I was using TmpegEnc for my VCDs with no problem until now. I purchased a new mainboard (MSI-6373 K7N415DPro, nForce chipset) which has proven to be very stable and problems free. It's working with an Athlon XP 1500+ and I don't overclock it. My previous mainboard was an Asus A7A266 (AliMagik chipset) and now it's working with a Duron 1GHz (SSE capable), It's my secondary PC.
Both PCs have Windows 2000+Service Pack 2+DirectX8.1. The *.avi is a DV one.
I have tried before with a Gigabyte 7ZX (Via KT133)+Athlon Thunderbird and an older MSI board with classic Athlon 600 and AMD 751 chipset, no problems with them.

I haven't been able to make any complete encoding with TmpegEnc, In any time shows a "Read error at XXXXXXXXX module XXXXXX" and stops encoding. I have tried many things, even reinstalling Windows 2000 through reformatting the hard disk. It always fails.
The SAME video DV file (12 GB), and the SAME TmpegEnc program and Template files, copied through my home network to the Duron 1GHz PC, is encoded with no problem, so I might think it is not a SSE issue, or a corrupt Tmpegenc.exe file issue.
The failure occurs in any point of the encoding proccess. And It's more prone to fail when encoding mpeg-2.
The test are done encoding mpeg-2 DVD with 2 pass VBR, and mpeg-1 DVD-like with 2 pass VBR, Fast motion estimate. If using Fastest encoding mode it sometimes ends successfully.

Sorry for my bad english.

Regards
Note: I like TmpegEnc, it's the best encoder for mpeg-1 vbr which I can use for making mpeg-1 DVD disks from old tapes.

Note2: I can use the Duron 1000 MHz for encoding, but I'd like to use the faster Athlon XP 1500+ for it.

Update: the thing failed even with another fast encoder (you know what is) trial version. I have applied all the Windows Update security fixes over my Service Pack 2 and installed DirectX8.1b (all except installing Internet Explorer 6) and seems to work (???) with that encoder.
I will try this afternoon again with TmpegEnc.

I have had exactly the same problem with that MSI Motherboard and Tmpgenc.
I sold 6 Machines with that Motherboard and they were all unstable.
After much research the machines were fixed by putting in a new Power Supply!!!
The Power supply must be at least 300Watts and from a reputable manufacturer.
Cheap Power Supplies just do not work with the ATHLON PC and the MSI Motherboard!

First I created an avi-file with a very good quality. Than I encoded the avi-file to mpeg-2 (svcd, high quality, 2524 KB constant rate). The result: quality is very bad if pictures are in move (camera turns left, right, up and down) and high quality if pictures are still. What can I do? I would prefer SVCD and not VCD. Please help me. Thanx.

Is your avi file "interlaced" cuz it sounds like you might be seeing interlaceing artifacts, they are more noticeable when there is movement.Try useing the "de-interlace filter" in the advanced settings to see if it helps....

Hi Minion, yesterday I tested all parameters (I didn't find the switch for 'interlaced' - de-interlaced'!)during 5h with no solution. Now I find out when I capure a video from my DV-Cam in 'mpeg'-format (it meens I save the video after captering in mpeg- not in avi-format) the same effect appers. Maybe it is WinXP?

The "de-interlace filter is in the "Advanced Settings" you double click on the filter and a settings screen will pop up with your movie displayed in the window and a whole bunch of de-interlace filters, so what you do is go to a frame in the movie were the effect is really bad and then go through the filters to find the one that works best, there is a list of different filters to help adjust the color and sharpness contrast ect, these filters and the de-interlace filter are on the "Advanced Settings" screen, you can"t miss it...

When I launch the software I get the following message:
MPEG 2 trial period has expired

i am not sure why i get this error message. Long time back i had installed the TMPGenc software but i uninstalled the software before deleting the directory by double-clicking on TMPGEncVFP_uninstall.bat.

Any clues on how to get rid of this message?

Thanks,
Prasad

There is no way you can get rid of it legally (unless you purchase TMPGEnc Plus).
If you just encode some files to MPEG-1, just leave it as it is.
If you want encode files to MPEG-2, you need to buy TMPGEnc Plus.

Someone please help clear this up for me. This is probably the 4th time that I started seeing this message that the Mpeg2 file I try to import is not supported. The file used to work. I added the Free DVD files etc. Registered them... played with Environment settings and still nada. used to work, now it doesn't... again. Driving me nuts. Why does this continue to happen. I even reinstalled a fresh O/S, TMPG and did all the same above and still no go.

HELP!!!

You should make sure that you have the "mpeg2 vfapi plugin" and some times you have to de-mux the mpeg2 file and load the audio and video in seperately or not load the audio in at all just load the video and encode it and mux the mp2 audio with the encoded mpeg file........

Is there any way to encode video & audio together without de-mux the m2v & later mux them again?

What Minion is trying to tell you is that it is pointless encoding the audio. The audio is already mp2 and you would just be re-encoding it to the same format, which means you would be losing quality and wasting encoding time when all you have to do is encode the video and then mux it with the original sound.

