Ok, I've been experimenting with some templates and have noticed something: on my videos, the macro blocks, etc, that I noticed in my earlier post apparently disappear when I switch from I-frame only mode to IBP mode.

Is this supposed to happen? I thought that creating an I-frame only video would result in the HIGHEST quality possible?

My goal is to create the absolutely highest quality video possible, I don't care if it takes 50 hours to encode 1 hour of video.

Can anyone shed some light on why this might be happening? My only explanation is that for some reason at 8mbps, with I-frames only there is not enough bit-rate to go around for 30fps. Does not seem right though since that equates to 26.6KB per frame, which at 720x480 should result in a decent quality JPEG image...

Thanks for any help!

I frame Doesn"t nescesarilly Create the Highest Quality, I frames are Just Less compressed than B and P frames Pluss there are no Mpeg Video standards that Support I frame only Files so the Use of them for DVD/VCD/SVCD is not supported....Cheers

You've answered your own question. If you want to create a high quality I-frame only MPEG then you are going to need a high bitrate, compression will be less and the file size will be huge and in no way will fit a DVD.

>this supposed to happen? I thought that creating an I-frame only video would result in the HIGHEST quality possible?

The highest quality possible would be complete uncompressed frames of which you might get about 5 mins worth on one DVD if your lucky (248Mbps to create a series of uncompressed 720×480 images at 30fps in 24-bit RGB color)

>I frame Doesn"t nescesarilly Create the Highest Quality, I frames are Just Less compressed than B and P frames Pluss there are no Mpeg Video standards that Support I frame only Files so the Use of them for DVD/VCD/SVCD is not supported....Cheers

Actually there is no limitation in the DVD/VCD/SVCD standard which frames have to be used in a GOP, but in DVD there is a limit to the amount of frames in a GOP whether they be I-frames or P/B frames. However it's not pratical for DVD because the data rate would just be to high for the DVD player to handle.

Actually, I use the I Frame only option to be able to edit MPEGS at the frame level, since TMPEnc products (encode and DVD Author) are not good enough to edit
anything else at frame level (they can only cut at an IFrame).

I capture at 8mbs, run it though TMPGEnc with I frame only and 8mbs CBR (it seems very fast), then splice and dice using DVD Author, then run the resulting VOB's though DVD2AVI and back through TMPGEnd and do a VBR encoding at a lesser bitrate.

Suprisingly, I do get reasonably good quality.

Joe

Why don't you just use a proper frame accurate editor such MPEG2VCR. It's a lot less finicky about formats than TMPG, can do multiple edits on one file and when used properly gives good results.

>Suprisingly, I do get reasonably good quality.

It surprises me too.
I wouldn't think that 8Mb/s is a high enough bitrate for I-frame only encoding. You must be losing quality doing this.

8Mb/s is good enough for for GOPS that contain P,B frames because the compression is much higher for these frames and therefore 8Mb should be plenty for each GOP, but I-frames don't compress too well and the data rate per second would have to be quite high to maintain any sort of quality with full resolution files.
I would estimate the bitrate required to encode an I-frame would have to be at least twice as high as a B or P frame 15-16 Mb/s, probably higher.

You may want to take a look at the page below. This is not the first one that I have seen which suggests a minimum of 25 Mb/s for I-frame only encoding.

http://www.broadcastpapers.com/editing/Pinnacle4MPEGMyths01.htm

I brought up the ULEAD Mpeg2 file and saw that its VBV buffer was set to 112 not 224 as TMPGEnc has its set. I encoded a TMPGEnc Mpeg2 using the NTSC DVD template, only changing VBV from 224 to 112. When I was finished, I looked at it in BitrateView and it said the VBV was 56???!!!

Does the BitrateView program you gave me accurately display VBV settings or is it halfing them?

Oh and I'm delighted to say that this fixed my skipping problem. But I'm still confused about the mismatch between programs...

Can I try a VBV setting between 224 and 112? Does it have to be a divisor of 56?

For some reason which I'm not sure about myself the value is always half of the actual value. Whether there is a reason for this I don't really know.

As for the difference in VBV settings of Ulead and TMPG. If I remember rightly I advised you in one of the first posts you made to drop your VBV buffer, but you chose to ignore it.
http://bbs.pegasys-inc.com/bbscgi/ebbs/board.cgi?board=tmpgenc&page=2#topic26124

At least now you know the problem.

>Can I try a VBV setting between 224 and 112? Does it have to be a divisor of 56?
You can use any value it doesn't have to divide by 56, but why change it if you know it works fine?

Because it is now showing to be a DVD compliant stream with a VCD's VBV...

Why do so many things not make sense? Where is the middle ground on this process? I've got a friend that's been in the broadcast business for 30 years and I now understand his hatred for DVDs. Sure this is fun from a tweakers point of view, but what ever happened to just hitting record after you've edited? Are standards being withheld by the industry because how can any program say they are giving you compliant settings when they don't work like all the DVDs that you've played in your player before?

Is this all just hit or miss? And if so why?

