When archiving Hi8 footage for posterity it makes sense to use a "future-proof" format with as little loss as possible. (DVD-RAM disks at $11 per 10GB allow saving even unedited footage at fairly high bitrates.)

According to specs, 4:2:2P@ML allows for higher quality than MP@ML (studio vs broadcast quality). But would the difference be noticeable on Hi8 source?

Here is a test I ran: AVI capture -> archive with 4:2:2P encode -> extract back to AVI (Huffyuv RGB) -> edit (Ulead MS Pro) -> "author" with MP@ML Encode -> view in WinDVD.

Both encoding steps were done with 2-pass VBR at 5-9 Mbs, 7Mbs nominal.

The results are very impressive. Casual viewing shows the final output to be virtually identical to MP@ML encoded directly from the captured AVI. Substituting MP@ML for the archive step "seems" to produce an inferior result but better testing is needed to confirm.

The bad news (partially due to my lack of experience at this): 4:2:2P@ML can not be processed by standard codecs. TMPGEnc can read it using the m2v VFAPI, but audio is dropped. Furthermore, TMPGEnc can not save AVI files larger than 2GB with any codec so the original captures need to be limited to ~2.5 minutes. On top of that, TMPGEnc does not get sync sound from the original capture unless I do an AVI to AVI translation first.

So this was my actual flow: AVI capture (ATI AIW board) -> Huffyuv RGB encode (Ulead) -> 4:2:2P archival encode -> extract video back to AVI (Huffyuv RGB) + extract audio to mp2 (TMPGEnc) -> merge audio and video to single AVI (Ulead) -> edit (Ulead) -> "author" with MP@ML Encode -> view (WinDVD).

The flow would be a simpler if 4:2:2P proves to be unecessary. (Any other suggestions for a simpler flow would be welcomed.)

I am NOT going to spend a fortune on MPEG 2 hardware accelerators only to find they also have compatibility issues and rapidly go obsolete.

My system: Win XP Pro, Asus P4S333 MB, P4-1.8GHz, 0.75GB PC2100 RAM, 320GB ATA Raid 0, NTFS, ATI Radeon AIW 8500DV video card.

I looked a lot more closely at VirtualDub and Avisynth. These can probably take care of the capture and AVI handling issues mentioned previously. (VirtualDub captures in Huffyuv format with no audio sync problems!)

So my main question remains centered around 4:2:2P@ML. Any opinions from people who have used it would be welcomed.

I guess the central question is whether any software based codecs exist which handle it well?

Don thanks for reply i will play the vcd on a friends dvd player that supports vcd . my dvd player was given to me used with no manual its a GE dvd player on front of dvd player it says spatializer, dts dolby digital, 3D surround sound. nothing else. i have a question using this TMPG enc i downloaded avi file movie panic room off kazaa , it encodedwith TMPG took about 4 hrs does this program burn also? when i put a cdr in my cd write while encoding nothing happened.it converts to mpeg correct? so i went to nero and burned it to a vcd it wont play on my pc cd rom nero encodes and writes also but you dont see a frame by frame thing like TMPG gives you. and with nero i dont even know if its converting to vcd. the only time it plays on my pc cd rom is when i burn it as data let me know whats the deal with this thanks

No "tmpgenc" doesn"t burn.And to find out what your dvd player will play go to www.vcdhelp.com .To play vcd"s on your computer you might need to get vcd playing software.don"t use nero to encode cuz it looks like crap.......

I agree don't use NERO to encode it does look like crap, but don't confuse this with burning with NERO. Nero is still the best burning software out there.
Stick with TMPG for your encodes just make sure you choose a VCD template and then burn in NERO using the Video cd option.

ASHY

http://www.doom9.org/Soft21/svcdtools/VCDEasy_v1.0.9_Setup.exe
This is the easyest VCD burning program I have seen and the quality rocks Just one note make sure you select your CDR burner in the settings before you start and check the write to CD box so it will automatically burn the VCD or SVCD for you! TMPGenc rocks!! 2.54a best yet that I have seen to bad it cant read concurent VOB's If it could I wouldnt need DVD2AVI. These are the tools I recomend to any one posibilites with these are unlimited.. Decryter 3.11(or smart ripper), DVD2AVI, Tmpgenc 2.54a, VCDEasy and for those stubborn Audio extractions Total recorder. System requirement are 400Mhz or better(fastest you can afford my 1.33Ghz does nice), 256MB RAM, Good burner ie. Plextor,Yamaha etc. I perfer Windows XP Professional (The Corporate version..hehe) paid for Professional but I prefer to use the Corporate version since it doesnt make you get a REG KEY its stabile as a rock and works with every thing I throw at it Except for some Dos based games Dual boot with Windows 98SE. Every one has their opinions so I know alot of you might not agree but I have almost no problems ever compared to any other system I have ever used! ~NewtronX

I have a problem if I use the TMPG Enc wizard.
At first I have split an avi file into two parts.
When I use the wizard to encode one of them, it shows me that the movie will use more than 300% on a 80min CD. And he shows that the movie-file has a size of 1,2 GB. But the file is only 300 MB. What is the problem ??
I don¡­t have this problem with any file.
What can I do to fix the problem?