ASHY

I have a DIVX .avi file that was created in wide screen ration (640 x 272, 163334 Frames, 23.976). When I encode to .mpeg for vcd viewing it appears to be distorted out of ratio on Windows Media Player playback.

Any suggestions what ratio should be set at to encode .mpeg output at proper ratio?

To get the closest possible representation of your original avi you should choose the "Fullscreen(keep aspect ratio)" with the 4:3 display unless you got a widescreen then use 16:9, and don"t use media player to view your mpeg file cuz it doesn"t show the correct frame size it resizes it to fit in the media player view screen, pluss it has really be quality for mpeg playback, use dvd playing software like "power dvd" and it will surely look better..

Hi, hopefully some1 can help me out. I have an avi film which is 29.970fps, which i want to convert into 25fps(pal). Heres what ive tryed and what happens..

Firstly i extract a .wav file from the avi film while its still at 29.970fps(Using virtual dub in full audio process mode). Then using Besweet i set all the standard setting but for FRC Presets i select NTSC2PAL 29.970 to 25.000. I then convert the wav file to an mp2 file. Now this is where the problem starts,
I tested the wav file against the full original avi file, and both sound perfect the speech is at the right pitch. BUT when i listen to the mp2 file the female voices sound like mens voices and the mens voices are very deep pitched. Ive encoded a small part of the film with tmpgenc just to test sync and its fine, its just the voices are very deep.

The link below is the method i use for converting 23.976ftp avi films to (PALsvcd) films and it works every time.

Should i be setting Besweet up differently ?
Please can some1 help.

Thx Mike

Sorry thats the link i use for 23.976 to 25fps.

http://www.doom9.org/mpg/avi2svcd.htm


Plz help.

Thx

I couldn"t get through to see the link but the way I do it is ,extract the audio to wav then use "avi frame rate changer" to change the frame rate to 25fps then encode the video to a "m2v" video file, then I find out the video length then use "cool edit" or "sound forge" to stretch the audio to the exact length of the video file,makeing sure that i use the "preserve pitch" option so I don"t get the same effect that you are getting, then encode the stretched wav file to mp2 the mux the files together...

Minion has hit the nail on the head.
The reason you are getting the audio problem is because a 29.97 to 25 fps conversion means the audio has to be stretched quite a lot thus having the effect of lowering the pitch. I don't think Besweet corrects the pitch so this is your problem.
The best way is to use Cooledit pro or 2000 as Minion says. This will preserve the pitch of the audio.

ASHY

I am experiencing unstable video when playing back via my Pioneer DVD player.
Firstly i edit my footage using Premiere 6. I then create an AVI file using Mainconcepts DV codec. Then using a high quality setting with Tmpge i encode the the AVi into an Mpeg2 and then using Nero burn as an SVCD movie for PAL (UK) .

The quality is excellent if there is no movement but where the video `moves` ie panning the camera the video image begins to stutter and partially break up. But once the camera remain still the image is perfect. This `break up appears as lines. Sorry i cannot describe it any better.
I am using 2 pass VBR rate for quality which is my main aim. I am not bothered about file size. Playback is for a TV not computer.

Anyone got any clues what causes this.

Martin

I have experienced a simular thing on many occations and it comes down to the dvd player that your playing the files on,I have noticed with my player if I put the bitrate to high I get the stuttering effect when there is any movement at all but when there is no movement then it looks perfect, so now for svcd I make sure the max bitrate is below 5000kbs for my player, another thing that causes this is if you encoded your avi file to a different frame rate as the avi file, so if you encoded a ntsc file to a pal file you can get this effect...

This sounds like interlacing artifacts.
You need to de-interlace your source AVI using the de-interlace option in TMPG.
Click the de-interlace filter and choose a scene in the movie with some action like a car moving across the screen or someone walking then choose the'even-odd field(field)' option .
Click the right hand arrow button a few times and have a look at the motion. if it is smooth the field order is correct, if it appears to stutter( move forward then backward) then the field order is wrong and you need to change it.
Once you have selected the correct field order change the de-interlace option to 'even field'.
This should cure your problem.

ASHY

This sounds like a wrong Field Order in the Video. DV uses Field order B (Bottom Field First).
Don't do any deinterlacing, the only effekt is lowering the Quality of the Video.

I figured out how to do a single avi>>mpeg conversion but I would like to know how I can set a batch task to convert a whole bunch of avis to mpegs at the same time.

Thanks for your help!

What you do is load each file in tmpgenc seperately do your settings and go to "file" to "save progect" then repeat for each file, then when you are done saveing progect files for each avi file then you go to "file" to "batch encode" then load all the project files into the "batch encode" window then click "run" ans thats it accept wait.....

How can I eliminate a stutter condition on the last frame of a clip?
using TMPGEnc version 2.56.39.143 downloaded June 30, 2002

Have a 5 min 13sec clip that I've used to test various settings and encoders. This clip is NTSC, 29.97fps, 720x480 resolution, 4:3 aspect.

