I am new to DVD. I've encoded some VCD's using tmpgenc in the past with success, but in anticipation of my DVD burner I wanted to convert a couple AVI's (DivX) to burn to DVD. Here's my question, problem. When I load a default DVD template in TMPG it tells me I can fit 120-165min worth of video depending on the audio and video encoding I choose (CBR, PCM, etc, etc). That would be great because my AVI's are each about 50min each (qty. 3). So I choose 2Pass VBR, MpegII audio and load the AVI and choose all my settings and at the very end it reports just one AVI takes up 77% of the DVD (about 3.6gb). The problem is, it's telling me I can only fit about 65 minutes onto a DVD. I know I can manually limit the video bitrate and fit more, but what I don't understand is why the TMPG template doesn't do this by default? Why does it allude I can fit 2-3 hours of video onto DVD but than tell me I can only fit 1 hour? I guess more than anything, I'm confused as to why this isn't more user friendly, if it says using this method will allow 120 minutes of video when I select that it should allow 120 minutes of video. Any thoughts?

You seem to be bit confused.
Because you are using a VBR method of encoding TMPG will simply use the highest bitrate it can (while keeping within the limits) to maintain a high quality picture. At the moment your bitrate will be somewhere around 8000 kb/s.

So no matter what length of source you load it will always use up most of the disk. If you had a longer source then TMPG would automatically reduce the bitrate to accomodate the longer file.

What you need to do is number the 3 AVI's in sequence then load them and TMPG will then join all three toghether and treat them as one file and adjust the bitrate accordingly to fit it on to the DVD the bitrate will then go down to something around 4500 kb/s
You may need to go into the enviroment settings first to enable sequencial file opening.

Ok, thanks for the clarification, that makes much more sense. I understand why it does that from one perspective, but it's very confusing when you're trying to cram something like home movies or TV episodes onto one disc because there is nothing that indicates it's trying to fit each file perfectly onto one disc. I'm not sure your suggestion will work in this case though. One AVI is in AC3 the other two aren't (it's not one movie, they're all seperate videos). I'm going to try that AC3ACM tonight when I get home and see I can get it work, otherwise I guess I'll have figure out the appropriate bitrate and encode each individually.

Ok, thanks for the clarification, that makes much more sense. I understand why it does that from one perspective, but it's very confusing when you're trying to cram something like home movies or TV episodes onto one disc because there is nothing that indicates it's trying to fit each file perfectly onto one disc. I'm not sure your suggestion will work in this case though. One AVI is in AC3 the other two aren't (it's not one movie, they're all seperate videos). I'm going to try that AC3ACM tonight when I get home and see I can get it work, otherwise I guess I'll have figure out the appropriate bitrate and encode each individually.

Ok, thanks for the clarification, that makes much more sense. I understand why it does that from one perspective, but it's very confusing when you're trying to cram something like home movies or TV episodes onto one disc because there is nothing that indicates it's trying to fit each file perfectly onto one disc. I'm not sure your suggestion will work in this case though. One AVI is in AC3 the other two aren't (it's not one movie, they're all seperate videos). I'm going to try that AC3ACM tonight when I get home and see I can get it work, otherwise I guess I'll have figure out the appropriate bitrate and encode each individually.

If you have an AVI with AC3 audio you should simple Just extract the AC3 as an ac3 audio file and use that as the audio in your DVD cuz AC3 is the best Format for DVD"s...You can extract the audio to AC3 useing Virtual Dub and AC3-Fix or BeSplit, if you need further instructions Post back....

Any bitrate calculator will tell you what bitrate you need to set for a 150 min movie. In this case the average bitrate would be 3850 kb/s.

I was wondering if I am using 80-minute with 750MB CD-Rs, can I fit 3 30-minute episodes on there with quality at 70? The first file is only about 230MB. So if I have 3 of those, it would only come out to 690MB. Will it fit on a CD-R? :( It is really important that I fit 3 to every CD-R or I will waste so much discs! I would even sacrifice the video quality!

You've got me confused here.
>I was wondering if I am using 80-minute with 750MB CD-Rs

80 minute CDR's are 800mb not 750mb.

>The first file is only about 230MB

Is this an MPEG we are talking about? If so and all three are the same size then 690mb will easily fit a 74 min or 80 min CDR no problem.

Sorry, guess I got mixxed up. So even if all 3 movies added up are over 80 minutes but is under 800MB, it can still fit on the CD-R?

