I'm using a 640x480 Avi DviX4 as Source... and for the life of me I can't find a way to get my "Souce Aspect Ratio" and my "Video Arrange Method" to produce a Letterboxed (OR) Full Screen finished file that doesn't A: Look streached or B: Clip the Left/Righ edges off (sacrificing Minimal Action but Significant amounts of the Subtitles).

I've tried:
1:1 VGA | Both Center Keep Aspect Ratio and Full Screen Keep aspect Ratio 2
16:9 & 16:9 Display | Both Center Keep Aspect Ratio and Full Screen Keep aspect Ratio 2
4:3 NTSC | Both Center Keep Aspect Ratio and Full Screen Keep aspect Ratio 2

Am I missing Something??

What are you trying to make ? A vcd,svcd,dvd? you have to realize that vcd" and svcd"s have lower resolutions than your avi file so there is allways going to be clipping of the frames going on and to get the whole screen to fit into a smaller area you either have to squish the frame to fit or you have to cut off some of the frame.With dvd"s the resolution is 720 by 480(ntsc) so if you were to use your avi file for dvd then it would get stretched to 720 from 640 ..but what you can try is see if your dvd player will play full resolution svcd/vcd"s(xsvcd/xvcd) then you can play your files with the same resolution as your avi file on your dvd player but these are not compliant with svcd/vcd specifications but some players will play them, mine does and they look awesome, allmost like the original dvd.......

You shouldn't really lose anything in the resize as TMPG should automatically account for the resize and adjust it accordingly as long as you choose the correct parameters.

Imagine each pixel is a brick and a wall you are building is the image. Lets say this wall(image) is about 6ft wide and 4ft high. You can use small bricks or large bricks to build this wall, but the resulting size of the wall will still be 6x4. The resulting wall will have more bricks (pixels) if you used small bricks or less bricks (pixels) if they were large bricks.

This is the same as pixels in an image, you can use more pixels or less pixels to build an image.
Letsd say your AVI uses 640x480 pixels to build this image and then TMPG converts it so it only uses 352x240 pixels to build the image. The output will look exactly the same because the same amount of information from the original is now stored in the smaller frame size, but due to the lower amount of pixels(lower resolution) there will be less detail in the image as it is lost in the larger pixels.
This is how resizing works and not by removing or cutting anything away.That would be cropping not resizing.

With a 640x480 source this means that the aspect ratio is 4:3. So you should choose the source aspect ratio as 4:3.
If you want the film to look exactly the same as the original you need to choose 'Fullscreen(keep aspect ratio)'
This should ensure the output fills the screen without any gaps at the sides and has the same aspect ratio as the original and doesn't look stretched or squashed.

Also make sure the output aspect ratio is set to 4:3.

You shouldn't lose any information at all this way and should be more or less the same as the original except it will be whithin the chosen output frame size.

ASHY

I theory that is the way it is supposed to be but I can never get all of a 720 by 480 picture in a 480 by 480 space, no matter what setting I use in the video arrange method,unless I squish it, most of the time you wouldnt notice the sides being cut off untill you have stuff like subtitles then you can only read the words in the middle,I must of encoded "Crouching tiger hidden dragon"30 times trying to get all the subtitles to fit, no luck......

Strange I have never had this problem, I have already encoded the movie you mentioned and it came out perfect.
Also I have just checked a movie to see if any of it is cut off and as far as I can see there is no difference. No loss what so ever.
As a matter of fact I usually have to clip in a few pixels as there is a very slight black line at either side. This is usually the case with all my movies.

So I would have a look at your settings Minion as it seems there is something amiss somewhere.

The settings I use are:

Source - 16:9 Display
Full screen(keep aspect ratio)
Output - 4:3

ASHY

Maybe it is just the way my dvd player plays them ,I dont know but i solved the problem by encodeing my mpeg2/svcd"s at 704 by 480 resolution, and they look exelent....

I have a very large DVD libary I a DVD rom drive and a HP DVD 200i writer I would like to make backups of these DVD's I am not sure how to go about it. I have smart ripper and nero burning software but have been unable to make copies is there something I need to do to make my backups?