A friend of mine is able to set the Input video (and audio) files of TMPGEnc to the VOB files from a DVD without requiring to build a d2v file (DVD2AVI).

I've tried everything I can think of including installing Nimo's codec pack, DivX3.11 and 4, setting VFAPI plugin priorities, etc. but I can't get TMPGEnc to frameserve directly from a VOB file. I get stopped by the dreaded "Can not open ... file unsupported" error message.

I'd really appreciate any assistance!!!

My friend's settings are as follows:
He has DivX 3.11 Alpha codec installed.
Environmental Settings:
General Tab: "Enable reading refferd format AVI..." checked for both.
CPU Tab: Enabled MMX, MMX2, SSE, Use multithreaded
VFAPI Plugin:
Priority 0:
AVI2(Open DML) File Reader, BMP/PPM/TGA/JPG File Reader, Wave File Reader, and TMPGEnc Project File Reader Beta 12h
Priority -1:
DirectShow Multimedia File Reader,
Priority -2:
AVI VFW Compatibility Reader

you can feed vob files directly in "tmpgenc" but I wouldn"t recomend it cuz there is no way for you to pick which audio track you want or you might end up with subtitles or no audio at all cuz most vob"s have ac3 audio which "tmpgenc" can"t read.....

It is possible to open VOBs with TMPG directly, but I would recommend against it.

Reasons being:

1. TMPG will only encode the VOB you open and wont encode the rest in sequence as DVD2AVI does.

2. You wont be able to choose the audio track.

3. It is likely you will get A/V sync problems and other audio problems or no audio at all.

4. The encoding will be slower.

5. If you download the latest Smartripper 2.41, you wont have to create a .d2v as Smartripper already creates one in the ripping process.

Hope this clarifies things.

ASHY

after i encode avi movie file with tmpg and convert to mpeg i burn it with nero to vcd why wont it play on my dvd player it says no disc

unhappily, there could be a few reasons. try using VCDEasy to burn a
VCD 2.0 disk. burn a short .mpg so that your testing time will also be
short. Burn to a RW disk. It's slower, but it saves disks in testing.
check the front panel of your home DVD unit for the "VCD" lettering.
also, find the unit's manual so that you can make sure it supports VCD.
Also, download a freeware VCD player and test the disk on your computer.
If the burned disk plays as a VCD on your computer, but not on the home unit,
then you'll know it's the unit and not your burning procedure.
- Don

Don thanks for reply i will play the vcd on a friends dvd player that supports vcd . my dvd player was given to me used with no manual its a GE dvd player on front of dvd player it says spatializer, dts dolby digital, 3D surround sound. nothing else. i have a question using this TMPG enc i downloaded avi file movie panic room off kazaa , it encodedwith TMPG took about 4 hrs does this program burn also? when i put a cdr in my cd write while encoding nothing happened.it converts to mpeg correct? so i went to nero and burned it to a vcd it wont play on my pc cd rom nero encodes and writes also but you dont see a frame by frame thing like TMPG gives you. and with nero i dont even know if its converting to vcd. the only time it plays on my pc cd rom is when i burn it as data let me know whats the deal with this thanks

if I take two files that, together, total some 780 megs,
and I burn them with VCDEasy to a VCD 2.0 standard,
it works great.
However, if I use TmpgEnc to merge the two before using VCDEasy,
suddenly the single merged file will not fit on an 80 min CD...
hmmm.... a lot of padding is taking place somewhere...don't know
where yet. I think in VCDEasy... not sure yet.
Anyone else notice this?
-Don

Amazing...
Someone or some people must be working on this constantly.
well... I loved 2.54, so I'm sure I'll like 2.54a...
wonder what they fixed?
-Don

Somewhere on the homepage all changes in the versions are listed.

Well, I head that the author is only 21 years old..., but TMPGenc is really good program I think.

I hope the author and people in Pegasys Inc. keep good work.

I've got an (ATI All-In-Wonder 7500) video bd that converts all my videos to ATI Files. Is there a plugin to convert these to another format that I can use to record a VCD or SVCD.

I sure you mean avi files. And you can use TMPEGEnc to convert to VCD or SVCD.

I can't get synchronized sound if I encode directly from an AVI file produce by my AVI file. (It is WAY off.)

The sound will be synched if I load the AVI into an editor and save it back out. I use Huffyuv RGB codec for this step.

