Lately I posted here about bad merging of mpeg2 VBR files (bad sound sync in result file) in TMPGEnc 2.57.141.46. I was referred to "Note for Specification Change in TMPGEnc 2.57". Still I am a little bit confused so please read this :

- In "Note for Specification Change in TMPGEnc 2.57" there is a description of problems playing files, but I have problem MERGING them , so I think that I should have been referred to "MPEG files which can be edited with MPEG Tools in TMPGEnc" :
- There is written "MPEG files made by other software/hardware might be edited, but we are not able to support/warrant the result officially " - I HAVE ALL MY FILES HAVE MADE IN TMPGENC !
- It follows: "At "Cut" of Merge(Cut) in MPEG Tools, it uses Microsoft DirectShow to show preview and determine the positions to cut. Microsoft DirectShow can not seek MPEG files correctly if files were encoded in VBR, thus, start/end position to cut may not be accurate. The actual position to be cut may not be the one it is displayed on the window, so, even an MPEG file which is encoded TMPGEnc, if the MPEG file was encoded in VBR, it may not be cut accurately. We are not able to warrant the results on this matter ..." - I DIND'T CUT ANYTHING ! I HAD BUCH OF MEPEG2 VBR FILES CREATED IN TMPGENC AND TRIED THEM INTACT TO MERGE. LET'S ASSUME I HAD USED "CUT" - HOW IS SO, THAT THIS PROGRAM LET ME DO SOMETHING, THAT IS MAYBE OK, MAYBE NOT ?
I Tried many other softwares in attempt to join my files without reencoding - not even one was able to do it right. The simple diagnostics is this - try to demultiplex it back in TMPGEnc. Always the only first fragment in joined file is processed , the rest is ignored.
CAN BE POSSIBLE, THAT ALL THE MERGED FILES CREATED IN TMPGENC ARE BAD FROM THE BEGINNING? I did simply this - from AVI 480x288 I did mpeg2 480x576, VBR (2-pass), the best quality, some noise filtering.

CAN SOMEBODY RECOMMEND ME SOLUTION TO ALL THIS ? THANKS.

The solution is to use a different Mpeg merger,Tmpgenc"s merger doesn"t support the correct mergeing of VBR Mpeg streams.....

you might not have cut them, but the guy who made the mpeg2 files did.
if he didn't pay attention then the error has already slipped into the files.
then you only have 1 choice if you want to do it right. Re encode with closed gops and if you are using PAL settings make sure you have no more than 15 frames in a gop, for ntsc it's 18 i think.
if the video and audio of the source files already have different lengths (which is often the case with cut VBR files), the merging wùÍl alway result in sync problems
using the tools from a version 1.x tmpgenc might solve your problem, althoug you should expect a short sqeek on the seams.
The problem can only be solved at the source. after the parts are cut wrong, there's no way to correct it.also i discovered that most people don't use closed GOPs which would have prevented lot of these sync problems in the first place.
Professional dvd authoring tools won't even except files that are not encoded with closed gops

I repeat - I had made these files myself in TMPGEnc and I dind't cut them. The only 'cutting' was defining start and end position in AVI file before converting to mpeg2. By the way - I found good SVCD authoring program , which allows me play those files consecutively without returning to menu - that was my problem why I wanted to merge my files. I have bad feeling from all this problem - TMPGEnc allows me do something, even if it knowns the result will be unusable ...

Thaks to all for your reply to my previous question.
I would like to know how i can create a SVCD with a dolby surround audio track with TMPG Enc....
Thanks so much!

Gabry

You need a "Dolby AC3" encoder like "Soft Encode" to encode the audio to AC3, then you just mux it with the video ,,you dvd player probably will not play this though....

So is it possible to use ac3 for the audio ?
I have always been converting all my audio to wav (with headac3he)

Yes you can have AC3 for audio but Tmpgenc will not accept it and either will your DVD player..But if you were only going to play it on your computer then it would work...

a svcd that has a ac3 track is not a svcd anymore.
so a standalone player might have problems playing it.
tmpg does allow you to multiplex an ac3 audio stream if you don't set it to mpeg-2 videocd (vbr), choose mpeg-2 program(VBR) and you can mux anything, even private streams (subtitles). but you need seperate video and audio to do it .m2v and ac3 for instance.
Just not very smart, because a lot of standalone players cannot handle ac3 in svcd mode.