What you have to do is rip the dvd with "smartripper" then use "dvd2avi" to extract the audio and make a d2v project file then encode the d2v file to a mpeg file then burn it..That is the short way of explaining it, but beware that "HP dvd burners" are notorius for burning non compliant dvd"s and there is a big lawsuit going on right now against "HP" for there dvd burners....There are manuals that will tell you how it is done and probably betterways to do it to at "vcdhelp.com".....

I am a new user of TMPGEnc. I aim to use it to move analog avi files onto Video CD.
My first sample file converted fine. However, all other AVIs are displayed in preview, and in the output .mpg as black. Playing the avi in media player works fine. Any ideas?

The input avi is 25pfs, 360x540 24bits, compressed with the Studio DC10 codec.

Thats a "pinnacle DV codec"? the dv codec in pinnacle is not supported in tmpgenc, so you have to capture useing a different codec or better yet un-compressed avi, but for codecs Tmpgenc" is only compatible with "Direct show" formats "Open DML" formats and "Video For Windows" formats so you will have to use a different codec....

>Thats a "pinnacle DV codec"? the dv codec in pinnacle is not supported in tmpgenc, so you have to capture useing a different codec or better yet un-compressed avi, but for codecs Tmpgenc" is only compatible with "Direct show" formats "Open DML" formats and "Video For Windows" formats so you will have to use a different codec....

Hi ,
I have the same problem with black screens ! ,but how can I change the codec for pinnacle DV ? could u please tell me ?

best regards :)

Well you should have other compression formats(codecs)to choose from in "pinnacle" but if you don"t you will have to "uncompress" the dv file or compress it to a format that is supported in "tmpgenc"....

I have used TMPGenc to convert 2 avi's to mpg's successfully. Files were about 680 mb each and last about 1hour 15 munutes.
I have another avi file (9695 MB, 1h16) that I want to convert to mpg. However, the program indicates that the file is very much over 1h16 minutes and would not fit in a 80 minute CD. It says it will take 5 hours to encode, whereas it took about 1.5 hour for each of my previous movies. And after around 1.5 hour, there is an error message. Il tried to read the mpg file that has been created. There is no sound to this file.
Anybody can help me with this issue ?

Only solution I can think of is to split it into two parts, I've had to do this before when converting 1:30:00 Avi files to SVCD. Simply use Source Range to encode the 1st portion then encode the next part starting from about 20 frames behind where the last part ended. It's worked fine for me (Kinda brings back Laser Disc Flashbacks having to switch discs) but watch for Audio Gaps!

To encrease speed I have enabled DMA setting on my Western Digital UDMA 7200 min-1 40Gb harddisk.

But when I playback or caprure new movies the sound is terible. Metal sounds peeps'are there.Creating MPG file with TMPGenc is better not good. DMA disabled all works perfect..

Is there a sollution that I can enable DMA and have good sound?

I don"t think haveing "DMA" enabled should make much of a differance when it comes to encodeing cuz the amount of information writen to your hard drive is not a lot especially considering that it takes hours to encode a movie...

Another thing you can try is to encode your audio seperately from the video then multiplex them together ,just an idea......

problem solved after placing cd rom drive master en HD slave (dma enabled)

You shouldn't really have your CDROM drive on the same channel as your HD. This will slow down your hardrive.
Most CDROM drives work in ATA 33 mode and if your hard drive is on the same channel it will also be dropped to ATA 33 mode.

Why don't you put your CDROM on the secondary channel?

ASHY

Has anyone noticed that using 2-pass vbr causes the machine to lock up
consistently? I've tried several times to encode with this, but every time,
it just locks the machine so that I have to press reset to recover.
Has anyone else noticed this?
-Don

Yes I have the same problem but not only with VBR, other modes also. I posted about this two days ago here and on vcdhelp.com and it seems no one has an answer for this problem... it seems to be a bug. I managed to work only with an older version 2.53 and otherwise by loading failsafe BIOS settings (this hampers speed though). Do you by any chance have a XP+ CPU? It seems people with this problem are using AMD.