Keep an eye out for this and maybe somebody has a solution.

NO, they have been changed to "ATI File Player" files. This is what Win Explorer and Properties see it as. Help

The ATI format is very proprietary. I suggest capturing with something like VirtualDub or preferably iuVCR (which I haven't tried, but it looks good). Incidentally, when capturing with VirtualDub with my old All-in-Wonder Pro card I can use the DivX 5 codec to capture directly to DivX format, which allows hours of recording in only a few Gb. Then convert the DivX AVI file to SVCD MPG format with TMPGEnc.

The ATI format is very proprietary. I suggest capturing with something like VirtualDub or preferably iuVCR (which I haven't tried, but it looks good). Incidentally, when capturing with VirtualDub with my old All-in-Wonder Pro card I can use the DivX 5 codec to capture directly to DivX format, which allows hours of recording in only a few Gb. Then convert the DivX AVI file to SVCD MPG format with TMPGEnc.

ATI newer models allow changing the capture format to a non-proprietary codec. It captures fine using Huffuv except the audio is offset.

Through some experimentation, I found that there seem to be an extra 7-8 frames of audio at the beginning.

Fast recompress in VirtualDub with an offset of -266ms gets the audio synced back up.

ATI's big advantage: it has a remote control that the other capture programs do not have.

HI All
I've seen this a few times here but I'm having an issue with tmpg not displaying any picture while encoding.
I've tried using different codecs, I've tried 3.11, 4.11, 5..and I've installed the smr patch.
Alas its still encoding with no picture, sound is fine. Now I know this isn't tmpg's fault because on the other computer with 4.11 codec its fine (except that comp crashes often so I can't use it for the 4hrs encode jobs..dont even go there, I've tried EVERYTHING with that one bar processor replacement)
Basicly during the encoding you won't see any picture and if written to vcd the dvd player will just play sound but no picture.
The computer is a P3 500, 196meg ram and a tnt2 vid card. But since its a number crunching task I doubt the other details on it are very important.
Both comps use winxp.
Has anyone has this and found a solution. I've wanting to convert divx to svcd so I can watch on the dvd player.

I think the codec you are looking for is the mpeg2 codec,with this codec you can see the mpeg2 files,but if you can"t see anything while you are encodeing then you got other problems cuz if you can"t see the file while it is encodeing, if it is a black screen then there is something wrong.......

Hi, I have some perfectly good avi films which i want to burn to vcd, but when i re-encode them to mpeg using this software i get no Audio. please help.

During the setup process the audio "line" is flat as if there is no audio there

i have the same problem... if you figure it out please post to let us know

What kind of audio do your avi."s have?"tmpgenc" can"t read all audio formats, what you should do is load your avi. files into "virtua dub" and extract the audio to "wav" and load that file in "tmpgenc" as the audio track and load your avi in as your video.Make sure that the audio output in "tmpgenc" is 41000hz not 48000hz and between 128kbs & 224kbs .......

After I have created an .MPG file (using Version TMPGEnc 2.54 or 2.53) I get error messages when trying to creating a VCD as follows:

Not Acceptable - System Clock Reference 1058 and

Probably OK for 3 items - Video Pack Size 2048, Audio Pack + Padding 2048 and Last Pack Size 2052.

What settings have I make that are wrong?

First stop using that Roxio crap.
Run your MPEG through the 'Simple multiplex' option in the MPEGtools in TMPG.
Make sure you put the same file in both the video and Audio boxes.
In the box which says 'Type' choose 'MPEG-1 Video cd' then choose your output and click run.

After that burn in NERO not Roxio Easy cd creator.
http://www.nero.com

ASHY

ASHY'S suggestion worked.

ASHY obviously is astute since I never mentioned EASY CD CREATOR in my message but ASHY knew I was using it. And ASHY is right about EASY CD CREATOR PREMIUM. They have bugs when it is run in WINDOWS XP. For example when I format a disk, I must reboot before the disk drive can be used again; and if I don't use the program software eject the system crashes with the dreaded blue screen (i.e., I can't push the eject buttom on the CD drive).

ASHY, I am a novice. Can you explain why your suggestion worked and what was wrong?

I have an MPEG-2 file (352x480, 4Mb/s) that I want to shrink a bit in size...
So I thought I would recode it as 352x240, 23.997 fps, or 352x480, 23.997 fps -
and see what the results would be like. But no matter how I try, I seem to
be losing the last couple of seconds worth of the video stream - it freezes up
the video, and holds it for that last couple of secs... Is it something I am doing wrong?

This is what I do:
1. Demux original MPEG-2
2. Take video (352x480 4MB/s) and recode as (352x240, 23.997, CQ 95)
3. Multiplex resulting video and audio stream.
4. Play resulting MPEG-2.

Thank you!

Moises