Using TmpgEnc to convert Avi to M2V, it always stop at 97% with "Stream Writing Error". I have followed the instruction by TmpgEnc official site to change the Environmental setting for the temp file, it still won't rectify the problem. Can someone help?

This does not seem to be an issue with TMPGEnc itself, but I am hoping someone here can shed some light on my issue.

I have a Dazzle DVC80 capture device and using MovieStar5 to capture my video to raw avi. For 25 minutes of video, my file size is roughly 5 gigs.

I tried to use the MovieStar software, TMPGEnc, and also Nero to convert this raw avi file to SVCD. Each program will completely lock up my computer and random times during the encoding process.

I tried VCD and it looked like it was working, but with about 4 minutes of encoding time left, everything locked up again.

Does anyone have any suggestions as to why this may be happening?

I have a problem: My TMPGEnc isn't taking any movies files of mine....it keeps telling me that it doesn't support the files and they're the DVD2AVI vfp. files. I've been inserting these in TMPGEnc before many times, but now it won't let me do it. This is getting to be very frusrating as I have a lot of movie files to do! I recently had to wipe everything out on my hard drive. It was working before I did this, now NOTHING'S working on it! I have an AMD athlon(tm) xp 2500 processor, 1 gig of RAM, integrated sound card, two hard drives(120 gig & 200 gig) and a NVIDIA GeForce 5200 video card (128mbs) and two DVD burners in it.I have the TMPGEnc version 2.58....Somebody PLEASE HELP ME OUT WITH THIS!!

Copy the DVD2AVI.VFP from your DVD2AVI folder to the TMPGenc folder.

I've tried that and it still won't work. I've even went as far as to wipe everything out on my hard drive and it still won't work! I've adjusted the directshow to 2 and 3 and it STILL WON'T WORK...ARRRRRGGGHHH!!!! I just don't understand it...it worked before and now all of a sudden it doesn't want to work and now I have all these movies I need to do....any other suggestions?

The directshow settings have nothing to do with the DVD2AVI frame server as it uses the VFAPI interface.

Follow these steps and it should work.

First of all carry the instructions I gave you previously again.
Ensure that the the version of DVD2AVI that you created the .d2v with is exactly the same version you are copying the DVD2AVI.vfp file from to the TMPGenc folder.

Secondly do NOT move, rename or delete the .d2v or any of the files or folders associated with it inckuding the source files until you have finished encoding.

Run TMPG then navigate to the VFAPI plugins folder. You should see the DVD2AVI.vfp plugin listed. If it is, ensure it checked. If it is checked then try raising it's priority and then restart TMPG and then load your .d2v

Instead of jumping through all these hoops of nonsense, you should make sure first that you havent lost or overwritten your necessary codecs. Have you made significant changes to your system since the last time it worked for you? Without proper codecs installed, TMPEG will not support very many file types. I recommend K-LITE CODEC PACKS. They are complete, quick to install, and 100% free. Try this first.

Well it just goes to show the extent of your knowledge with your 'Hoops of nonsense' crack and your little understanding of how the VFAPI interface works.

First off he doesn't need an installed codec to decode the MPEG2 source as DVD2AVI works as a frame server through the VFAPI interface and has it's own standalone codec and only needs the DVD2AVI project file reader added to the TMPG VFAPI list to decode MPEG2.

Secondly anyone who advises installing a codec pack on a system has little or no knowledge of why these should NOT be installed. Anybody with plenty of encoding and video editing knowledge on any of the video forums will tell to stay well away from them.

Lastly before posting messages challenging someone elses advice, make sure you know what you are talking about as your advice will do diddly squat as far as decoding MPEG2 with DVD2AVI is concerned.

um, could you please explain all this again in stupid man's terms? i can't find a plugin folder? and i dont understand why a file needs to be moved from the folder it was saved in to the tmpg folder? i imagine it has a browse button for a reason?

i made a .d2v file with DVD2AVI and when i browse for the file, it's not automatically detected as a video file, i have to view All Files (*.*). then, when i select my file, it says it's not supported, or couldn't be opened.

I'm not familiar with either DVD2AVI or TMPG, i'm just following steps outlined in my uni course notes for ripping DVDs. So some really simple steps to fix this problem would be appreciated.

Hi,

i bought a new Canon A510 digital camera and i can do movies with it.
The problem is i tried to convert the .AVI using TMPGEnc and it wont even open the file. The AVI is encoded in Motion-JPEG so i can't use it in my video editing software. Do you have any ideas that could help me ?

