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TMPGEnc 2.5 (Free or plus version) BBS [ Sorted by thread creation date ]
I used SVCD-CQ template for 1/2 dozen DVD->SVCD without ANY problems. Everything encoded perfect and was just the right size to get 1 DVD to 2 80 min CDR.
A couple of days ago I ripped 3 new DVD's and they are all blocky durring certain scenes. I have thus far: deleted the TmpGenc INI&CFG, replaced the CQ template from a backup, verified all of my settings and have looked over all of the CODECs on my machine and uninstalled and re-installed PowerDVD. I have tried Quality settings from 70-100 with the same output, blocky scenes. Last night I used the SVCD wizard which created an excellent encode but it is using CBR and the file is larger then what I care to have. The only thing I would like to add is that I had an XP profile error the other day and had to use a restore point,not sure if that could have effected the registry.
I think I have done everything but really could use someones expertise. I mean just last week everthing was perfect and now I am block city with my SVCD encodes (using CQ).
I dont know why you are haveing the problem with "cq" but you can use "cbr" and get a smaller file size if you just lower the bitrate a little bit, down to 2200 or 2000kbs the quality differance would be un-noticeable, you can just make your own templates to your own specs and use them .....it"s not a sollution to your "cq" problem but maybe a way around it......
I have had the same problems with DVD things to SVCD.
It seems that if you stick to the SVCD standard you will run into problems in some scenes that will produce blockyness. This is visable if you encode a DVD trailer with fast movements etc.
Some blockyness you have to stick with but it should only be just visable in fast movig scenes, not the whole movie, if so the there is something wrong somewhere. Try and load a MFC file svcd file and just stick to constant bitrate (maximum setting 2530 or something like that) and set high motion search and maby you need to change field of order.
Then hit encode, let it encode for 3h, hit stop and check the en results, if there is something still wrong then you have some big problems.
Here is the funny thing I have not had a problem with, fast motion scenes. The problem is produced on still backgrounds in a scenes, when the camera is not moving. An example is Unbreakable, where on the train the camera moves between Willis and the woman and is shot from the seat in front of them. As soon as the camera stops the blocky starts on the texture of the seats. Last night I tried CQ template with the same results and then swtiched to 2-Pass VBR with equal results. When I tried Auto-VBR everything was as good as my original CBR encode. If it was a codec error would it not produce these reults bad results consistantly with any template? The bitch about it is that the CQ template was working perfect! So, Auto-VBR and CBR are the only setups that work.
If you have done a system restore then the only thing I can guess is that you have probably restored some different settings in TMPG.
Depending on how bad the blocks are you are talking about,as with the standard SCVD template the high speed scenes always give blockyness in TMPG which is why I personally don't use TMPG for MPEG2 encoding.
Also tick these options in the quantize matrix tab.
1. Output YUV data as basic YCbCr not CCIR601 - This will give the correct luminance scale for T.V
2. Use floating point DCT
3. No motion search for still picture part by half pixel
4.Soften block noise and make sure that Intra block and Non Intra block are set at 35. Don't believe anyone that tells you to put it at 100.
Intra block settings have been widely tested by experts and 35-45 is a very good setting and shouldn't be changed.
5. Make sure the setting is Default in the drop down menu
6. Under the GOP structure tab make sure Detect scene change is ticked only.
7. Use 'Constant quality(CQ)'and not 'Automatic VBR(CQ VBR)'
8. DCT component precision - 9 (faster movies use lower number, slower, smoother movies use higher number)
10. Bitrate Max - 4000 Min - 1800
12. Audio bitrate - 128 stereo if your player allows it.
11. VBV buffer 112
12. Motion search precision - Normal (this will reduce macro blocks, but don't bother using slowest method as the difference isn't that great considering the increased encoding time)
13. Under advanced - Top field first (Interlaced DVD's are usually top field first, but if you get weird artifacts on edges such as a combing effect on edges of fast moving objects then change the field order to bottom first)
This should give a nice picture quality with hardly any visible macroblocks and will just about fit a 100min movie on two 80mins cd's using the bitrates above.
That is all I can think of at the moment to improve things.
I would have sent you the template for this, but you don't have an email address.