The last 1 second of this clip contains rapid motion. Each movie consists of the same 5:13 clip, authored with DVDit and played back on a Sony DVP-NS700P player. Outlined below are my test movies which all use this footage:

Movie1
Clip exported from Sony Giga Pocket as MPEG2
plays fine

Movie 2
Clip exported from Giga Pocket as AVI, encoded with DVgate Assemble
plays fine

Movie 3
Clip exported as AVI,encoded with TMPGEnc (using Rui's settings)
plays fine until last frame. Last frame stutters on screen for approx. 1 second before the movie ends.


For example, when playing back, I pause the player at the 5:13 mark. I then frame by frame forward 8 times. For all movies tests, the clip plays ok up to this point. When I frame forward the 9th time, Movie 1 and Movie 2 displays ok. When I frame forward the 10th time, the frame stutters. If I continue to frame forward, on the 21st time, the movie ends.

Movie 4
Using Premiere 6, I took the same footage and added a 20 frame, black fill title clip at the end. Encoded with TMPGEnc. Performing the same frame by frame replay, when I frame forward the 9th time I see the final scene appear ok. I then have to frame forward to the 41st time until the movie ends.

Using BitRate Viewer, I have verified that each clip contains a total of 9399 frames, except for Movie 4 which contains 9419 frames.

I have tested with 8M CBR, 2-pass VBR (hi 8000, avg 6000, low 2000). Same results.

Tested with 8M CBR, Max GOP length 15. Same results
Tested with 8M CBR, unchecked "Detect scene change". Same results.

Any suggestions on how I can eliminate this "stutter" condition?

I have also used other clips created by Premiere 6. All appear to have this same condition.

I thought I had cracked the video audio sync issues with TMPGEnc (even v 2.56 does this). Then I found that even the raw captured AVI on the hard drive was suffering badly from the same problem.

I had a 3 hour video which I captured thru a win tv card using MGI Videowave 4 capture software.

At the beginning of the capture all is well but by half way thru (about 1.5 hours) there is about a 10 second difference.

If this is happening at the AVI capture stage what hope do I have for encoding the whole thing? Why is this happening?

cheers
tc

This is probably the most common problem with captured files, the de-sync is usually caused by dropped frames and in turn the dropped frames are causeing the video file to be gradually shorter than the audio file so your file gets slowly but gradually out of sync, to fix this you can use a audio editing program to speed up the audio file and shrink it so it is the same exact length as your video file you can use "cool edit" or "sound forge" for this ,There is a detailed "how to" at "www.vcdhelp.com" on how to fix sync issues like this....

Your capture software may have a setting somewhere regarding interleaving with the Video with the audio. If it has make sure it is set for full interleaving this should prevent the audio going out of sync when frames are dropped.

The other and more likely reason is that your sound card's clock frequency is running at a different rate than your capture card. This will cause precisely the problem you are having.

Your best bet is to use another capture software which corrects this. Virtualdub is able to syncronize your capture card with your soundcard.

Start Virtualdub for capture and then click Capture>Timing... and make sure the option to sycronize is checked.

This should sort you problem if it's down to the frequency mismatch.

ASHY

Your capture software may have a setting somewhere regarding interleaving with the Video with the audio. If it has make sure it is set for full interleaving this should prevent the audio going out of sync when frames are dropped.

The other and more likely reason is that your sound card's clock frequency is running at a different rate than your capture card. This will cause precisely the problem you are having.

Your best bet is to use another capture software which corrects this. Virtualdub is able to syncronize your capture card with your soundcard.

Start Virtualdub for capture and then click Capture>Timing... and make sure the option to sycronize is checked.

This should sort your problem if it's down to the frequency mismatch.

ASHY

Thanks folks, - looks like I might have to buy Virtual Dub

cheers
tc

Virtualdub is absolutely free and is a program that you don't know how you did without once you have it. I don't know where I would be without it.

ASHY

Hello!Although you cannot belive I've another problem with audio when I encode a film!As you teach me I'm using virtual-dub to encode the audio and then I encode all film (audio + picture) And it worked well in my first film!but in the second one, when I encoded the second frame of film audio isn't syncronized with picture. What can I do to solve this problem?????????????


Another personal question: tmpgenc plus have so many problems? or if I buy it I will encode all my films correctly at once?

Thanks a lot!!
ALBERT (a frustrated encoder)

It seems that most problems encodeing stem from the quality and condition of the avi file you are encodeing and not bugs in tmpgenc,if you encode movies downloaded off the net you will have a lot more problems than with avi files produced by your computer or captureing, this is because while downloading movies off the net there is a certain amount of corruption in the file,but for you out of sync problems, it depends on what type of sync problem you have as to what method you use to fix it, if the audio and video are out of sync the same amount the whole way through the movie then the problem can usually be fixed by de-multiplexing and re-multiplexing with a program like "bbmpeg" or "mpeg2vcr" and use the feature in the multiplexor that lets you off-set the audio or video to sync up the file......

I wish there could be an option to Pan and Scan a movie in a way that I'd tell TMPGEnc the periods and the amount of Pan and Scan to do for every section.

Its very helpfull when converting from one format to another NTSC to PAL, 16:9 to 4:3 and such.

Thanks
dakos