The original question was 'How to create a SVCD with dolby prologic track' which has nothing to do with muxing Ac3 streams with SVCD.
Ac3 is Dolby digital 5.1 and cannot be used with SVCD as your player won't play it.

There are many programs which will downmix an Ac3 stream to a Dolby Prologic sound track which is supported by VCD/SVCD. DVD2AVI will do this as will VOB2AUDIO and a few others.

ASHY

AC 3 (5+1) is not part of the SCVCD SPECS!

Your player won't play it ... which is unfortunate but true!

BUT ... I just read about an mpeg2 5+1 extension ... anyone knows what this is?

http://www.uni-kassel.de/~eckhardm/PDF/PhilipsSVCDSpecs.PDF

Cheers

Here is some info about it and how to create one. It's a little complicated and I would rather stick to Dolby prologic, much simpler.
http://www.stud.uni-siegen.de/sven.koelsch/mpeg2mc/

ASHY

When I convert the video in TMPGenc and try to burn a DVD in DVDit! I'm told that each GOP header needs to be follwed by a sequence header. I used the DVD templete with encoding so I don't know why DVDit! is not accepting my files. Does anybody know what I should do to get my files to work.

You have to do exactly what DVDit says ,put a sequence header before each GOP,Go to settings to "GOP" then were it says "Out put of sequence header" put that at "1"...this should solve the problem......

Thanks to Minion for answering my last problem. (Setting the encoding to MPEG-1 non-standard allowed me to reduce the file size).

My next problem is that I can't open an MPEG-2 file. I get the error message "can not open, or unsupported". I have a Ligos decoder installed and I can view, cut and edit the file within File->MPEG tools, but I can't select the MPEG-2 as a video source in the main screen. I have tried different MPEG-2 source files, including one created by TMPGEnc (encoded from mpeg1 to mpeg2), but I always get the same error.
Is there another setting I am missing?

Thanks,
Mick.

This is probably because the Tmpgenc does not like the compressed Mp2 audio, if you demultiplex the mpeg file and just load in the video and just encode the video then you just multiplex the video the the audio from the de-muxed source file ,this usually works, and you can try raiseing the priority of the "ligos mpeg2 decoder" in the "vfapi plugins"...when I need to re-encode a mpeg file cuz i don"t have the original source file anymore I de-multiplex the mpeg file then load the "Mpeg video" file into "DVD2AVI" and make a "D2V" project file and encode that in Tmpgenc, then use the audio that I saved from de-muxing the mpeg file for my audio which I join in the multiplexor.....

Hi Minion,
I tried doing to de-multiplex the stream, but it still could not read the file. I think the problem is that although I've installed Ligos, it doesn't appear in the VFAPI plugins. How do I add ligos to this list? I've downloaded the VFAPISDK_1013.zip file but I don't understand how to use these files to create a ligos plugin.
Mick.

I never mentioned anything about VFAPI_SDK, what I said was to de-mux the mpeg2 file then use DVD2AVI to make a "D2V" project file then load the "D2V" file into Tmpgenc and encode it to mpeg then multiplex the de-muxed audio to the newly encoded mpeg file...What I think you downloaded is the "Vfapi Converter", it is a very handy tool to have and i use it every time I encode dvd rips, but it is for frame serveing "D2V and "TPR" project file to certain programs......

That sounds like it will fix my problem, thanks.
I mentioned the vfapi stuff because my original problem was that the MPEG2 streams could not be read and you mentioned that I could change the priority of the ligos decoder. As I don't have the ligos decoder in the vfapi plugin list, I think that this is the source of my problems. So how do I add the ligos decoder to the list?
Thanks for your time in answering my questions.
Mick.

That sounds like it will fix my problem, thanks.
I mentioned the vfapi stuff because my original problem was that the MPEG2 streams could not be read and you mentioned that I could change the priority of the ligos decoder. As I don't have the ligos decoder in the vfapi plugin list, I think that this is the source of my problems. So how do I add the ligos decoder to the list?
Thanks for your time in answering my questions.
Mick.