By the way you may get better quality in still picture scenes using Automatic VBR but this is because in Automatic VBR mode more bitrate will be allocated to still parts when using the same settings as you would in CQ, but you will still get blockyness in fast moving scenes and will end up with a larger file size (sometimes quite a bit larger) due to higher bitrates in still scenes.
CQ is still the best way to go and will produce an overall better quality picture regarding the file size.
ASHY thanks for the ALL of the info. I am encoding a clip right now, I have provided my e-mail. Would you mind sending me your CQ template? I think I have all the settings you mentioned right but just want to make sure. I also had a question about your CCE encoding (from a pervious post) but I will ask you later, one thing at a time.
hi, Can someone helpme fix this problem...when I tried to convert avi to mopg I got the following error" unexpected decimal point calculation" ...what should I do? please help...
This is a error that gets every one from time to time,it is caused from a couple of things the most common one is as "ffast" said bad frames in the source file.I also get this error if I do anything with with my computer accept encode, I can"t even let my screen saver come on for fear of getting this error,so surfin the net is out of the question whilst encodeing(for me anyway)..
But if you get this error every time at the same spot in the file,you can go to the "cpu" tab and un-tick all the boxes and then go to the "quantize matrix" and un-tick the "use floating point" box..This should help but encodeing will take longer........sherlock
i have a avi file with an ac3 sound. Converting this file to mpg with tmpgenc won't work so i extracted the ac3 with GraphEdit, it works fine but ... it gives a desinc. I did not change anithing to the files just demuxed them, converting the ac3 to wav and muxed them again. Why the desinc ?
Is there an other way to do this ?
I alreaddy tried VirtualDub and Nandub, virtualdub won't work and nandub gives klicks in the sound. plz help.
If you go to the "source range" tab there is a "audio correct" feature that lets you adjust the gap between your audio and video,you have to play around with it to get it right.......
The VBV buffer size does not for the millionth time have any effect on image quality whatsoever, but may give problems on a less than compatible DVD player.
Reason: The VBV buffer is to set the internal buffer size of the decoder.
Basically what happens is there is a space in a memory chip called the buffer which is sort of a like a small pipe (so to call it). This pipe needs to be filled with data from one side before the data comes out on the other. The size of the VBV buffer setting in TMPG determines the size of this pipe.
If the pipe is too big and the data being supplied to it is slow moving such as low bitrate VCD's then what will happen is the pipe (buffer) will not fill quick enough from the input side before the data is requested at the output side causing 'Buffer underflow'
When the decoder requests the video data at the output side then this data won't be there yet so your decoder has no information to supply to the DVD player to put on your screen. To compensate your decoder will just have to wait for the data to appear which will then look like jerky playback because it is always waiting for the data to catch up or your player will just freeze after a certain length of time and refuse to play the movie any further.
A similar thing would happen if its too small i.e small VBV buffer size and the data being supplied to it is high bitrate (such as DVD) then this information will be pushed into the pipe at a fast rate and the pipe will fill faster due to being smaller.
If the pipe fills up before the decoder is ready to take the data at the other end to be put on the screen by the DVD player then the pipe will begin to overflow (buffer overflow) which will cause the DVD player to have to drop frames to keep up with the data flow or may stop playing altogether.
This is the reason why it doesn't affect the actual picture quality and doesn't reduce macro blocks, but the actual picture stability. Macro blocks are what make up the image of a movie and are hard encoded into the movie and can't be removed, but can be made less evident by other decoding filters which which your DVD player uses.
I posted this because of Technos' constant advice of a 224 VBV buffersize which is to big for a standard VCD and is DVD standard. The MPEG standards state the best setting is 40 for standard VCD and should be plenty. I say standard because if you up the bitrate past about 1800kbps then the buffer size should be increased to about 112 and then past around 3500 increased to 224.
Who do you want to believe? The author of TMPGenc and the knowledge of respected experts or some jumped up school kid with a chip on his shoulder.
I hope you now understand why the buffer size Techno is stating could cause problems in your DVD player when playing VCD's.