You need to install the Morgan media MJPEG codec or similar directshow codec.
http://www.afterdawn.com/software/video_software/codecs_and_filters/morgan_m-jpeg_codec.cfm

I'd just like to be able to select 20 files or more and drop them into TMPGEnc and have them all processes at the same setting.

Right now to get over a 100 files encoded, I drag-n-drop and click through the wizard ... ouch

Dennis

http://www.videogeneration.com.au/batchlist.htm

I have tried converting my avi movie which is about 1:39 minutes long
to an mpg file for a dvd
well when I did so the result was I had no sound on it....and after the end of the movie...there was 2:55 of black screen added on the end of it.

Yeah, that's a frequently asked question which has been frequently aswered

Very frequent, far more frequently than using the search function.

No offense, however...
I have the same question as everyone else.
I'm looking through a search now and all I'm turning up is a bunch of nada.
If this question's been frequently answered why does the answer not frequently turn up?

As per subject... I have an old PC and it takes 30 hours to convert a 1-hour video, and I'd prefer to save, shutdown, reboot and continue the conversion. Can TMPGEnc do this yet? It's been a common request but never fulfilled, for some strange reason... as a coder I can't understand any technical reasons why this hasn't been done...

There is no encoder out which is able to what you want.

A coder with a very slow PC...unlikely.
Use the hibernate function of your operating system if it has it.

> A coder with a very slow PC...unlikely.

It's not my only PC, buddy. I do my coding on my pro box, which
I do not install any third-party apps (such as TMPGEnc) on. Tsk!

> Use the hibernate function of your operating system if it has it.

Interesting idea... it won't corrupt the encoding process?

>Interesting idea... it won't corrupt the encoding process?

Start the process as normal then when you decide you wish to pause the encoding process click the 'Stop' button, this will effectively pause the process. Ignore the pop up box then put your computer into hibernation. Upon restarting the PC just cancel the 'Stop' command and the encoding should continue.

Thanks Ashy, good thinking! ;)

I have been trying to use TMPGenc free edition and have installed the KLite mega codec pack to use it with.
What I find is that often the program will say cannot open or file unsupported when all the other programs I use can open it.
The second thing is that when it does open a file, there's a 'snag' every few seconds when something is panning across the screen. EG a flyby from left to right.
Does anyone know what this is and what I can do about it?

>KLite mega codec
Very bad idea.

>there's a 'snag' every few seconds
Maybe not using original frame rate or as above.

I have instructions on how to create a DVD from an AVI file but what i can't seem to do is lower the Average Video Bitrate any lower than 2000, lower the estimated file size to less than 5.6GB and can't lower the "Makes file size ?% of disk capacity any lower than 134.80%

Can anyone tell me how i can fit my movie to a 4.7GB DVD?

Thanks in advance.

I would not recommend lowering thw average bit rate that low anyway.
How long is this movie? It is either very long or you have a problem.

there seems to be a lot of idiots talking like they know all the answers on here... simply go into your advanced settings (there's a button to the right on the screen that shows those things you 'cant' change) and lower your bitrate 50 kb/sec at a time until you are just below 4.5 Gb... dont go too clode to 4.7 or you eill not have sufficient space left over for the authoring program.

>there seems to be a lot of idiots talking like they know all the answers on here

Yes and from what I can gather you seem to be one of them with little idea of what you are talking about.
Are you here to pretend you know all the answers or just to annoy people.

Again you seem to have little understanding of what the problem is. The problem he has is not solved as simply as changing the bitrate to as low as it can go by altering the settings.

As he has already stated TMPG will not allow him to go below 2000 Kb/s which means he is using the project wizard to create a DVD
2000Kb/s is the lower limit for DVD compatiblity. It can be set lower, but is not advisable as the quality will be awful.

However his solution to the problem is not to lower the bitrate. There are several reasons that could contribute as to why he the file size is so large and over the capacity of 1 DVD even with the average bitrate set so low.

Usually the the most common one is a decoding problem. TMPG has a bug whereby it sometimes incorretly reads the header data in the source file and wrongly calculates the timecode and thus sometimes extends the actual time length of the source by 2 or 3 times.
This leads to TMPG wrongly calculating the bitrate and encoding a couple of hours of blank movie at the end of the real movie.

Unless the source file is something like 4 hours long then there is no reason for the average bitrate to be set any lower then 2000Kb/s and should even then certainly fit 1 DVD.

The usual solution to the problem is to increase the priority of the 'Direct show file reader' to top of the list and/or install FFDSHOW.
This should then allow TMPG to correctly read the header data and calculate the proper bitrate.

