I'm getting the "can not open or file unsupported" error when trying to open an m2p file on my laptop. I have tried the +2 adjustment to DirectShow and it didn't help.

Here's the catch: the same file works fine on my desktop machine, using the same version of tmpgenc, the current one. Both machines will play the file in WMP if the extension is changed to mpg, albeit with incorrect aspect ratio. Both machines play the file in RealPlayer (again, changed to mpg), and their respective DVD players (PowerDVD XP on the desktop, WinDVD 3.0 on the laptop)

So I know the file is good, I know the VFAPI trick doesn't work, but the codec exists (well, _a_ codec) or else WMP and Real wouldn't be able to play it. I'd rather not install the 400 codecs in that Nimo Codec package if we can figure out which ones I might actually need.

Any ideas? If I missed a vitally important piece of information, let me know...

Your problem is simply that you do not have the correct MPEG2 codec installed. Not all codecs work with TMPG that work with Media player.

Heres the best one which works with TMPG 2.56, but doesn't work with 2.57 due to the chages the way 2.57 uses codecs now.
www.plmovies.com/mpeg2codec_installer.zip

ASHY

Okay, I think I see now. In the revision notes, it mentions that it'll see the Cyberlink codec, but it doesn't mention WinDVD. Since that's the difference between the two machines (2.57 with PowerDVD installed works great on my desktop), I wager that is the problem. So I can either go through that big honkin' codec pack and see if I can find the Cyberlink codecs (which I think were in there, I at least recognized an audio one, if someone could tell me the video one that would be great, or I can just put PowerDVD XP on the laptop (which truth be told I think I like better than WinDVD, but WinDVD came with the laptop.)

I'll give those a shot and report back. Thanks for the help.

Bingo. I dug through the Codec Pack for a while, and found a couple ideas, but I figured I wanted to install PowerDVD anyhow, and I had it handy with me, so I installed it, and voila, TMPGENC works fine now. It must have specifically searched out the Cybervideo codec. So it's all good now. Thanks for the shove in the right direction. :)

I want to create a VCD (MPEG-1) from a DivX AVI file. I'm using CBR and reduce the bitrate so that TMPGEnc shows me the target file size of 680MB. But after encoding the new mpg will have the same size if I had used the standard 11500 bitrate??!? Is't it possible to reduce the target file size by reducing the bitrate or what I'm doing wrong?

The problem is that since you are makeing a "Non-Compliant VCD" you need to change the "system" setting to "video-cd non-standard"..I hope you realize that lowering the bitrate will greatly decrease the quality of the mpeg file, but if you need to get your file size smaller then use the "CQ" encodeing method, with this method you can actualy have a much higher maximum bitrate with a smaller file size and have better quality than the CBR method..Setting the maximum bitrate to 3000kbs and the minimum to 500kbs and the quality on "80" you could probably get 90-100 minutes on a cd-r depending on the movie and have better quality than CBR, give it a try...

Ive been finding that more than less of the movies I've been trying to convert are being read 3x larger or more. For example, the movie Oceans 11 is, 1h and 56 min (690mb 1 disc/file) TMPG reads it as 381 mins or 6hrs 35 min. The movie Kiss of the dragon is 1hr 38min (698mb 1 disc/file) and TMPG reads it as 256min or 4hrs 26min. Both are divix. Is it a TMPG bug? Something not yet supported? Or am I missing a setting?

The "file size" feature is fairly new to tmpgenc and there for probably has a few bugs in it, or it is haveing problems reading the header on your divx files.Does this affect encodeing???Have you tried to set the beginning and end points with the source range?? and the size of the divx file has nothing to do with the size of the encoded mpeg file it is the length of the file that matters and the bitrate used while encodeing.Anyway if it doesn"t screw up the encodeing then i wouldn"t worry about it but if it does post back with the effects you are getting when encodeing or any error messages you get..

Your the best Minion. The source range has to be set for the begining and end frame of the movie. Otherwise the encodeing does suffer badly (300kbs). This is due to the movie being viewed as larger than it really is. THX!!!!!!!

I have audio but no images when converting DivX to Mpg. Both audio and video files are .avi.