I get "buffer underflow" quite often and it makes the picture shake back and forth really fast on the tv.does that mean that I need to reduce the size of the buffer? and does "packet" size have to do with the buffer size,cuz with other programs (cce)you can"t adjust the buffer size but you can adjust the packet size??? This info will be very usefull cuz i get "buffer underflow" all the time,I usually encode vcd at 1700-2200kbs with a buffer of 80 and a packet size of 2024kb......thanx
I'm not too well up on packet sizes but what I do know is that the packet size depends on the application receiving the MPEG stream and I think is more relevant to transport streams.
Packets are used for timing information and to keep things in sync and 2048 is MPEG standard for program streams which incidently is what DVD's use.
So to answer your question, you don't really need to worry about packet size as the default is correct for your DVD player.
Willyiam If you read the above info it says NOTHING about data packets,the two words "data packets" aren"t in there anywere, so how is it clear to see...you seem to have something against me, so can you please let me know what it is so I can rectify it by sending you flowers or a box of candy.....
TMPGenc's video quality is still somewhat better than the latest Pinnacle Studio 7 codec. However, when encoding from AVI's I always get a few glitches with the TMPGenc VCD settings. Using the same AVI files, the Pinnacle codecs always produce glitch free MPG1 files.
My TMPGenc VCD files had glitches in the same 2 spots after 10 attempts. Somehow, I got a glitch free conversion once with TMPGenc, but have been unable to reproduce that result.
Any ideas? I have a Dell p4 1.8Hz with 640MB RAM and 2 disk drives.
what type of glitches do you mean? do to mean jerkyness?you can try to get rid of the jerkyness by setting the "motion precition" the slowest setting.....
No- it's not jerky. It looks like a bunch of random blocky pixels exploding. The strange thing is that the original video doesn't appear to have any corruption, or unusual/excessive movement in those spots. I think there's also an audible pop in the VCD file. The Pinnacle codec and new Microsoft Windows Media 8 codecs have no problem encoding the same file. Only the TMPGenc VCD option consistently has the problem. I also tried encoding another sequence, and TMPGenc messed up in a few spots (again, there was nothing apparently unusual about the frames that resulted in the faulty encoding).
Im using the Pinnacle dc30+ capture card, and i think we're having the same problem when trying to encode using Tmpgenc. Are your gliches Green? blocky flashs? ....Maybe its a compatablity problem between the card and the Software!
I'm not using the DC30 Plus, although I have one installed. I'm using the firewire card that came with Studio DV. Yes, the glitches are kind of green and blocky, but I think I had no problem encoding other AVI files with earlier versions of TMPGenc. I think I'll try to see if VirtualDub detects any problematic frames in my AVI's later tonight.
Okay, I checked the AVI file in VirtualDub and it is completely clean. Upon further inspection, the video glitches in the VCD MPG1 version created with TMPGenc, are very large, square or rectangular blocks, similar in color to the other elements in the frame. There is always a short, high-pitched audio squeal that coincides with the video glitches for a tiny fraction of a second.
I got TMPGenc tosuccessfully encode the problematic section of the AVI file by itself-- however, when I try to encode it from the beginning of the file, it gets messed up at the same point every time (for a fraction of a second).
Well, I spoke too soon. Now it still glitches, but in a different spots. However, it may be a playback problem, because if I start playing back the clip a few seconds before the glitch, it's okay- however, when I start playing from the beginning, it breaks up at the same points every time.
I try to use this simple tool of TMPG Enc : "Merge & Cut" in MPEG Tool.
But the result is often the same : video is OK, and audio is only a clic at the beginning...
During the operation, all seams to be OK, no error.
How to simply merge MPEG clips in one long ?
Have downloaded two AVI's, converted to MPEG with TMPGEnc-2.53, and got only audio. Converted one of these AVI's with Nero (rather slow) and got good VCD (audio and video). What might I be doing wrong (hope list isn't too long).
I have had the same problem when using Virtual dub and trying to go from what I believe is Divx5 to 4.12...I get only sound and no picture unless I uncompress fully and then try to recompress to MPEG2 using TMPGenc...My understanding is that TMPGenc is not compatable with DIVX5...That might be his problem but I am not sure how to fix it
I am new to all of this and wanted to try to help out other newbies. Sorry if this makes them lazy, but since I did the research and found it, I would like to share where I downloaded the DIVX 4.12 codec that Techno keeps mentioning. I know it seems to offend some when we help each other, but I am glad someone helped me, so I am going to "Pay it Forward" to the other newbies. Here is where I downloaded the bundle from.
