Recently I've downloaded a Divx movie that plays both audio and video perfectly in Windows media player. But when I load it into TMPGenc to convert it to MPEG-1, there is neither audio nor video in the resulting MPG file.

The AVI-file does load into TMPGenc however, and I can even start the conversion, but the output MPG file is a black screen movie without audio...

Could this be a wrong codec problem?

Greetz,

Chris

The reason the video turned out blank is probably because you needed to raise the priority if the "direct Show plugin" I have noticed that with especially Divx 5 Tmpgenc will load the file but it would not show a picture.You raise the Direct Show Plugin by going by going to "options" to "Enviromental Settings" to "Vfapi plugins" and Raise the "Direct Show" to "2", and for the audio being not there that is probably because the audio is either "VBR MP3" or "AC3" and neither is supported in Tmpgenc so if it is "VBR MP3" you need to download "Virtual Dub" and use it to extract the audio to a wav file and use that as your audio source, but if it is AC3 then you will need an AC3 decoder to extract the audio to a wav file...

PS: If the video still doesn"t
then re-instell the relevant codec..

I don't get it!

Maybe it is just this movie (.mov) but it starts converting to VCD just fine...but eventually takes forever to convert a frame. I ultimately have to kill it. The 'slowing down' happens at different parts, so it does not seem to be related to bad data...does TMPGenc search through the entire file it is writing to add the last converted frame or something? That might explain it...

Apple Quicktime .mov
30 minutes, 1.1 gig, 320 x 240, 16 bit 44khz.
Default VCD settings.
Converts fine with other codecs (but TMPGenc always has the best results!!).

Thanks,
JR

I created a VCD yesterday using the following process

DVD decrypter ---> DVD2AVI ---> TMPGEnc (via the *.D2V file)

Itworked fine

Today I tried the same process on a different DVD but when I tried to open the *.D2V file, tmpgenc said it was unsupported.

What might be the problem?

Thanks

I tried it again after I posted this message and it worked. I set it aside and came back later and now it isn't working again

What's going on?

Once u create the d2v file make sure u do not move, rename or delete the file or any of the folders or vobs associated with the movie.

ASHY

They have not been moved or changed at all.

Copy this file DVD2AVI.VFP from your DVD2AVI dir to your TMPG dir. It should solve ur problem.

ASHY

A lot of people are encoding their avi-file into mpeg-2 (svcd) because they say it has a far superior quality over mpeg-1 (vcd)
Okay, i wont argue the better quality of mpeg-2
BUT ..... in my opinion if you have a avi file which has a video bitrate of ~1000, then it would be a waste to encode this into mpeg-2 (which has bitrates up to 2500)
The best quality you will be able to get, in my mind, is vcd which has a bitrate of 1150

Is this assumption correct, because it is my believe that with a lower bitrate then 1150 you NEVER will be able to get a better quality if you encode this as mpeg-2 with a higher bitrate.

If i'm wrong then i have to make a lot of apologies :)

Don"t look at avi files with Bitrates in mind look at them with Quality in mind,because you aren"t encodeing to avi and you have no controll over the quality of a file that has allready in avi format, but you do have some controll over the mpeg quality, but your mpeg will never look better than the avi you are encodeing and the higher the bitrate you use the closer the mpeg looks in quality to the original avi..A vcd will never look as good as the source you are encodeing cuz the bitrate of a standard vcd isn"t high enough to acurately duplicate the quality of the avi file and mpeg is a lossy format but you can raise the bitrate of the vcd to obtain better quality..The biggest reason that svcd"s have better quality than vcd"s isn"t really the bitrate(it sure helps) or because it is mpeg2 but the increased resolution, a svcd has over twice the resolution of a standard vcd,......

Excuse me Minion but for once I have to disagree with you. I downloaded some Star Trek movies on Kazaa. They were encoded in Divx 3 and the quality wasn't really great... in fact it was poor. I thought I could try to convert it to MPEG-2 (SVCD) and I was really impressed by what I get... quality is now much more superior than the original one... so that's for me, sorry Minion :-D...

Dont forget that an mpeg will always look better on a TV than a monitor ...