The onlt thing I can think of is to Re-install the program or codec or whatever the Ligos decoder is in, then see if it shows up then, or you can Install Tmpgenc again and see if it recognizes it Now...Or download "Power DVD" and use the "Cyberlink" Decoder, there is the old Mpeg2 plugin for the version before this one that still works, but it is a very slow and buggy decoder but it works and it"s free, it is just hard to find now because tmpgenc uses this new system for decodeing Mpeg2 video files... But this other codec has other uses it makes the VFAPI converter accept Mpeg video files and turn them into Psudo AVI file for frame serveing and allmost every program accept them..It is usefull when you have a mpeg file that you want to encode or edit and the program doesn"t accept Mpeg files so you would use the codec and the Vfapi converter to instantly turn your mpeg file into a avi file that you can use in an encoder or editor that doesn"t accept mpeg files, you could use it instead of DVD2AVI for your problem right now, but DVD2AVI is faster..Any way if you want the Mpeg2 codec for tmpgenc just e-mail me and I"ll send it to you, and tell you how to use it with the VFAPI converter and a few other things it can do.....

this is my suggestion, since an encoding is a long process, it gets really irritating when the process is stopped by some factor of nature and u have to start all over again...instead, since u already have a process logging function.....
y not use that to provide a pause/resume, more importantly, provide a resume after a power failure, the log will provide details of the last frame that was processed, simply knock of the last 50 frames if need be and start encoding again from where u left off ?!?
i dont see y this is not possible !? the software would b really great if i could stop the encode today, shut down the software and resume the encode 2 days from now.
hope 2 hear from u soon.
till later
>driven

This sudgestion was made to the author many times and a long time ago and from what I gather it is pretty much impossible..The information gathered in the log file isn"t the right kind of information for the encoder to resume encodeing after a crash..you would think it wouldn"t be that hard to do but I guess it is easier said than done cuz no encoder has this feature..You can pause the encodeing but you have to keep you computer on, you just click "Stop" then it will ask you if you want to quit encodeing and you just don"t answer, then you can go run another application or you sister can go check her e-mail, or you can put you computer in hibernation mode till you want to start encodeing again then you just answer "No" and it resumes encodeing, and if it does crash on you you can use the source range to start encodeing were you left off and then use the "Merge & Cut" to join the parts together, it"s not perfect but if you do it right you can"t tell were the join is....

thanks for the prompt reply, i understand clearly what u mean, but with computers nothing is impossible, can b nearly impossible, but never out of reach.
has any one though of some means of saving the state of the thread/process to provide the pause resume function ?!?
kinda like fooling the process, i.e. the encoder, that it never stopped ?!

i'am really interested in doing this, coz i was converting an avi to svcd, the output was going to b 2.5gb large, but at 1.5gb, the process got terminated due to a power failure, now i'am really disgusted at starting the whole process all over again.
till later,
driven.

p.s.: i dont mind spending time in this over here to get a resume function working (or give up after beign satified that it really is impossible, hehe :D )

Like minion said, you dont have to start over from the start.
cut off what you already had before the powerfailure, best use the last frame before an i-frame as the last frame of that mpeg file , set the starting point for teh second part to the lenght of the bit you already encoded, encode the second part and then use the cut/merge tool.
it should work out fine if you have set the encoder to closed GOPs.
if you would devize a funtion that does resume automaticaly you wouldn't be able to stop the process at all.
which means that the job would finish no matter what.

Ok, guys, it is me again. Here is where I stand. In reading the forums of several different sites, I came across a suggestion to go into DivxPros configuration and select smooth playback. I did this without re-encoding. Just did the vcdeasy part of it. What came out is by far the best I have had yet. But there are still freezes. No where near what I had before, but they are still there. Have any of you ever tweeked you vcds in this way? If I re-encode this now that I have selected this feature, will it make a difference?

Has all this effort been for the same movie??if so it is probably just a screwed up avi file, you shouldn"t be haveing all these problems if the avi file was in perfect shape, have you tried a different movie file???The best thing you can do to get trouble free exelent quality VCD"s is to get yourself a DVD-rom for $50 and rip dvd"s, the quality is much greater than you can get by encodeing avi file downloaded off the net, and the problems are allmost non-existant......

you are probably right. I have a DVD-ROM drive. Ripping was the next thing I was going to teach myself.
Just for the sake of time, Exactly what do I need to get started. I am looking for the proven way to do this. Thanks much.