You probably need to raise the priority of the "direct show file reader" you do this by going to "options" to "enviromental settings" to "vfapi plugins" then raise the "Direct Show File Reader" to "2"........

I have been created my Mpeg2 files with TMPGenc. I author my DVD with Ulead moviefactory. Every time I view all my newly authored DVD I can only search thru it once maybe twice before my DVD player cannot fastforward or rewind anymore. I have tried this with 3 DVD players, and all do the same thing. Tried many clips and re encodes(with closed GOP etc) but still have have the fastforward and rewind issue. The only way I can get the dvd player to search again is to stop and play again then I can search just one maybe two times. Does this have to do with anything concerning the GOP layout? When I encode my movies I do load just the default DVD NTSC template for encode. Any Suggestions would be greatly appreciated. thansk /bigU

The fast forwarding and rewinding is a header issue and that could be a "ulead" problem cuz the header gets re-writen in "ulead" to do chapters,or do you do chapters and menu"s??Can you do can you still navigate through the file useing the chapter points???And if you plan to do chapters then don"t use those KVCD templates cuz the GOP layout of those only has one I frame per 48 frames and you need I frames to put in chapters and edit.So if you aren"t haveing problems with your chapters just fast forward and rewind then try putting in more chapters then you can jump to chapter points instead of skimming through the file.......

Hi minion

Thanks for the info. I am using menus/chapters. I can navigate fine thru the chapters. Its only skimming thru the file where I have issues. I did not know that ulead rewrites the headers. This can very well be the problem. Thank you for giving me a starting point to debug this problem. I will look into this further and will try what you suggested(add more chapter points :-)).

thanks

big U

Chapters work great with every KVCD template. Just use VCDEasy to make your chapters.

A while ago (using 2.55), I encoded a VBR MPEG set at 0/2000 with an average 850. Added in some 128 MP2 audio, and the resulting file was 350MB and 49' long.

Now, with 2.57, I have a VBR MPEG again set at 0/2000 with an average 850 and 128 audio. The size of this file (48'30") is almost 500MB.

What's gone wrong?

Because you use the same settings on one file and got a certain file size does not mean you will get the same file size with every file you encode with those settings, this is the nature of VBR ,the bitrate varies so the file size will not be the same twice, sometimes even with the same file and the same settings the file size could be differant each time you encode it, plus you are useing a different version so there could have been some changes in how the encoder allocates the bitrate, and each file is differant,I have encoded the first half of a movie with the same settings as the second half of a movie and have had one part be up to 200mb bigger than the second part just because the second half of the movie had all the action in it so was therefore much bigger...

Was this actually the same movie and the same length?
If not then I'm not suprised you have different file sizes if it wasn't the same movie.

Even if it was the same length it is unlikely one movie will result in the same size as the next.

VBR adjusts the bitrate to that particular movie otherwise there would be no point in using VBR.
Depending on the content of the movie the bitrate will rise and fall causing the movies to differ in file size.

ASHY

I would expect a differing size to be the case if I set a quality level, and allowed the encoder to do the bitrate, however if I set an average bitrate, then the size of the movie should be average bitrate * length - otherwise the resulting file's average bitrate isn't the average bitrate I've specified, which would be a bug.

When you are useing such a low average bitrate and a high max bitrate then the encoder is going to choose the higher bitrate when needed, image quality is allways a priority over file size(from the Tmpgenc faq)..The encoder isn"t going to allocate less bits to a frame than another simular frame because it has gone over it"s average bitrate for the file, What would happen then if you set the average bitrate too low the encoder will tend to run out of bits at the end of every file,I have done a few tests with Tmpgenc and CCE useing really low average bitrates and really high max bitrates, test simular to setting a 0kbs minimum 500kbs average and a 8000kbs max ,and after encodeing viewing through a bitrate viewer the average through the whole file was a lot higher than 500kbs and the quality was better than I expected considering the minimum bitrate..I don"t know the mechanics of why these encoders act that way but it seems like a fairly good explanation...

Ok, let me quote from the TMPG manual itself.

>Every scene in a movie has a different optimal bitrate. In this mode, a scene is analyzed to determine the best bitrate before it is encoded. One can set the maximum, average, and minimum bitrates to use.

>Average Bitrate
The average quality desired for the movie.