(Actually, my CD-Rs are 80 minutes and 700MB. With overburning selected, I can burn up to 813MB)

I am capturing movies from my mini-DV cam directly to Premiere. Until now I've only been editing and sending back to the camera. I would like to take some clips and put them on the web. The quality I got with Cleaner 5 (integrated with Premiere) was horrible...blurry, banding, etc. regardless of the settings I tried. I have just started using TMPGEnc to convert AVI's to Mpeg, with much better results.

1. Is there a way to integrate TMPGEnc into Premiere, like Cleaner 5 is?

2. In the Wizard, can someone give me a few suggested parameters to use for encoding video for the internet? We are talking 20 sec. clips with a lot of motion (motorcycle, mtn. bike). Obviously looking for the best quality and a reasonable file size...say 2mb or less. Playback size can be smaller, does not have to be full screen.

Thanks in advance. I'm new at encoding, but not new at editing.

I think I solved my own problem, at least the first part of it...

I downloaded the plug-in from www.videotools.com and got it integrated with Premiere. They have a nice online tutorial on how to use it with TMPGEnc! (I also discovered that Cleaner 5 EZ that comes with Premiere is total crap, and doesn't support the video server mode...thus there is no way to control any parameters, even bitrate.)

Other than that, I'm just using mpeg1 so far, my file size is 10mb per minute, which I can live with.

If anyone has any other tips or suggestions for configuring videos for the web, PLEASE let me know!

Well If you are Doing Videos for web distribution then you might get Much smaller file sizes and same a lot of Bandwidth if you maybe tried a Different Format like WMV/ASF format...With WMV you could probably get about the same Quality but at a quarter the file size and anyone with a windows based PC could watch the files no problem...Just a Thought and Yes Cleaner5 is Crap...Cheers

Thanks, I'll give that a try!

Recently, I reinstalled Win XP Pro on my machine at home due to some problems I was having.

Once everything was reinstalled, I came to convert a couple of files I had.

I currently have a settings file that I use however, along with this, I run the project wizard so that I can specify a file size to find out the bit rate (I don't know if there is an easier method, but I find this works).

Anyway, I have now found that whatever files I open, the length is displayed incorrectly (always way too long) which results in the filesize being about 8Gb for a 2000 bit rate.

Having searched through the forums, I have only really been able to find the answer - it is nothing to do with TMPGenc since it gets the information from the file itself.

I have a file that I had converted (before formating my drive and reinstalling P) and the movie length was being report by TMPGEnc with no problems. Also, if I continously open the project wizard and go through to the end, I am occassionally given the correct info.

I am trying to convert XVID and DIVX movies to MPEG-1 Layer II Audio

Is there something I am doing wrong? I don't think that the problem is with any of the files since they were all okay before the reinstall. Since these files were on a different drive, they have not been effected.

I have also installed FFDShow Codec.

Thanks in advance,
Pie

I don't think that this is a problem anymore.

By chance I noticed a thread that mentioned VFAPI. This rang a few bells from the first time I was setting everything up.

After some extensive huntig, I came across the following prority settings -

DirectShow Multimedia File Reader-----Priority 3
AVI2(OpenDML) File Reader-------------Priority 1
Microsoft MPEG-1 Decoder--------------Priority 0
Wave File Reader----------------------Priority 0
AVI VFW Compatability Reader----------Priority 0
BMP/PPM/TGA/JPG File Reader-----------Priority -2
TMPGEnc Project File Reader 2.59------Priority -2

After I had installed the VFAPI codec I set the prorities as above and then checked one of my AVI files. Low and Behold, the length reported was correct :-)

hi, i am trying to open an .avi movie file. But TmpgEnc says blah.avi can not open or is not supported. I know its either divx or xvid, how can i change the enviornment settings to have TMPGEnc recognize it and be able to edit it.

Well if it is a XviD file then you should also have the FFDShow Decoder installed Because it Replaces the XviD codec for Decodeing XviD files Because Tmpgenc doesn"t get allong well with the XviD codec...To change the Enviromental setting is so Simple that it should not even be asked..You just Right click on the VFAPI Plugin you want to Change the Priority of and just change it...To get DivX/XviD files to load you raise the "Direct Show"...

Hi, when i try to load any avi file, it a msg comes up and says "file cannot open, or unsupported"?? can anybody pleez help me??!! thanx

Search the board and you will get your answer a million times over.

i downloaded the TMPGEnc Version 2.521 but i get "this zip file is damaged or incomplete" and i can't install it. seems to be a problem with the .dll file too.
what can or should i do?

thanks

Well Try downloading it again...and make sure you have a newer version of WinZip installed or even better something like WinRar...and if you use a Download Manager then try without one...

done! thanks a lot.

I have just installed the trial copy of TMPGEnc Plus (2.521.58.169) and managed to encode an Microsoft AVI file from Premier 6. Two files resulted from the encode: a *.WAV (PCM format) and an *.m2v.