"you are probably right. I have a DVD-ROM drive. Ripping was the next thing I was going to teach myself.
Just for the sake of time, Exactly what do I need to get started. I am looking for the proven way to do this. Thanks"

For starters, go here: http://www.dvdripguides.com/dvdmenu.html

Ripping is simple, first get "SmartRipper" the default settings are the correct settings , and you rip the vob files to you hard drive, then download DVD2AVI and load the vob files into it and then make a D2V project file and the Wav audio file, then you load the "d2v file into Tmpgenc and the wav file in for the audio and encode to the format of your choice......

hello, i need help if i download ulead dvd workshop and use it to author my VCD's will it ruin the quality? i tried using the dvd plug in in the other program of ulead but it kept freezing in stuff i'd rather use something plain and simple thatll get the job done thanx

If you use Ulead dvd workshop and you don"t make totally VCD compliant vcd"s then it will re-encode them and you will loose lots of quality..When you were useing the DVD Plugin was it freezeing when you were scrolling through the file looking for chapter points???If this is true it isn"t actually freezeing it just takes a long time for the program to scan trough the file looking for I frames, it will do this if you are useing anything slower than a 1.4ghz cpu, and it will do this more with files encoded with tmpgenc, the plugin does not like Tmpgenc mpeg files, but it scans through 5 times faster with CCE encoded files. it is the only program That I know of than does chapters and menues with XVCD and XSVCD"s, but if you are makeing totaly compliant VCD"s then you can use DVD workshop with out it re-encodeing, but they both use the same Mpeg decoder so you might have the same problem with it ,and DVD Workshop only lets you do 20 chapter pionts per file, but if you just want to do Chapters then you can use VCDEasy but the Menu"s are nice to have......

what do you mean when u say totally compliant VCD's and yes that when it freezes but when i clikc alt+ctrl+dlt it says that that program isnt responding

My monitor screen freezes up quite often, and when I press "Control Alternate Delete" I often see that TMPG has frozen,,, but there are several different reasons for this... But I'm no expert... this is just based on personal observation...

1) TMPG encounters unreadable frames in an avi file and freezes.

2) Insufficient Video memory... sometimes if I'm downloading from Kazaa and encoding at the same time, a "pop up" ad will appear. Depending on what else I'm doing the "pop up" is often enough to overload my screen memory, causing a "freeze-up"

Those are the most commom causes that happen to me.

Totally VCD Compliant is a VCD at 352 by 240 1150kbs 224kbs audio 41000hz, sequence headers aligned to vcd specs..That is totally VCD compliant..The windows task manager is overly parinoid when it comes to unresponsive programs if you just wait a couple minutes the program will start running again..But this seems to be only a problem with Tmpgenc encoded files, CCE encoded files don"t have that problem with the DVD Plugin........

I was experimenting with low bitrates with the VCD template. I noticed that if the bitrate was below 1150, then the files were always the same size. I used vitualdub to verify the bitrates of the files and they were correct. If the bitrates were higher than 1150 then the files were larger. Is this a bug, or is there some sort of padding going on that can't be disabled?

If you are useing a VCD template Tmpgenc will allways make the file VCD compliant by adding Padding, what you need to do is change the "System" setting to "Video-CD NON-Standard"......

Hi New To This But I Use To Use The TMPGENC Program To Load VOB File That I Ripped With Smartripper And Then I Would Encode It To A AVI File But I Had To Recently Reinstall My Whole System And Now It Says (Can Not Be Opened Or Is Unsupported) When I Try To Open A VOB File Help Pls Anyone I Have A DVD Program Installed Which Is PowerDVD Deluxe Edition 4.0. Am I Missing Some Plugin Or Codec Hlp Thks!!