TMPGEnc will attempt to encode the movie close to the average bitrate, while still adjusting for scene motion. The higher the bitrate, the better the quality of movie and larger the file size.

>Maximum Bitrate
The maximum bitrate setting restricts the encoder to an upper bitrate limit during encoding. The higher the value, the better the quality of scenes with rapid motion will become at the expense of file size.

>Minimum Bitrate
This minimum bitrate setting guarantees a minimum bitrate for scenes with little motion if "Enable Padding" is enabled. If this value is set too low, even scenes with little motion will be of a poor quality.


As it says in the first statement regarding 'Average bitrate'
>TMPG will *Attempt* to encode close to the average bitrate,while still adjusting for scene motion.
This means even though you have set an average, if you set a maximum bitrate which is higher than the average then this bitrate will be used if the scene requires it.

Again in the next statement regarding 'Maximum bitrate' it says
>The higher the value, the better the quality of scenes with rapid motion will become at the expense of file size.

Notice the last few words of the statement.
This is telling you that regardless of the average bitrate set if you set the maximum bitrate high enough, this will affect the file size if there are lots of high motion scenes.

ASHY

I am having the same problem 2.57 plus stinks because it seems to totally disregard the vbr bitrate values.

Example I encoded a two hour movie with 2pass vbr 2520 max average 2100 and minimum 500 kbps. The end result was average bitrate 2160 kbps. Needed 3 discs so I decide to re-encode and lowever the average bitrate to 1600.... Tmpegenc 2.57 gave me the same filesize!!!!!!! even though i made sure i typed in 1600 average vbr and save the .tpr file and double checked it it gave me a 2160kbps average file--just ignoring my parameters (1600 average).

SO I decided to go back to tmpgenc plus 2.56 and you know what? no problem. The average was 1610 kbps (I choose 1700 kbps) and it fit on 2 cdrs...

Something needs to be fixed....

Hi I am having a problem with the file size of a SVCD I am trying to create.
Firstly I captured 1 hour of video from my Dazzle DVCII in mpeg2. The captured file size is 3.6Gb.
I am now trying to encode it down to standard SVCD using tmpgenc 12a. My settings are as follows.
Standard PAL SVCD template
Changed constant bitrate to constant Quality
Left bitrate at 2520
Video source - interlaced and field order A
Search acuracy set to highest
Now it encodes in approx 15mins (not long I thought for 1GHz PIII 256DDR)
but the file size comes in at 3.5Gb?
I have tried using both just the captured file and demultiplexed video and audio files in the source to no difference.

Please help as this SVCD file size can't be right!

Thanks

Flash

Ther seems like there is something definately wrong first off the encodeing should take much longer like about 2 hours at least with the highest quality on my 1.7ghz a hour of svcd on the highest quality takes about 2.5hours,and the file size is more than 3 times as big as it should be ,so what I would sugest is to de-mux your captured mpeg file and load the video into "dvd2avi" and make a "D2V" file and then load the d2v file into tmpgenc then encode just the video then you mux the audio from the original mpeg with the encoded D2V file, this should work and the quality should be pretty good also........

Thanks I'll give it a go and let you know.

Flash

The problem is you haven't encoded the file at all, but simply made an exact copy.

The reason is because you are using version 12a.
What you seem to have misunderstood is that even though this version can encode to MPEG2. It cannot open MPEG2 files. To do this you will have to install an MPEG2 codec.

When using 12a and you load the MPEG2 into TMPG it will simply load the file into the Video and audio boxes and then just remux the audio and video files back together as the output.
This is why it is the same size and it was so quick to encode.
You will notice that you will see this: mux:// before the file name in the 'Video' box. This indicates your file is going to be muxed not encoded.

ASHY

Thanks Ashy
Have you got a link to a good mpeg2 codec or is it a case of searching.

Thanks

Flash

Hi again I've just had a think and my maching has Power DVD installed so should already have a mpeg2 codec installed I think?
Running XP and can't find a list of the codecs, no problem with 98 but Hmmm where is it.

Any further suggestions are welcomed.

Thanks

Flash

I also have the Nimo codec pack installed.

