I'm very new to this, so please bear with me, I had converted a avi to mpeg that I downloaded off the net using TMPGEnc, then I downloaded another movie and forgot how I did the first one. I tried to convert to mpg with tmpgeng and it worked great but no audio. I don't know enough to solve this problem, please give me some advice, I would like to figure this out, the first movie I did everything worked great, I just can't remember what it was. Thanks

extract the audio first using virtual dub... I already replied to a similiar problem.. the info can be found at http://www.tmpgenc.net/cgi-bin/ebbs/board.cgi?board=tmpgenc#topic6945 .... also try encoding and hit stop after the source range reaches a minute or two... then look at the file and make sure there is ausio and video and that it is in sync...sound matches mouth moving... then if all is good hit start again and say yes to overwrite... happy encoding

Not all avi files have the same audio format,and the audio in your avi file probably not supported so you will have to get "virtua dub" to extract the audio to "wav" format and load the wav file in for the audio source..a lot of avi files downloaded of the net have vbr mp3 which "tmpgenc" doesn"t like very much....

and one thing that you have to check is that the audio is encoded to 41000hz or your dvd player won"t play it.....

I thought it had to be 48000khz.

Hi all, Iv been captureing and encodeing for a few months now. Most cartoon or CGI movies turn out pretty good, veggie tales for my kids as an example.

But when i try to convert either VHS or direct analog signal from my Dishnetwork reciever, anything real-life (ghostbusters 1, all my Enterprise series) Dont turn out quite as nice.

Iv been using these settings to get the best look but I cant help but think if Im missing a few things or should try something else.

usually for around 45 minutes of real life I capture at 2000 kbps I then use TMPG to convert my AVI also at 2000 I set motion detection at Highest quality/slowest speed. I also save as Mpeg2. This will get me on one SVCD.

35 mins all the same but i record around 2500.

My equipment is
CAP-card PCI : Pinnacle Studio DC10+
cpu and system : 800mhz Athlon Thunderbird with 320megs or pc100 and my hardrive is a ATA-66 20gig by Maxtor 7200rpm

My CAP-software : I usually use the DC10+ software that came with it, but i just rescently bought Pinnacle Studio 7. Which is its own problem. It keeps closing after opening.

anyways, does anyone have any ideas or suggestions on how to improve my quality. My picture sometimes is fuzzy or even looks like pastells when people start walking around. kinda like a smudge trail behind them.

thanks all.

when you capture the video up your bitrate to its max .... 10,000 for me.... encode your movie according to what bitrate you need for cd size...it will affect it slightly.. obviosly.... but I think your problem is that your capture bit-rate is too small... that or your saving it as a compressed file...save it as uncompressed... there are two codecs you can use .... I can't remember the name...but I believe it yuyv2 and the other is the huffy codec... hope this helps you out on your quality issue

I forgot one thing.... a very important thing.... some capture cards and win98/me only allow a 2 gig file to be made in avi format.... there is a way around it for the video capute....usually called sequential capture mode or something like that... and if you run NT/2K/XP ... these operating systems do not have the 2 gig file limitation... good luck and hope this works for you

>Hi all, Iv been captureing and encodeing for a few months now. Most cartoon or CGI movies turn out pretty good, veggie tales for my kids as an example.
>
>But when i try to convert either VHS or direct analog signal from my Dishnetwork reciever, anything real-life (ghostbusters 1, all my Enterprise series) Dont turn out quite as nice.
>
>Iv been using these settings to get the best look but I cant help but think if Im missing a few things or should try something else.
>
>usually for around 45 minutes of real life I capture at 2000 kbps I then use TMPG to convert my AVI also at 2000 I set motion detection at Highest quality/slowest speed. I also save as Mpeg2. This will get me on one SVCD.
>
>35 mins all the same but i record around 2500.
>
>My equipment is
>CAP-card PCI : Pinnacle Studio DC10+
>cpu and system : 800mhz Athlon Thunderbird with 320megs or pc100 and my hardrive is a ATA-66 20gig by Maxtor 7200rpm
>
>My CAP-software : I usually use the DC10+ software that came with it, but i just rescently bought Pinnacle Studio 7. Which is its own problem. It keeps closing after opening.
>
>anyways, does anyone have any ideas or suggestions on how to improve my quality. My picture sometimes is fuzzy or even looks like pastells when people start walking around. kinda like a smudge trail behind them.
>
>thanks all.



Hi Jeremy!

I too have a DC10+ card... and I too get them "pastell" colors (sometimes)...
I have some reflections reguarding that card, AMD and TMPGEnc.