Got this from http://www.research.ibm.com/journal/rd/434/mohsenian.html

"The encoding scheme is responsible for eliminating any overflow or underflow condition that the decoder buffer may encounter. This is accomplished by examining a hypothetical decoder buffer, i.e., video buffer verifier (VBV), and computing lower/upper bounds on the number of bits assigned for a picture type. The lower bound should be a large enough nonnegative number to prevent the overflow condition, while the upper bound should not be larger than a predetermined value above which the VBV buffer will underflow."

The above statement refers to an upper and lower setting for VBV. TMPGEnc only has one setting. What is TMPGEnc's setting referring to, upper or lower bounds?

I suppose you misunderstand it's explanation. I posted an indepth explanation of the VBV buffer a while ago, you may still be able to find it on this BBS.

The explanation above refers not upper and low limits which are set as such, but to the size of the actual buffer regarding how it handles the amount of data passing through it.

For example if it is set too high you will get an under flow of data this is the upper limit. If it is set too low you will get an over flow this is the lower limit.

To explain it quick, imagine the buffer as a pipe, you can set this pipe to a certain size by changing the VBV buffer setting thus changing the amount of data that the pipe can hold.

Lets say we set the VBV to 224. When the pipe (buffer) fills to this capacity data will flow from one end through to the other. If data is not fed into the pipe (buffer) fast enough to fill the buffer because it is too large the buffer will empty as the decoder from the other side takes the data from it. When this happens there will be a shortage of data to the decoder side thus causing an interuption to smooth playback and hence the jerky playback and resumes as soon as the buffer fills again for data to flow through to the decoder.

A similar thing happens with a pipe (buffer) is too small, but instead this time too much data is being fed too fast into the pipe (buffer) before the decoder on the other side can deal with the data. This causes the data too overflow out of the pipe (buffer) causing a loss of data to the decoder and again playback problems such as stuttering where the data has been lost.

This is the simplest way I could think of explaining it. I hope you understand it better now.

If i imported an jpeg image for my menu background what size should it be so that it will look good on my TV screen.

thanks

Your image size should be 640x480.

ahm.
i think full D1 should be best choice.
which would be 720x576 for PAL and 720x480 for NTSC.

or am i getting something wrong?

The manual says either, but 640x480 is exactly the proper 4:3 aspect ratio as non-widescreen NTSC TVs. That's what I've been using, and the aspect ratio looks correct for everything I've done.

Why doesn't TMPGenc support Windows Media Video files. If anyone can help me out with this I would surely like to know. Is there anything I can do to make it support it? If anyone can give me some answers I would greatly appreciate it.

Tmpgenc DOES support WMV/ASF Files ,You Might have to rename WMV files to ASF Files and you might have to go to "options" to "Enviromental Settings" to "Vfapi Plugins" and Raise the "Direct show File Reader" to "2" and have the Correct Codecs installed but if all of these Things are done you shouldn"t have a Problem, I don"t....Cheers

or if ur dumb and lazy like me get:
db powerAMP Music Coverter and make sure you download and install the 'WMA V9 codec', tmpgenc should now recognise wmv and ur'll also have a not bad mp3/wave/wma encoder as well

>or if ur dumb and lazy like me get:
db powerAMP Music Coverter and make sure you download and install the 'WMA V9 codec', tmpgenc should now recognise wmv and ur'll also have a not bad mp3/wave/wma encoder as well

That will only encode the audio NOT the video.

>That will only encode the audio NOT the video.
Sorry that should be:
That will only decode the audio NOT the video.

Hey, this is regarding my widescreen problems. Ashy and B_racer helped me last time. Here is the last post if you want some looking back:
http://bbs.pegasys-inc.com/bbscgi/search/docs/en/tmpgenc/box66/tmpgenc_post_25142.html

This time, my AVI is the same as last time: 640x360. I followed Ashy's solution and converted to MPEG using a video arrange method of Center (416x368). I don't have a widescreen TV and B_racer's 480x416 would surely cut off some of the subtitles on the video. So after converting using Ashy's methods, I find that in some scenes, the faces are a bit long yet in other scenes, they look pretty normal. Is there something wrong with the size 416x368?

Ok, I'm using the latest TMPGENC version, trial version, and I am trying to convert some MiniDV footage into DVD.

I used WinDV to capture from my Sony MiniDV camcorder. I now have Type2 DV AVI files, full 720x480 NTSC interlaced with 48KHz 16bit audio.

I am using TMPGENC at the highest quality settings - tried both CQ_100 and 2-Pass VBR, both set near the 8000kbps limit for video, and using PCM audio Elementary Streams. I am using TMPGENC DVD Author to author the disc. All speed options under CPU are checked. Motion Search is set to Highest Quality. I also chose I-frames only, no P or B frames, for the absolute in highest quality.

I am using a P4 2.4GHz (not Celeron), 1.5GB of RAID0+1 storage, 1GB RAM. WinXP.

I was shocked when I saw the output file on my TV - pixelated and blocks everywhere. Disgusting quality. Far worse than what I remembered with TMPGENC B12a - I know there must be something wrong with my quality settings. First off, it encoded too fast - about 30 frames per second.