Thanks for the responses

So if i understand i right, my little explanation about the bitrates is sofar incorrect that their is NO DIRECT relationship between bitrate AVI vs bitrate mpeg (1or2)

What you are looking for is a good quality avi (in this the bitrate is of course a big factor) and with this good quality avi it will make a difference whether you convert it to mpeg-1 or mpeg-2

Guess i have to start apologizing ;)

Another way to look at this: Once a video has artifacts like noise or pixelation, it requires higher bitrate and resolution to reproduce that noise exactly when transcoding. Defects do not compress as well as clean video.

It is counterintuitive that poor video requires more file space to archive, but that is the mathematical reality.

Filtering defects kills two birds with one stone as long as the quality is not degraded. Although slow, "smart smoother HiQuality" for Virtualdub produces results without the cartoony, "merged pixel" appearance of other smoothers.

After several bug posts, you guys put in a feature that lets the user select the MAX number of frames in a GOP. Well, I am sad to say it doesn't work at all. I have tried 5 differet DV Avi files and for all five of them when I put in output sequence header code to 1 every GOP and set the MAX GOP size to 36 it still outputs occasional GOP with as much as 40 frames in it. I am using Industry Standard Sonic Scenarist DVD creator and it is report this error with the mpeg 2 files generated by TMPGENC. Please actually FORCE THE PROGRAM to stop at 36 frames per GOP, it doesn't do this all the time!!!

Thanks

I don"t know if this is actually the problem it is just a guess, but maybe if you turn off the "detect scene change" option then it might not make the gop"s longer that you specify cuz when Tmpgenc detects a scene change it will add an extra I frame, I don"t know if it just replaces a B or P frame with an I frame or actually adds an extra frame in turn makeing the gop longer, just a thought.
I don"t do DVD"s but I thought the standard number of frames in a gop for DVD"S is like between 15 and 18? If this is actually a bug in Tmpgenc and you are useing the "Plus" version then go to the "Pegassus site" and tell them about it so they can fix it cuz the makers of Tmpgenc don"t really seem to come here.......

DVD-GOPs are between 14 - 18 Frames or up to 36 FIELDS.
But in TMPGEnc you have to use the Max Number auf Frames. Set it to 16, and all's OK (and compatible).

I was just wondering. Is their an easy way to edit out specific words from the audio, i.e. editing out swear words for my children, etc. Are there any freewre program out there that make it easy or does TMPGEnc have some plugin that makes it possible. Thanks.

Tmpgenc can"t do this ,and it wouldn"t be very easy ,you would need a good audio/video editing program like "Sound Forge 6 "..with it you you could add silence were you needed to or you could add a sould or a Beep were the bad words are or you could even hook up a microphone and dub your own words in, you can download a trial version at the sonic foundry web site here:http://www.sonicfoundry.com/Products/NewShowProduct.asp?PID=668
It actually has a pretty good audio and mpeg video encoder but I don"t know what the limitations of the trial version are and I think it is about $350 to buy so it isn"t cheap but I don"t know of a freeware program that can do what you need done.....

I have a couple of AVI movies that I downloaded a long time ago (at least a year). I think they might be DIVX but I am not sure. Under the properties window (under windows) it shows the audio as Mpeg layer-3 at 40 KBPS. The video it show at 20fps at 55kbps. When I try to load this in TMPGEnc I get the file unsupported error. I have searched the site and have not found any useful information. Is there anyone who can tell me what I can do to convert these files to VCD. Thanks

Go to "options" to "enviromental settings" to "vfapi plugins" and raise the "direct show file reader" to "2"

ASHY

Hey that seemed to work. It at least loaded the file. I'll now see what I can doo with it.

Thanks

P.S. Where can I find a description of all of those setting in the plugin tab. (what exactly did changing that setting do?)

The Plugins Help Tmpgenc decode different formats,for example the direct show plugin lets Tmpgenc read Direct show formats , these are the most common formats like "divx/mpeg4,WMV,ASF,Mpeg1"most of the formats that can be played on Media Player, there is a "DVD2AVI" Plugin so Tmpgenc can read "D2V files from dvd2avi, there is a "Wav File Reader" so Tmpgenc can read wav audio files..There are quite a few plugins and some of the plugins read the same formats like the direct show plugin can read some of the same formats as the "avi VFW(video for windows)" plugin can ,That is one of the reasons they have differant priorities, so you can give a certain plugin priority over another to read the file...