It is like this:

Whenever I use TMPGEnc to encode a movie grabbed from air/VHS/LD, it seems that when I use a AMD Athlon CPU the result is shite and when i encode with a Pentium CPU (both P4 and PIII) it turns out good...

I guess that TMPGEnc doesn't work with AMD CPUs...

Tmpgenc" is optimized to work better with "pentium 3 & 4" because of the mmx and sse, but it is optimized for 3d now which I think is a AMD optimization..

Here's my advice for excellant quality captures.
Capture at no less than 640x480.
Use YUY2 and not RGB.
framerate - 23.976 fps

Capture to the DIVX pro 5.01 codec set at highest quality (2000 kb/s is far too low for high quality).
This codec has the ability to capture to progressive frames and de-interlace on the fly which should solve any interlacing artifacts or blurring problems and gives excellant results as far as de-interlacing is concerned.

If your card starts to drop frames when using the codec then set it's performance to 'Fastest'. This won't affect the quality, but will give less compression to the file.
Capture the audio to a wav not a compression codec.

When you come to encode it is pointless setting the 'Motion precision' setting to 'Highest quality' which as far as I'm concerned is a 'white elephant' as this yields very little difference if any at all compared to the 'High quality' setting and for the extra time it takes to encode you could have done something like a 3 pass encode which would give better results.

Using the SVCD(NTSC FILM) template(only if you captured to 23.976), encode to MPEG2 using the 'Constant quality(CQ)' setting and set your bitrates to min-1800 max-4000. To set this you will need to unlock the template using the 'unlock.mcf' template in the 'Extra' folder

Now encode and you should have a high quality MPEG2 file as a result.

ASHY

Thanks Guys, Ill try your advice. What capture software do you recomend?

Iv noticed the supplied program that came with my board isnt gonna cut it. I think it can only capture in its own codec made by pinnacle. I did notice a section under make file which listed 12 others, example :Cinemac Codek by Radius, micrsoft RLE and H.261 and H.263 Mireo Video DV300. there were a others.

Iv been fooling around with Pinnacle Studio 7.13 but it wont let me capture more then 10 mins worth of video. I have like 14gigs free. Also the majore problem is it wants to capture around 27000 for high quality and 6500 for low quality. My max safe (and locked speed according to the program) is 6000 so I cant capture even low quality with it. Not sure why i have this problem. My read speed on the drive is like 25000 and my write speed was something like 13000. I would think a ATA-66 would run better. All cables are good and drivers are up to date.

I also im trying to get Adobe Premiere 6.0 to work but it just gives me a load error and says " The operation hase been canclled due to restrictions placed on this computer, I need to contact my system administrator. " I dont know why in the world it decided to do that.

Sorry for the run on and off topic mess i made. Maybe someone knows whats up on this. I have retried installing the capture programs and the drivers.



btw Ashy thanks for the templates.

I just wanted to give a shot out to minion and ashy... my movies turned out perfectly... my dvd player does support xvcd.... thanx minion.. apex rules.... and my NTSCFilm plays great with no skipping, jerking, or glitches... internal 29.97 is great... ty ASHY... you guys rock

Thanx for that. Good to be appreciated.
Glad your movies turned out ok.

ASHY

I second that..It is difficult enough out here with little help but Ashy has been a godsend to me/.

I got a question... I have been encoding for a while, but want to perfect what I am doing...not just foollow someone else's tutorial... I have graduated beyond that... the question is ...how can you tell whether the film was originally 4:3 or 16:9 and how do I choose what options I want according to this.... and the other question involves interlace... if the original file comes up as interlace do I just encode with de-interlace or use ivtc or inverse telecine...then do I usew the interlace or non-interlace? and does this matter whether its vcd...xvcd...or svcd? any insight or where to look for this would be greatly appreciated...there has to be an mpg or avi analizer that will give me this info... and on a side note ... how do I get to kazaa?

Ususaly when you load a file into "tmpgenc" the settings in tmngenc should show if it is 4:3 or 16:9 in the source file info,but another clue is that most 16:9 movies have a black bar on the top and bottom, like widescreen...ntsc movies are interlaced,I usualy use one of the de-interlace options.and if you go to "www.downloads.com" or "www.kazaa.com" you should be able to download the program.......

is it better to get rid of the interleaving and just encode as progressive? if so is this true for vcd svcd or xvcd or only some? if so which ones... is it neccesary to get rid of the interleaving or just encode as interleaved? I know how to figure out bottom or top field first and it works...but I am looking for best quality...which method is preferred for quality purposes?

