I don't really like their default backgrounds.

I always produce my own Backgrounds. Where's the Problem? Just klick on the Background, a PopUp will show up where you can choose your own Pic.

Cool, I never knew you could right-click it! Thanks!

What does the error:
"invalid pointer error" mean?

When do you get this error? Could you provide more info like can you open your avi file. Or do you get this when you just open the program?

Video Guy

i get that message sometimes when splitting files using the source range

I really like this product, but it would be nice to have an UNDO button on the editing screen as well as a SAVE button so you could save it after a lot of edits in case something goes wrong.

A couple of times, I have somehow made an incorrect CUT and an UNDO button would have saved me a lot of work. A SAVE function would be very useful after you have made a lot of edits and you could save it without getting out of the EDIT function.

Mike Halvorsen

The UNDO is in the EDIT MENU under the EDIT CLIP screen.

I just purchased DVD Author and am having a problem importing a DVD I have copied to my harddisk using DVD XCOPY. It plays with no problem in my software DVD player (PowerDVD).

On the ''Source Setup'' screen, I click on ''Add DVD Video'' and point to the VIDEO_TS folder where the files are located. In the ''Select Title'' screen, it shows the title I want to import correctly. In this case, Title 4 which is 5hr20min13sec and 6477mb.

When I click NEXT, on the ''Options settings'' screen, I click ''Copy the clip video data to the HDD'' and point to a folder, however, there is a message in red below the ''destination folder'' box that says ''3453 mb of video data has been copied to this folder'', not 6477mb as shown in the previous screen. The endpoint in the imported clip is not the end of the movie, because it apparently didn't copy all the data.

Am I doing something wrong or is this a bug? Can it be fixed? I purchased this product because I liked the simple interface and it did exactly what I wanted, however, it is not much use to me if it doesn't copy the entire movie.

Thanks,

Mike Halvorsen

Hi! If you want to rip DVD movie, try to use DVD shrink. It's an excellent program to that purpose. Than you can author it using any program you like the most. Also you must specify a drive that can support a large amount of data. On the other hand, you HD has to have enough free space to handle it. The best way is to have one drive for all systems and one for only DVD transfer (ripping), I mean, 2 HDs.

I need to encode approx. 200 10 second files, do I have to do each one seperatly or can I set the encoder once, and have them all done at once?

Every time I tried to normally uninstall TMPGenc from the Add/Remove Programs control panel, the Install utility loaded up and promptly exited without any notice or warning. So I manually brute-force uninstalled it by deleting the TMPGENC folder and it's contents and then I deleted every reference to it in the registry.

Then I rebooted and tried to install the new version of TMPGenc, but it always fails with the following error messages:

"Error 1714 during install -- unable to remove old version"

THEN:

"Feature transfer error

Error: -1603 Fatal error during installation

Consult Windows Install Help (msi.chm) or MSDN for more info"


It turns out that error 1603 means: "Error installing Windows Installer engine. A file which needs to be replaced may be held in use. Close all applications and try again."

Naturally, I tried exiting all applications and then re-installing, but I got the same error.

So then I tried installing it from Safe Mode (although I'm still having trouble getting into Safe Mode deliberately) but I again got the message that it couldn't uninstall the previous version.


What should I do? Thanks in advance for your help!

So I FINALLY got the xvid .avi file to convert to an mpeg via TMPGEnc, and burned my vcd's.

Overall the quality is very good. But every once in a while (not at scene changes and not with fast action, necessarily) the video just hesitates; sometimes for just a second or two. other times, I have to mess with the pause/play/search buttons to jar it out of it and make it play again!

I encoded using the standard template for VCD/NTSC.
I burned the disc using the Roxio Platinum VCD utility.

Any ideas how I can get it to play more smoothly. I am using FFShow which is how I got it to work in the first place; before that it did not work at all; and as you may recall I set my DirectShow setting to 2 at the top of the list in Settings. And I'm playing the dvd on a Panasonic dvd player, an RV-32. (not a computer dvd player, a stand alone one, with my tv.)

A few suggestions:

1) The bitrate is too high for your player. But you say you use the standard VCD template, so that's not the case.

2) Limit the burning speed to 4x.

3) Try another brand writable CD.

4) clean your CD.

Cheers

Does the actual XVID have any playback problems itself?
You may have a movie which is encoded with the new XVID codec which causes this jerky play back if you try to use the old XVID or FFDSHOW codec.
You need the updated version of FFDSHOW which will solve this problem.
http://athos.leffe.dnsalias.com/ffdshow-20040329.exe

>Does the actual XVID have any playback problems itself?

No, it plays back fine on the computer with WMP. Only on the dvd player with my tv does it give me problems. Also, I have no problems with other vcd's I've made from vcd-ready files (I have not made any others with TMPGEnc, so I don't know...)

>You may have a movie which is encoded with the new XVID codec which causes this >jerky play back if you try to use the old XVID or FFDSHOW codec.
>You need the updated version of FFDSHOW which will solve this problem.
>http://athos.leffe.dnsalias.com/ffdshow-20040329.exe

I will try that. Thank you! But, do I need to uninstall the previous version of FFDSHOW, first? (I have the 20040325 version.)

I already tried cleaning my recorder and my player, and if the above does not work I will try another brand of cd-r, but right now I dont have any others. But I doubt that is it, I've never had a problem before with Imation cd-r's on my TDK 4800.

is there a downloadable manual for tmpgenc? if so, where can i get it?

thanx,
-sean

Download the plus version there is a manual with it.

Where would one find the "plus" version? I see only one version available on http://www.tmpgenc.net/e_main.html

Jaysus, have you guys never heard of google?
http://www.pegasys-inc.com/