Flash

Go here for the codec, but be aware this will only work for version 2.66 or below due to the new way the new version handles codecs.
www.plmovies.com/mpeg2codec_installer.zip

ASHY

That should be version 2.56.

I just purchased a license for TMPGenc, downloaded the latest version, installed it and it works fine on VCD settings but when I encode MPG-2 for SVCD it comes up with no audio. I have tried it with several DIVX encoded AVI's which were checked and found to be fine. I also tried them through software and hardware DVD players.

Am I missing a CODEC for MPG-2 that I am unaware of?

HELP!!!

The problem probably is that the audio format in your divx files is not supported in Tmpgenc, wav format is the best to encode with tmpgenc so you will need to extract the audio from your divx/avi file with "virtual dub" to a wav files then use the wav file for your audio source in tmpgenc....

Hi!

I thougt that in a future version maybe there could be an option to add selectable subtitles to a SVCD-file. Just an idea i had because those very few programs that can actually do that is in early versions and not working properly or to advanced to use. Hope it will come...

Axe P.

This is probably a lame question (not the audio encoder lame), but when I am encoding SVCDs fron Divx (avi) files, sometimes quality is the most important factor and I let it go for 3 CDs worth.

There are other times when I wouldn't mind making the quality is little less and having it take up 2, 80 minutes CDs.

What do I need to set in Tmpgenc for 2 80 minutes CDs ?

Thanks in advance,

Jolo

You should be able to fit 90-120 minutes on 2 cd-r"s in svcd format without much trouble.I suppose you are just useing the svcd template? or you wouldn"t be asking how to make your files smaller, ok, last night i did 2 48 minute svcd"s and they were each about 750mb and the quality was great.The settings were useing the CQ(Constant Quality)with a maximum bitrate of 4500kbs and a minimum bitrate of 750kbs and the quality at 85, with these settings you should be able to get 50 minutes of svcd on a cd-r and if you want to get more try putting the quality down to 80 then you might get close to 55-60minutes.and putting the audio bitrate down to 128kbs will give you more space for video without looseing noticeable audio quality..

Thanks for the reply.

Yes I am just using the SVCD template. The answer is yes, I use the templates which come with Tmpgenc, but make a change or 2 for high quality(slow) and to use full screen (keep aspect ratio).

Am I reading too much into your reply that might be saying that there are some custom templates that might do what I want to do or are "better" than the ones that come with the software ?

Thanks,

Jolo

Yes and No, you do not need to use a template to encode, i usually don"t or use one then change the settings, or you can make your own Templates, the Templates are Pre-defined settings that exactly match the Specifications for that format meaning the svcd templates are for makeing standard compliant svcd files, the thing is that most dvd/vcd players will play svcd/vcd"s that are out of specifications, some more than others, some players will let you play a mpeg movie with a resolution of 704 by 480 with a bitrate of 5000kbs and some won"t let you change the bitrate or resolution at all, but most allow for some augmentation of the svcd/vcd specification, to find out what your dvd player will play go to "http://www.vcdhelp.com/ and they have a section on dvd players and what they are compatible with, this is stuff the manual won"t tell you..ok, to change the settings you might have to load the "unlock.mfc" template from the "extra" folder after you load the svcd template and after you are done with the settings and you want to save them as a template just go to the "save" button in the bottom right of the tmpgenc screen then name your template and thats it you have made a template....good luck

I just installed the latest copy (first time install) and I get the following error code when trying to recode an AVI file ?
Any idea ?

Make sure you have all the Tmpgenc files in the same folder then you can try copy and pasteing the "p3p package.dll" to the "system" and "system32" folder and this should work......

Ooops, as I reply to myself.

I forgot probably the most important setting that is changed from the defaults in toolame gui. That is to change the default rate to 224. -b.

I recieve an error meesage when I Cut a file into half. I can cut the first file Ok but the second half of the file I recieve an error saying

"illegal MPEG Video Stream " .


Can anyone Help me please. Can someone also please answer my other question I left a few days ago. Thanks.


akaid24@ntlworld.com

Regards..................Akaid

The best thing to do instead of waiting for the "merge & cut" to work is to use a different mpeg editor, you can download a few at http://www.apachez.net
and go to the Tools section and there are a few mpeg editors there for download......