Ntsc(north america,Japan)is interlaced source,and pal(europe asia)is progressive,as for the type of de-interlace to use, it depends from movie to movie.I usualy go to the "de-interlace" option screen and scan to a part of the movie that has noticeable lines and just experiment with the settings till I find the one that looks best,I don"t screw with the inverce telecline it"s not for fixing interlace lines, it is for takeing non-interlaced 30fps avi and converting it to a 24fps mpeg.If you live in north america and you are ripping "dvd"s you probably never use the "inverce telecline(ivtc)"...

Just one or two corrections.
PAL is indeed interlaced not progressive, but doesn't have the same problem as NTSC interlaced movies due to the fact there is no 3:2 puldown added.

IVTC is for fixing interlacing problems related to movies which are 29.97 fps interlaced movies which were originally 23.976 progressive FILM and have 3:2 pulldown added.
It simply removes the 3:2 pulldown of interlaced movies and returns them back to their original 23.976 fps progressive FILM state.
If you don't use the 'ForcedFILM' option of DVD2AVI then this is the option you should use.

The decision whether to use this or the 'Forced FILM' option depends on whether DVD2AVI reports the movie as FILM and you are encoding to MPEG2.

ASHY

Hi everybody
when i start tmpg appears a window error (can't load P3 package.dll)and the program don't run. I saw in the file list and P3 package is there...
Thanks and bye
Mr.Arkadin

Go to the search bar above and type p3package.dll

ASHY

Hi All

I was just wondering if any one else out there is using the pinnacle impressions DVD authoring software with MPEG 2 streams created in TMPGenc.

I use a PAL source video from the pinnacle DV500+ and encode to MPEG 2 using PAL format. When I import the MPEG stream into the impressions authoring software it is always reported as being NTSC format. I guess this is an issue with the authoring software but I'd be intrested if anyone else is trying (and maybe succeeding?) in using a similar configuration.

Regards

Bill

Why not simply use the MP2 output and then import the audio and video files into Impression. It's hardware accelerated output and therefore is faster than most software encoders

Thanks for the reply

I tried that as well. It is much faster than the software encoders but the quality wasn't as good. Also, I still had the problem!

It seems that pinnacle impressions DVD treats everything as NTSC when you first import it and then SOMETIMES let you change it to PAL if you lucky.

I'v been seeing a lot about nero on this list - maybe I'll have a look at that.

Bill

i convert avi to mpeg but when i do it twice as big and will not fit on a disk

what can i do to make it fit on a disk. it 700mb disk please help me

Goto File>MPEGtools>Merg&cut
Then split your file in half.

ASHY

think nothing about the file size... it means nothing...well it does....but try not to look at it that way.... with a vcd standard template you can fit 80 min of movie per cd and with a svcd you can fit 40 min of movie.... if you use the standard templates and do not change the bitrate this will always hold true, irregardless of the quality... to get different amounts of time to fit on a cd you would need to adjust the bitrate... there is a good online bitrate calculator at http://www.vcdhelp.com/calc.htm .... you can also save it to use offline.... sometimes the cut/merge option makes the stream be non-(s)vcd compatible and requires you to multiplex it again.... to avoid all of this use the source range setting in the setting/advanced tab... set the beginning frame to 0 and set end frame to either half the movie or up to 80 min for vcd or 40 min for svcd.... most movies will fit on 2 cds in vcd and 3 cds in svcd... this is usung the standard templates... to do cd2 or cd3 just move to end frame and set that as start frame...then drag it over to the end or another 80 min and choose set end frame.... I usually start cd2 frame offset about 50-60 frames before the end of cd1 to give me a 2 sec repeat from cd1 to cd2... this works good if during an action or important talking scene.... that or make sure your switch from cd1 to cd2 is during a non-important part... some templates will allow you to fit more per cd...this is accomplished by lowering the bitrate of the audio or video...resulting in degraded quality.... I would just use this rule of thimb till you get the idea of bitrate and what it means.... I hope this helps you to understand ... best of encoding luck

Im fairly new to TMPG ( which is cool by the way) but when i convert from avi to vcd...the finished movie seems to stop ever so slightly every 2 seconds ..then plays... then stops..This is only for a fraction of a second or so but is still noticeable.Im using all the standard settings so nothings been changed.(Im using the Pal vcd setting)Is this normal or is there a setting i can change.

Check the original framerate of the movie.
If it's different from your output framerate then this is your problem.

ASHY

I got a Pinnacle DC-10+, capture a video (from vcr vhs), the result is a file named *.avi ........... and I try to convert this avi file to mpeg1 (vcd standar), but when I open the TMPGenc 2.54a Plus and I try to open the avi file captured ......... surprise .... a little window that says: cannot open file or unsupported.
Can anybody help me?, please.

