Everytime I try to decode/encode a long video file my XP system reboots. It starts fine but within 10 minutes or so it reboots with no warning. I thought maybe someone else had the same problem with hopefully a solution.

I'm figuring it's either some bad codecs or something running in the background. I have it down to just my HP DVD Writer helpers, Mouse stuff, and Nvidia stuff. I'll try to kill those and see if it's any better.
1. I've done a virus scan and checked for trojans.
2. It seems to happen no matter which video software I use!
3. Everything else on my system works fine, and for as long as I want.
4. I can play the videos fine, for as long as I want.
5. My system only reboots when trying to decode/encode video.

Kinda strange.
Any help appreciated..............Sam

It sounds like a CPU/memory problem. I've had something very similar. A couple of programs to download and try:

memtest-86 will test your memory thoroughly. Long video processing uses quite a bit of memory.

prime95 will test your whole system thoroughly. Make sure you have closed everything else down before prime95 because if your PC has a problem encoding video it will almost certainly crash, freeze or reboot with prime95. A healthy PC should be able to run it, but there are numerous reasons why it won't such as inadequate PSU, not quite compatible memory, PC running a little too hot are examples. Some games, internet access, word processing etc will not cause a problem even though there is one lurking in the background.

Do you know what motherboard/CPU/memory combination you have?

Bob.

Well, in an attemp to fix the rebooting while converting videos, I burned what I think now is the wrong bios to my motherboard. Oops! It was toast. So I decided to upgrade to a new motherboard (MSI K7N2-L) and while I was at it I picked up a 450W power supply.

Now I can convert videos all day long with no problems. I think my former power supply (300W) just wasn't powerful enough. Either that or I had a quirky motherboard. In any case it all works now. It certainly wasn't the software.

Moral: You can fix anything if you throw enough time, effort, and money at it!

I've played with both TMPGenc and the DVD Source Creator software downloaded from the Pegasys site. I thought that DVD Source Creator was simply a dumbed down version of TMPGenc 2.5 but it seems to be a separaate program.
I have found that some avi files just won't open in TMPenc, but DVD Source Creator doesn't have a problem with the exact same files and works perfectly.
Does anyone know why this might be? I'd think they both have access to the same codecs, etc. since it is on the same machine. Anything suggestions would be appreciated.
Thanks

Dumb newbie!
If I'd searched the forum I would have found out about raising the priority of Direct Show files (Options -> VFAPI)
But I didn't...

Promise to save the forum to ask about less easily found answers.

Regards

I'm not blaming any product for what it does and my apologies for going on about it, but I'm determined to derive a sensible solution to this without spending any more money which means no more buying new products to cover deficiencies in the ones I have already bought.

I have two questions which would help me if anyone knows the answers:

1) Can TMPGenc be configured to mask empty frames rather than ignoring them?

2) If not, is there a freeware product that will do so.

I can't leave the empty frames in the MPEG and avoid encoding it for two reasons. Firstly, I need to change the bitrate to get the finished MPEG to fit on a DVD and secondly any VOB encoding software will remove any empty frames and cause loss of audio sync.

Thanks,

Bob.

I have a clip in a project that is fully recognized by TDA (from start to finish, video and audio). And I have created a bunch of chapters in it. The chapters are recgonized and I can click to the last chapter and last frame in the editing screen.

However, when I author the clip to DVD, the last chapter is #50 and the title ends. The help file says 99 chapters are possible.

What could be the problem? I have started from scratch twice, there is nothing wrong with the orignal clip, TDA "sees" it ok, it's just the authoring that goes bad.

Thanks,
Owen

Maybe the problem comes from your DVD player...
What are you using?

I'm using my stand alone player, which plays every other disc I've authored using TDA. I must have re-authored this project 5 0r 6 times already, and I'm convinced it's the clip itself and not TDA.

Anyone know a good format checker for VCD files? Illegal frames, bit rates, etc?

Thanks,
Owen

Hello, I've seen folks say they were able to use TMPGEnc to create DIVX movies from a stack of bitmaps. Can anyone point me to tips on how to do this?

Thanks.

Once the Divx encoder is installed, it will appear in the compressor list for any application that uses Directshow compression plugins in a "Save As" dialog.

TMPGEnc is meant to control its own mpeg encoder. It has a "Save As AVI" mode but other apps are better. A good one is VirtualDub. It can load numbered BMP sequences directly.