Can someone please help? I can submit screen shots if interested.

Thanks!

You Can not use all I Frames for makeing a DVD, It is Not DVD Compliant, Pluss the File sizes will be huge..How do this File Look When Watching on your PC before authoring?? If it looks good on your PC before authoring then it could be that your Player just doesn"t like I Frame only Mpeg files....Try it useing the Compliant DVD Gop Pattern or even a 12 frame gop will give a bit better compression ,But becides this I do not know what the Problem could be as I get Pristene Looking Encodes useing Half the Bitrate you are useing....Good Luck

I have been trying to convert AVI(DV) file into PAL DVD MPEG-2 file but I can not do it using the latest TMPGEnc Plus Trial version. When the progress reaches 50% it crashes or just freezes if I use 2-pass VBR. As far as I understand, it happens right when it is supposed to start actual encoding. Everything works fine in case of CBR. I tried VBR with different settings but it did not help. What can be the root cause of the problem?

I don"t know what the Problem is But I can tell you that Tmpgenc"s 2-Pass encodeing isn"t any Better than it"s "Constant Quality" Encodeing Accept that 2-pass takes twice as Long...You will be able to Achieve the Same Quality with smaller File sizes if you use the "Constant Quality" setting instead but it will be allmost impossible to Predict the Final file size.....Cheers

Hi all, hope you can help

I'm having problems with TMPGEnc, until the other day when i converted files from divx'ed .Avi to .mpeg i had no problems.

But now whenever I try and convert/encode a file, it adds around 2-3 hours of blank data at the end, making the files almost double the size

Any ideas?

Thanks for any help

If you look at the page numbers of this BBS you will see there are 350 pages, some of them containing your answer many times.
Just above the page numbers you will see the search button. I'm sure you can work the rest out for yourself.

Erm, any chance of being pointed in the right direction?

Pionted in the Right direction?? Well that would be UP!! "Up" would be the direction were you would find the "Search" Button....

You can cut the Blanc Video off of the file with the "Merge & Cut" feature and to avoid this Problem in the Future you can use the "Source range" function to set the In and out points of the File, and Raiseing the Priority of the "Direct Show File Reader" to "2" Might fix this Problem also....

thank you sir

thank you sir

Is it possible to make a track first play and then not display this track in the menu? I could not find it in the programm.... Now also the intro will be selectable in the menu and this is not what I would like..

transcoding normal mpeg2 movie to mpg1 VCD, setting are all ok, but the source has some litte errors in some frames anywhere, all work, but when the progress is at 45% then stops the preview on an frame and then software don´t work with the same frames only the same for 35000 times.

Know anyone an trick that the software ignore so some bad frames?

thanks very much from germany

sorry for my bad engl.

If there are Bad Frames in the Source File then there isn"t much you can do..You can try loading the Source Mpeg2 File into "Virtual-Dub-Mpeg2"
http://fcchandler.home.comcast.net/stable/VirtualDub-MPEG2.zip
Then use the "Scan For errors" option then Frameserve the File to Tmpgenc ,Virtual dub should Mask any Bad Frames By replaceing the Bad frame with the last Good Frame...good luck

I was wondering about the Motion Search Precision. Usually, I set it at normal when converting this series. It usually takes me 4 and a half hours (slow computer) to complete it. When I set it at "motion estimate search", it took 7 hours. The video is the same length. I also have source range on. So which option would be recommended if I want faster speed, normal or motion estimate search? I know it says it's faster, but still...it's taking me 2 extra hours..

Normal is actually faster that Motion Estimate Search. They just ran out of ways to say faster, fastest, most fastest, more fasterer...

Really? Then I guess I should use Normal?

You will get the Best quality by useing the "High Quality" setting as the "Highest quality" setting doesn"t seem to improove the Quality But it does double the Time it takes to encode...Cheers

Since the quality doesn't improve by much over all the options, I guess I will take the option that takes the shortest amount of time. So I guess it would be "normal"?

The audio of the original file is:

Audio : 31 MB, 96 Kbps, 44100 Hz, 2 channels, 0x0 = RealAudio 8,cook-25, Supported

Converted is:

Audio : 72 MB, 224 Kbps, 44100 Hz, 2 channels, 0x51 = Mpeg-1 audio Layer 2 [0xc0], Supported

How come when I converted this file with TMPGEnc the sound doesn't work? When played there audio for 1 sec and then it's gone throughout the show... please help

O yeah, I tried using virtualdub but it says that it cannot detect the file
I also used Goldwave and it says cannot determine format of file

it asks to specify the format, attributes, and rate, but I can't find those info..

Please reply

Thanks

No encoding program is going to support real audio.
Real audio and real media files should be banished from the earth forever. They are just a pain and a now a pretty useless format.

You will have to download something like Dbpoweramp or the program below to convert the audio to a wav.
http://www.mp3-converter.biz/wisecroft-ripper/

Thanks

i think a program like tinra will convert all real media formats back to a normal avi. you then convert that avi with tmpenc