Problem: I cannot merge these two files to make a combined AV MPEG2 file. I tried using Simple Multiplex, Multiplex and Merge from MPEG tools that coems with the free trial. Each time the tool tells me that PCM is not an acceptable audio format. If not how do I get Premier to export AVI files in the right audio format so that TMPGEnc can work with them. I can find no further help on this problem.

Regards

Dave Barr

I think you've got yourself confused.
You can't multiplex a standard MPEG with wav audio. MPEG video only accepts MPEG audio unless you are creating a DVD and using DVD authoring software.

Next time you encode select CBR MPEG audio in the wizard not PCM, but for now just load the wav into TMPG in the audio field then select audio only then encode.
This will then produce the right audio format and THEN you can multiplex with the video.

Thanks for the response Ashy. I am a bit green on video editing and do need help with this.

Using AVI an export file from Premier and then using TMPGEnc to encode to MPEG2 I get two files, one a PMC audio wave file and a video M2V file. Obviously I need to merge these two files somehow to make a fully playable MPEG2. I was only trying to use what TMPGEnc provided from the encode. All I really want is a one step encode that provides a good quality finished MPEG2 with combined Audio & video, I dont understand the need for the extra step of combining audio and m2v files. Looks like I am a bit lost on the process of encoding from AVI to MPEG2.

Any more enlightenment would be appreciated.

Regards

Dave

OK. You obviously did NOT read my post properly because I have already given you the answer.

Here it is again:
>Next time you encode select CBR MPEG audio in the wizard not PCM

The easiest way to encode is to just bypass the wizard altogether.
Simply load your AVI into the main screen then just click the 'Load' button and load one of the templates.

hi, i'm having problems with merge & cut, some of what i have are bare minutes too long and i tried to merge & cut but it would just freeze........is there anything else that i can try?

Well when the Merge & Cut doesn"t want to work the only thing you can do is use a different Mpeg editor,This is an Mpeg editor that usually works Pretty good : http://www.marumo.ne.jp/mpeg2/m2v_vfp-0.6.40.lzh , It also has a Mpeg2 VFP Plugin for Tmpgenc...If this editor still doesn"t work Post back and I"ll try to find another one...cheers

Minion.....winzip tells me that it shortened the name.......and now i cant even get to read the readme file....what can i do??????
thank you...i sent you an email......but i dont know if it will make it back to me.......

Here is the best advice.
Just get rid of winzip and download Winrar. Winrar is a far superior program and is the best compression program there is.
For a start of it handles almost every compression format there is unlike Winzip. It's also much easier to use and user friendly.

It will unzip this particular file with no problem at all.

I have just installed Sorenson Squeeze, in order to capture from DV and encode Quicktimes.

The DV encoded AVI that it produces from DV camera captures, looks perfect in Squeeze, Windows Media Player, Quicktime and After Effects.

When I open it in TMPGenc, it looks like a very low bit rate MPEG - soft and bad artifacting around edges.

I've tried disabling various vfp plugins to no avail.

Any help much appreciated.

Richard

Try raising the priority of either the directshow plugin or the OpenDML plugin to 2.

Thanks Ashy. Raising Directshow to 2 fixed this. I'd tried unticking the box for AVI2, but this made no difference (Directshow should then have had priority).

Anyway, all happy now.

I am very new to this and would like to know if I can convert Windows Media to Mpeg with TMPGenc. Thank you in advance

Theoreticly Yes, if you have the latest WMV codecs installed, But some Poeple have had Problems getting the audio to encode , so what is a good idea is to extract the audio from the WMV file to wav format and use the Wav files as the audio source...For extracting the audio from WMV Files I usually use a simple audio encoder called "DB Power AMP" to extract the audio to Wav...You can get DB Power AMP for free at "http://www.dbpoweramp.com" and remember to download the codecs for DB power amp also, there will be a Link to a Place called "Codec Central" at the web site....good Luck

Question - Mr

Answer - Mr.

Tricky ... what is "Mr"? .... people keep putting that in the subject line

It's because he can't be bothered to put a proper subject, so in that case I can't be bothered to put a proper answer.

Hi!

I want to convert a divx film to two SVCD's. I want to use TMPGEnc for this, and I'm using a trial version.

Everything seems to work fine, for about ten seconds. Then the video freezes, but the program is still encoding, and I can also hear the sound when I play the file.

Am I doing something wrong, is it an error of TMPGEnc, or an error in my divx file?

I hope there's someone who can help me :D

Do a search on this board for VFAPI plugins for your answer.