I tried to add an AC3 file on my mpeg2 file, since I saw you could actually add an AC3 file when you want to multiplex.
I was just goofn around, finally after hard working I had an AC3 file on my HD, but then I had to extract the right language and drop the 5.1 to 3/1, so I made it "dolby pro-logic". It's still an official AC3 file and my DVD software player plays it perfectly clear on my 4-point surround system.
>BUT (there always is a but :S)
When I tried to multiplex it with the MPEG-2 file of the movie, it said "Illegal bitstream error". I thought I had made a stupid mistake somewhere in changing the 5.1 to 3/1, so I gave up experimenting with the problem.
Next day, for some reason I tried it again, and let the video type excedently stand on "MPEG-1 System (automatic)". Then first I add the audio (the AC3 file of 3/1) and then the MPEG-2 video file. Finally I put the type on "MPEG-2 Program (VBR)" and it didn't complain for once.
I'm very confused right now, are there any specifications for the AC3 file to mux them with an MPEG-2 file for TMPGenc? Or is it a VERY very od bug?
I'd to now that
GREETZ
Gideon
PS: I copied the movie 4 personal use, because I don't like to take an original DVD on a holiday so I can loose it elsewhere but home ;)
Yes I know you can make a VideoCD of a DVD but that's not really what I want to do.
I want to make a DVD movie, just like a DVD - 720x576 (PAL) resolution MPEG2 etc... but instead of burning a 2 hour film onto a DVD-R I want to burn a short 5 minute film onto a CD-R in the hope it might play in my stand-alone DVD player. By only making a short animation I hope the storage issue wont be a problem as the resulting VOB file would be well under 700Mb.
Has anyone one this or knows if it is possible and what other tools alongside TMPGEnc I might need? I'm looking for shareware/freeware first to try this out as I don't want to spend out on software if what I want to do is impossible.
There is an quasi standard called X(S)VCD. For more information, a compatibility list of standalone Players and sample files to burn on an CD-R(W) look at this link: http://www.vcdhelp.com/xvcd.htm
Use Google.com for more in detail info like 'XSVCD burn Nero' aso.
Well to my knowledg you could make a DVD (vob) file. Put it on a cd-r just as you would burn a normal file. And play it in a dvd player, there could be some problems with some things.
I don't know about the file system of DVD's and so on but what I know, it's the same as a ordinary CD-R just that you might have to mimic a DVD contens like on a ordinary dvd that is, dvd files go into a directory and the audio into another.
And a dvd authoring could be nice to creat ifo (could be wrong here on the extension dont remember) files if you need and so on.
As log as your vob file is smaller than 700mb and your standalone reads cd-r you will be allright.
If you are going to play it on a PC the you need to do nothing, just burn en (unencrypted) vob file onto a cd-r
Theoretically it is possible but in the real world it just won't work.
Your DVD player will automatically expect a certain file system for the type of disk used and will just give you a disk error when you insert the CDR.
I have tried this and believe me I did everthing possible to make it work, but in the end it just wouldn't work on a standalone no matter what.
It will work fine on the PC and will be read as DVD by DVD software players, but forget it when it comes to your standalone player.
The solution is to just use the DVD template, then re-multiplex and burn as SVCD and ignore the compliance errors your burning software gives you. Just make sure the audio is 44.1khz.
The closest i've come to making a dvd is an (x)vcd. You can put a full movie on 2 cdr's. The resolution I use is 704x480 because 720x480 will not play in standalone dvd players. These are very high quaulity movies and you really can't tell they're dvd rips. All I use is flaskMPEG preview,virtualdub, and TMPGEnc! These are the best!
I can't understand why the use of 720x480 wont work in your player as it should. This is a standard resolution for DVD players and shouldn't be a problem.
I would have thought 704x480 would have been a problem as this isn't a standard DVD players use.
Anyway regardless of that 720x480 works fine in my player, but never tried 704x480.