Search for: VirtualDubMod_1_5_4_1_All_inclusive.zip

(There might be a newer version. The "mod" version reads mpeg files and has a better "Save As" dialog.)

I am also using TDA to make back up copies of DVDs for my friends. So this is what I did:

1.Create New Project
2.Add DVD Video
3.Select DVD drive; VIDEO_TS
4.Double-click on first title
5.Uncheck reading chapters
6.Check copy to HDD
7.Ok

For some reason, near the end of the progress, it said "Stream write error" or something like that. Last time I did this, it worked and there were 3 outputted MPEG-2 files in my folder. What I'm trying to do is extract the videos from the DVD, and then load them back into TDA to burn to a DVD+R. Last time it worked, but this time, I'm getting all sorts of errors.

Hello, I was wondering if there was any way to create your own menus in TDA? Or at least provide your own backgrounds?

Have you looked at the product at all? There's a lot of editing you can do with the menus. From the "Create Menu" screen, you click on "Edit Menu Theme" or the "Edit" button to specify background images, change buttons, etc.

No, I meant to make my own backgrounds in Photoshop and use it in TDA. I don't really like their default backgrounds.

I always produce my own Backgrounds. Where's the Problem? Just klick on the Background, a PopUp will show up where you can choose your own Pic.

Cool, I never knew you could right-click it! Thanks!

What does the error:
"invalid pointer error" mean?

When do you get this error? Could you provide more info like can you open your avi file. Or do you get this when you just open the program?

Video Guy

i get that message sometimes when splitting files using the source range

I really like this product, but it would be nice to have an UNDO button on the editing screen as well as a SAVE button so you could save it after a lot of edits in case something goes wrong.

A couple of times, I have somehow made an incorrect CUT and an UNDO button would have saved me a lot of work. A SAVE function would be very useful after you have made a lot of edits and you could save it without getting out of the EDIT function.

Mike Halvorsen

The UNDO is in the EDIT MENU under the EDIT CLIP screen.

I just purchased DVD Author and am having a problem importing a DVD I have copied to my harddisk using DVD XCOPY. It plays with no problem in my software DVD player (PowerDVD).

On the ''Source Setup'' screen, I click on ''Add DVD Video'' and point to the VIDEO_TS folder where the files are located. In the ''Select Title'' screen, it shows the title I want to import correctly. In this case, Title 4 which is 5hr20min13sec and 6477mb.

When I click NEXT, on the ''Options settings'' screen, I click ''Copy the clip video data to the HDD'' and point to a folder, however, there is a message in red below the ''destination folder'' box that says ''3453 mb of video data has been copied to this folder'', not 6477mb as shown in the previous screen. The endpoint in the imported clip is not the end of the movie, because it apparently didn't copy all the data.

Am I doing something wrong or is this a bug? Can it be fixed? I purchased this product because I liked the simple interface and it did exactly what I wanted, however, it is not much use to me if it doesn't copy the entire movie.

Thanks,

Mike Halvorsen

Hi! If you want to rip DVD movie, try to use DVD shrink. It's an excellent program to that purpose. Than you can author it using any program you like the most. Also you must specify a drive that can support a large amount of data. On the other hand, you HD has to have enough free space to handle it. The best way is to have one drive for all systems and one for only DVD transfer (ripping), I mean, 2 HDs.

I need to encode approx. 200 10 second files, do I have to do each one seperatly or can I set the encoder once, and have them all done at once?

Every time I tried to normally uninstall TMPGenc from the Add/Remove Programs control panel, the Install utility loaded up and promptly exited without any notice or warning. So I manually brute-force uninstalled it by deleting the TMPGENC folder and it's contents and then I deleted every reference to it in the registry.

Then I rebooted and tried to install the new version of TMPGenc, but it always fails with the following error messages:

"Error 1714 during install -- unable to remove old version"

THEN:

"Feature transfer error

Error: -1603 Fatal error during installation

Consult Windows Install Help (msi.chm) or MSDN for more info"


It turns out that error 1603 means: "Error installing Windows Installer engine. A file which needs to be replaced may be held in use. Close all applications and try again."

Naturally, I tried exiting all applications and then re-installing, but I got the same error.

So then I tried installing it from Safe Mode (although I'm still having trouble getting into Safe Mode deliberately) but I again got the message that it couldn't uninstall the previous version.


What should I do? Thanks in advance for your help!