I have almost the same problem... when i open the *.mpg file created by TMPGenc(2.5), i have audio but no video is shown. The window is all black, and the audio plays normally. What can i do to fix this?
---Is there another way to compress a Pinnacle's DC10+ (*.avi) file so i can put it in a cd? I don't care so much about quality as long as i get a nice video reproduction at the monitor. Any help would help. Thanks!

Hi - I am new at this. I did make a movie tho First i download a movie from KaZaA (The wedding planner) then onto TMPG and then burned it to a cdrw using Nero - everything worked really good and I put the cd in my dvd player on my tv and it is working but it does not look very good - the picture quality is horrible - when people move it is like going too slow - any way to make it look better????? I would love to make a more movies but if I can't make them look better than this then I will just buy the dvd's that I want instead. I would like them to look like my dvd's or vhs tape I buy from the stores - any way I can get the picture to have better quality???? If so - please let me know!!! Not sure what you need to know - I went thru the directions on VCDHelp.com and did everything like it said and yes I did get it to work finally and was happy about that - just thought it would look better!

Thanks a lot
Rita

use noise and sharpen filter

noise to around 20 and 2
sharpen to around 30 each

allso if your divx is under 100 megs not much youc an do going to look like crap
if your running 300 megs it will look ok with filters anything over 300 should come out nice.

make sure you use 2pass mode and use 2 cd's try uses 128 sound and 23fps

(because souce going to have crapy sound and low fps anyway so will give you more space for better video)

basicly what you put in is what you get out, to have a good quality vcd you have to have a good quality avi .And there are variables the standard vcd template isn"t going to give you the best quality ..The number one thing you can do to make you vcd"s look good is to raise the bitrate, When i do vcd"s I have the bitrate at 1650 kbs and i get 60 minutes on a disk....

The quality of downloaded movies aren't really good enough for converting to VCD. You should be ripping your own from DVD. This will improve the quality a lot.
Really the quality of standard VCD isn't that great and when using 80min cd's it makes sense to up the bitrate as bitrate is related to the output quality.

Do as Minion says and up the bitrate to around 1650 kb/s for a 2hr movie, if the movie runs for less, lets say about 90 - 100 mins then you could up the bitrate to 2000k/bs. This will improve the quality dramatically.

Download yourself a good bitrate calculator such as this one to find out how much bitrate you can set for a movie.
http://www.tomzavodny.cz/program/bitcalc/VideoCalc.zip

If you need info on how to change the bitrate once you have selected the VCD template just type 'unlock.mcf' in the search bar above.

ASHY

I am very dissapointed with the quality of mpg1 (vcd) and mpg2 (svcd) I am getting. Although there is no interlacing visable, it looks pixelated when there is movement.

This is after using SmartRipper - DVD2AVI - TMPG to rip a dvd... Can someone email me a sample of either (just a clip). It just seems based on what I have read that the quality is supposed to be as good as VHS. Well not from what I am seeing. There is no pixelation on VHS tapes. Although when previewing in TMPG it doesn't look too bad. Well thanks again in advance,
And thanks Ashy for the newbie faq.
(oh the results look very close to Clad Dvd - TMPG)

< There is no pixelation on VHS tapes>

well vhs doesnt use compression :)

make sure you use twopass allso dont try to put one movie on 1 cd use 2 cd's or 3if long long movie if you can make a xsvcd (if source is dvd)

allso set the audio to 128. free up some more video byterate check out www.vcdhelp.com

The quality of SVCD when done correctly is far better then VCD or VHS.
The movies I create are all SVCD and are pretty close in quailty to the original DVD and only use 2x 80min disks. There is very little if any evidence of blockiness in high action scenes, but I use CCE for MPEG2 encoding and have a pretty complicated way of doing things which I wouldn't recommend to a beginner.

I have sent you some of the templates I use for TMPG which should improve your quality.

ASHY

ASHY
Could you also send me your templates for VCD and SVCD? Thanks~NewtronX :o)

Check mail.

ASHY

Thanks,
Just wondering why the svcd templates all make 480 x 480 pixels? Is that correct? I think the regular vcd (which I would love to stop using) is 325 x 224??? Don't have it in front of me. Thanks so much for all of your help guys. You seem to know much more than the FAQ writers.

Ashy
I have had the same experience as Heath could you also send me these settings also for Tmpge? I'm trying to transfer motorcycle racing from VHS and as you can imagine this really fits into fast panning/blocky problems and I have just about tried everything.

I have managed capturing frames at 25fps YUV9 640x480 without dropping any frames. If I do this for one minuet and burn to VCD it looks fine. When I go over 2.5mg I get the message "cannot write to capture, disc maybe full, date rate too high".
I'm using Windows Me with 256mb of memory and 15gb Hard drive. Winth Wintv pci-pvi.