StarLP22

You never load VOB files directly into Tmpgenc, Vob files usually have numerous audio tracks so how is Tmpgenc subposed to know thich audio track to use ,Pluss vob file usually have "Dolby Digital AC3" audio and Tmpgenc has never supported that format, so you must be remembering the procedure you went through wrong because Tmpgenc has never been able to do what you want it to do...If you want to use Tmpgenc to make an avi file out of a Vob file(there are better programs for doing this) you need to use DVD2AVI to extract the audio track that you want to a Wav file, and make a D2V project file for the video information, then you load the "D2V" file into Tmpgenc and the Wav file for the audio, then you "output to avi", a faster way is just to use DVD2AVi to make a avi video file and a Wav audio file then Mux them together...or use one of the many programs specificly designed for turning Vob files into AVI files, like "Vob To AVI" and there are many others.....

I have done this by simply renaming file as *.mpg to use TMPG. Then you can use TMPG tools to separate video and audio,

Next you can convert video format, then recombine using TMPG tools with original video.

Alternatively you can use an audio utility to convert audio, eg AC3 to MP2, before recombining with video.

The only reason you have been able to use VOB files with TMPG is because somewhere along the line you have installed an MPEG2 codec to decode the file otherwise it would NOT load.
It is a silly idea as Minion says to use VOB files directly with TMPG. One because of the many tracks involved and two because of the speed and three if you have more than one VOB file, TMPG cannot load the next file sequentially. DVD2AVI can handle VOB files much better than TMPG can and is the best and fastest way of converting VOBS to MPEG.

ASHY

Hi, When i try to convert a avi to a mpeg-1 file - i set all the settings i require and start the burn. Everything is fine up until about 22%. this means i can not encode the whole movie. It reports an error, although i do not have the error to hand as i have tried this several times and to get to 22% takes a while and i have not as yet noted down the error. So i am possibley thinking this could be an error in the actual DivX/AVI file. If so, is there anyways of checking if there is and fixing them. The movie plays fine as a AVI, in Winamp.
What could this be? (also errors occur when trying to normalize sound to)
Very greatful for any help...thx Liam

Hi everyone!

When I Merge 2 SVCD-files in Merge&Cut, the output-file gets REALLY Loud
Audio-Ticks just before the actual merge-start/point!
Why is it so? How do I merge 2 SVCD-files _without_ the darn audio-ticks?

(Using v2.57)

Thanx in advance!

Regards, Robby.

This happens when you merge 2 files that are part way through a GOP, the "Correct" Button is supposed to fix this but sometimes it doesn"t, what you can do is use the edit feature and merge them a few frames before the end of the first file and the beginning of the second file, if you use the slider it naturally stops on an I frame but if you the the frame by frame buttons then you probably wont be stopping on an I Frame, so try to use the slider to find the joining points not the frame by frame Buttons....

Exactly the reason why you should use closed GOPs and always cut before an i frame, so the first frame of the second part is an i-frame.
If you encode the parts yourself, it's also wise to uase the audio setting to make the volume fade out in 20 ms at the end and have the 2nd part fade in at the start.
Another option is demuxing the video and audio files, merge all the video files, then merge al the audio files and then mux the video file and the audio file you just produced.
That will sometimes work.

I have been trying to use toolame as an external encoder with TMPGEnc 2.53 in an effort to get better audio quality. Each time I get an error message saying "toolame.exe cannot be used as external encoder". Can someone please help me with this? All I want is better audio quality on my VCD's when I am converting .avi to .mpg......the audio when I use TMPGEnc sounds tinny.
Please help a newbie.
Thanx, Pistoly.

Make sure you are loading it in the "Mpeg layer 2" slot not the "Mpeg Layer 3", and if you still can"t get it to work you could try "SCMPX" it is a good audio encoder for tmpgenc and it is a sample rate converter also,you can find it on google........

Thanx Minion,
I tried SCMPX and TMPGEnc said the same thing "SCMPX.exe can not be used as external encoder". I must have some settings wrong in TMPGEnc... Aside from going into Environmental Settings and selecting Layer-2 and browsing to the SCMPX.exe file, is there other settings that you have to set?
Thanx,
Pistoly

You can just not encode the audio with Tmpgenc, Ashy says that "MpegDJ encoder" is a good mp2 audio encoder and very fast, you can use "DB Power Amp" with the MP2 codec and use that to encode the audio after extracting it to wav,there is a Toolame Mp2 codec for DB Power amp also, I do that sometimes and it works quite good, have you tried deleteing Tmpgenc and re-installing it and see if it corrects the problem??You could have gotten a buggy copy of Tmpgenc...