Thanks that helps alot

I just downloaded and installed the 2.57 version and noticed that the audio compression is not any longer the standard 224 kbit/s but has changed into 192 kbit/s

Question:
1. Why was it changed and is it also safe now to use for instance 128 kbit/s for changing the avi into mpeg-1 (with the objective to make a vcd)
2. Does this mean that it is now possible to burn a vcd which has more minutes then the 80 that is now the limit ?

I'm sorry for my crappy English, but i hope you'll understand the question.
TIA for answering
Andrea

The reason is that when you first extract TMPG, the settings are actually set for just ordinary MPEG1 files not VCD files. If you load one of the VCD templates the bitrate will go back to 224 kb/s.

ASHY

Oh and sorry, to answer your other question, yes it should be ok in most DVD players to use a non standard bitrate such as 128 kb/s.

ASHY

Thanks for clarifying this for me
And also for the speed in answering my question

I am trying to convert a quicktime file (music video) into mpeg but i have a small problem. Underneath the video the lyrics run along and they are actually part of the video image not a caption etc. When I convert the file i do not want to see these lyrics. Can anyone tell me how to crop the image size so that i convert only the music video and not the lyrics?
I hope that makes sense and that someone can help me.
Thanks

Click the 'settings' button then advanced and then double click the 'clip frame' filter

Here you will find the option to resize and crop your movie.

ASHY

Thanks a million. That has solved my problem.

David

I've tried looking through the posts but couldn't find anything on this issue.

I've downloaded an *.avi file - and there is no problem in viewing it on the computer with sound. But if I try to convert it to an mpeg file using tmpgenc, it can't find the audio track, and hence the mpeg won't contain any audio.
If I use 'avi audio decompressor' to extract the audio track, it stops just short of 1 mb, takes approx 10 secs.
It seems as if it's a packed file, have any of you had the same problem ???
I would appreciate some help, thanks.
Would it help to use Virtual Dub, instead of 'aad' ?

-M

I have a similar problem. I have downloaded an avi file and am converting to mpeg for svcd. The sound only goes for the first 10 seconds and then cuts out!

Can any body help?

Boner

The audio is probably Ac3 which TMPG can't natively read. Download AVImux and extract the audio to a wav and load that as your audio source in TMPG.

ASHY

Thanks - I'll try that!
-M

Hi
I am having a bit of trouble with a SVCD.
I am trying to extract the mpg from the CD to convert to VCD in TMPgenc (to reduce no of CDs)
This is nothing I haven't done many times before but for some reason I can't extract the mpg using isobuster all I get is a file that is recognised as music in media player and TMPgenc won't recognise format.
I am using the newest version of TMPgenc and SVCD is on trial period.
I have also tried CDmage with no luck.

Any suggestion please

Thanks

Flash

The best thing to do when this happens and is a sure fire way to extract it correctly is to go to http://www.daemon-tools.com and download this small and free program called 'Daemon tools'.

This will create another drive on your PC which you can load virtually any image into and the just simply copy and paste the file or load it straight into TMPG from the drive itself as if it was a real drive.

ASHY

The best thing to do when this happens and is a sure fire way to extract it correctly is to go to http://www.daemon-tools.com and download this small and free program called 'Daemon tools'.

This will create another drive on your PC which you can load virtually any image into and then just simply copy and paste the file or load it straight into TMPG from the drive itself as if it was a real drive.

ASHY

well a quick one
using the newest verstion of temp
any way i normaly batch files to run while i am a sleep
but a couple of files which i have
it starts encoding them
then just quits no error message or anything temp just closes down for no reason
any idea
thanks

I have this same problem and have ask about it before with no replies. It seems to happen to me when I set up a batch of file using the Project Wizard. Also, it seems to occur when I am using inverse telecine to convert NTSC to NTSC film. Also when this happens TMPGENC clears the batch list and shuts down on its own. A possible clue was found when I made a batch with only one file. At the end of the run, the blue arrow that normal indicates the file has been encoded was not there. There was an error message that said "Stream Error". The file was perfectly encoded though.

I wish someone would address this because it is very frustrating to set a batch of files to run overnight only to find the first one finished and TMPGENC has shutdown without doing the rest of the batch.

MrSmith

>well a quick one
>using the newest verstion of temp
>any way i normaly batch files to run while i am a sleep
>but a couple of files which i have
>it starts encoding them
>then just quits no error message or anything temp just closes down for no reason
>any idea
>thanks
>
well i have figured it out i just set like it said in so many posts
set the direct read to under enviromental to 2 and works fine