I am using AMD, 1.4Gb., 526 mb Rams, 2 hard disk drives, 40 gbs each.
I had the same problem before. After I increased the Virtual Memory from 2,000 mbs to 3,000 mbs, the problem disappeared. I plan to increase the Virtual Memeory to 5,000 mbs in my next projdect, just to see how smooth it will run .

I encoded a few movies (Full Metal Jacket and Snatch) and the mpg (SVCD) as a whole (2.6 sometin gigs) work and plays just fine, although when I cut the files into smaller files to burn I lose the audio. Once the audio worked fine until like 5:01 min and then it stopped, With FMJ I can cut CD1, CD2, but around 18 min of CD3 or like second 6500 somthing i lose audio! Video works and looks great BUT NO AUDIO! WHY IS THIS HAPPENING WHEN I CUT VIDEO?! PLEASE HELP!

There has been a few complaints about looseing audio when useing the "merge & cut" feature,there are quite a few bugs in the mpeg tools so my best advice is to use a different editor to cut your mpeg files cuz there is no way to make the mpeg tools work when they don"t want to....

I keep trying to load different avi files into TMPGEnc and it gives me the error message "cannot open or unsupported". Can anyone help me out with what may be wrong.

Do these files play well in Windows Media Player ?
Maybe you've not yet installed the proper codecs.

What you have to do is go to "options" to "enviromental settings" then to "vfapi plugins" and raise the "Direct Show File Reader" to "2" and lower everything else to "0" this should get your file loaded .And make sure you have the proper codecs.....

Can anyone tell me what are the proper codec's that I should have? Thanks in advance.

Thanks for your earlier help. I Think this is a great piece of software to use for my new hobby. I am trying to figure out how to improve the quality of my avi files...Is there a way to lighten the picture ? Most of my video is people of color who come out much too dark in the finished mpeg. Any and all suggestions for improved quality are welcome.

fg

There are a wide range of color filters in "tmpgenc" in the "advanced settings" you just "double click" the filter and a window will pop up with settings for what ever filter you selected....

I have a problem with windows XP: it canot read all my .avi when I try to select a part of the film to encode.If I force it encode only the sound.
But It's ok with the same .avi and windows millenium!
Why and What can I do?
thank!
my codec is the last included with divx player2.02 and I use the last vesion of tmpeg.
windoliv

get new codecs from www.divx.com

Q1. Have been using 2.54 to try and cut mpeg files but using the MPEG tools menu to preview and cut files I find even if I play it first before pausing and trying to cut ( old bug workaround ) it still locks up.

Q2. I have a demuxed video recorded with other software. Will TMPGEnc automatically adjust the sync on remuxing? The recording program gives parameters for that file for BBMPEG and DVD2AVI e.g. 79ms early BBMPEG(audio )
IS there a manual sync adjust in Tmpgenc??

Thanks,

Al

There is no way to manually offset the audio to sync up in the multiplexor in tmpgenc, I use the one in "bbmpeg" cuz as it multiplexes it will cut your file for you at the same time, there is the same syncing feature in the multiplexor in "mpeg2vcr", the mpeg tools have a lot of bugs in them and there aren"t any real workarounds accept useing a different editor and mux/demuxer..There are a few free ones out there to one is "xmuxer" and of course "bbmpeg"

If you've set the aspect ratio of the Video Tab in MPEG Settings to "16:9 (PAL)" and you change the Rate Control mode, the aspect ratio automatically changes to "16:9 (NTSC)".

Nope. Doesn't happen here. Check your system.

Haven't tried version 2.55 yet, but this has always been the case in prior versions of TMPGenc. I'm using Windows 2000 on all systems, but I doubt that that is the problem...

The dropdownbox of aspect ratio (set at "16:9 (PAL)") just changes its value to "16:9 (NTSC)" as soon as the rate control mode dropdownbox is selected.

That bug has supposedly been fixed in the 2.55 version.......