So I'm still on the lookout.

Brian

Thanks,
Just wondering why the svcd templates all make 480 x 480 pixels? Is that correct? I think the regular vcd (which I would love to stop using) is 325 x 224??? Don't have it in front of me. Thanks so much for all of your help guys. You seem to know much more than the FAQ writers.

Do you mean 2.5gb or 2.5mb?
If it's 2.5gb it could be the codec you are capturing to as it may be limiting you to 2gb captures, but your capture software should be able to overcome this problem by using sequencial capturing.

If it's 2.5 mb then I have no idea except try a different codec or change the capture software you are using.
I can point you to some excellant software which I use if you require.

If you are capturing to AVI you should be capturing to YUY2 format.
This is the native format of your card and any other format you choose has to be converted first internally by the card. This will give you better captures and lower CPU usuage.

Also check your drivers. If you are still using the old VFW drivers then get rid and download some WDM drivers for your card. These drivers will improve your cards capturing ability.
Tell me your card and I will point you in the right direction for some better tweaked drivers.

Check your mail for the templates.

ASHY

Thanks,
Just wondering why the svcd templates all make 480 x 480 pixels? Is that correct? I think the regular vcd (which I would love to stop using) is 325 x 224??? Don't have it in front of me. Thanks so much for all of your help guys. You seem to know much more than the FAQ writers.

strange I only wrote that once, sorry i hate that

ASHY I would love to see your vcd and svcd templates as well as xvcd and xsvcd... this post has my correct e-mail... if not icupn_icupn@hotmail.com ... thanx in advance... btw I love this board... I learn alot just by reading...and like the fact that I can answer about 25% of the questions asked... I think I will be around for a bit learning and helping

Hello Ashy, could i get an email copy of those templates to. thanks :)

jeremy.public@hotpop.com

Hello Ashy, could i get an email copy of those templates to. thanks :)

jeremy.public@hotpop.com

Thanks Ashy,
I hope the requests your getting are not driving you mad!
I do mean 2.5GB and I'm not too sure what drives I'm using or how to look as I'm still new to all of this. I have only just got WinTV PVR-PCI but maybe you can point me in the direction of these drives you recommend and I'll do the research.

Many many thanks
Brian

Actually Brian the Hauppage drivers are pretty good, but with my WinTV go card they only let me capture at 640x480, which upsets me because I know the card can capture at 768x576 without a problem.

I don't understand why Hauppage have done this, so I use third party tweaked drivers to overcome the problem.
I'm not sure if you will have this limitation with your card, but you should be able to capture at at least 640x480.

Your card uses a different chip, so I'm not sure these drivers are suitable for your card, but I have looked at the original drivers and are similar so they should work.

I have checked the Hauppage driver site and it seems your drivers are VFW drivers. To check which sort of drivers your card is actually using go to device manager and look under sounds,video and game controllers and you should see your drivers listed. They should say either VFW or WDM in the title.

If you would like to try the capture software and drivers I use then check this link.
http://www.iulab.com/index.shtml

ASHY

Ashy,

Any chance you can post me those templates as well?

Cheers,

Graham

i think ive learned how to encode the simple files and turn them into vcd. ive downloaded many programs, such as goldwave, ac3 filters, virtua dub, avi to vcd to name a few. but i still cant change the 'odder avis' to make a vcd. for example what would one do with this? audio MP3,56 kBit/s, 24,000 Hz, Stereo
video 352 x 288, 27273 Frames, 12.500 Frames/Sec, 44 KB/Sec, Unknown Format.
these things play in media player but im not sure how to change everything.

with that file I think you would extract the audio to wav with a higher bitrate and at 41000hz then encode with the pal vcd template at 25fps,I don"t do hardly any pal movies so I"m pretty lost when it comes to pal but i have encoded a few 12.5fps files useing the pal template and they turned out ok...

Bite the bullet and get a dvd-rom then you won"t have to deal with wierd frame rates and unsupported audio or even avi files.and you won"t have to wait forever to download a movie that you don"t know if it is the movie they say it is or if the movie is bad quality or any of those problems that come with downloading and encodeing movies from the net..Ripping DVD"s usualy goes without a hitch and with awesome quality.You can probably buy one for about $50us.The quality i get with my super vcd"s is awesome i can"t tell the differance between the svcd"s and the original dvd"s unless I use the zoom feature on my dvd player and I can see some pixelation on the svcd at 2 times the size,and the pixelation starts on the dvd"s at 3 times the size...anyway get a dvd-rom ,you won"t be sorry....