The other solution is to simple set the 'start' and 'end' points of the movie in the 'source range' function.

If you had actually any real knowledge of the way TMPG works then you wouldn't have posted such novice comments like the above.

I had the same problem and "increasing the priority of the 'Direct show file reader' to top of the list" worked. Everything seems ok now. Thanks Ashy.

I am trying to export video (tried many formats) and I let the video compile for a little bit and then stop it and watch to make sure it is the quality I want before dedicating the comp to it for a long time. When I watch these files however, I get no audio. Is the audio rendered seperately at the end and added back in or is this a problem? I would let it run, but I don't wanna take the chance that my computer will be tied up for hours and hours and then get something I can't use.

Also, I have a file that is around 2.8GB it is a very high-quality 720x480 recording (about 45 minutes long) that I want to shink to a few hundred MB to be more portable. What codec and quality settings would you recommend? I am already planning on making the dimensions smaller and slightly reducing the framerate. I have always just burned to DVD format previously so I am not very experienced in compression. Thanks!

You need to find out what the audio fomat is in the source. If it's AVI then load it into Virtualdub and check it's properties.
The audio is encoded into the output in sync with the video, so you have a decoding problem if you don't have audio.

My advice to shrink the size is to lower the bitrate and the resolution and encode to MPEG1. You can also modify the GOP structure. You can find KVCD templates at http://www.kvcd.net which allow high compression while mainting as much quality as possible.
I wouldn't touch the frame rate unless you enjoy watching jerky movies.

After decoding to m2v vide file play is slowed down...why??
Every thing was set as it should be...

Dunno, need more info on what your problem is first.

Hi there,

IÃÎ trying to use TMPGenc to create MPG files that are VCD ready so I can burn them and watch them on the big TV. The source files are also MPGs but don't have the right formatting (whether its screen size, bitrate, etc.).

Most of the time these MPGs are transcoded without incident but there are some that end up being transcoded with an error. In the final product of these erroneous files the video freezes but the sound keeps going, often for several minutes, and then the image will change to another still frame while the sound continues. This will go on until about the last few of minutes and then return to normal.

Today I looked more closely at a recently transcoded file and noticed that the intervals are suspiciously uniform. In a 31-minute clip the image first froze at 1 second before the 8 minute mark. The still image was then updated at 1 second before 16 minutes and again at 1 second before 20 minutes. At 1 second before 28 minutes the playback unfreezes and the last 3 minutes run out normally.

I have downloaded VirtualDub and the associated FreezeCheck program and have tested the source and end products and Vdub seems to think both are OK and found no freezes.

Any ideas on what IÃÎ doing wrong? The eerily uniform pattern (8-8-4-8) seems to indicate something but what? I have installed the latest version of TMPGenc on a different computer with the same result (testing the same files).

I used Vdub to convert one such original file to an AVI format and the end result is fine but I canÃÕ burn AVI direct to VCD.

UGH!
Any ideas what I should check next?

Thanks,
blurp

I take it the source files are MPEG-1?
You could try increasing the priority of the 'MPEG-1 Decoder' in the VFAPI plugins to top of the list or try de-multiplexing the MPEG first.

If that doesn't work then I'm guessing your MPEGs are not fully compatible with TMPG. TMPG can be funny sometimes with files made with other software. Either that or they do contain errors. Virtualdub isn't too good at detecting errors in MPEGs.

If the above doesn't work then you could try frame serving the MPEG from Virtualdub to TMPG.

Wow! That's quite a mouthful! I will try all of these things and see what happens. I'm a bit of a newb at the AV stuff but not on computers so I should be able to figure it out. Thefrustrating part is that you don't get to see if it worked for a couple of hours.

Do you think there's any relevance to the uniform distribution of freezes (on near-perfect 8 minute increments)?

Thanks,
Boris

One other thing... if not TMPGenc then what do you recommend I try if this doesn't work?

In the interest of testing I took one of those un-transcode-able files and coverted to AVI with VDub and got a fully working file. Now I'm using TMPG to transcode from AVI to MPG to see if the problems were washed out in the process. I'll let you know.

Thanks,
Boris

Ok I tried elevating the priority of MPEG-1 in the Environmental Settings and it made no difference. I had the same problem with another file but it also had the same telltale interval in the advancing of the frozen frame: intervals of 8 and 4 minutes EXACTLY.

What the heck? I've now had this happen on several machines with several different files with multiple versions of TMPGenc. For some reason I think the solution is related to the interval of freezing but I can't figure out what it is. Could it be some form of copy protection? Is there some kind of disruptive system call that happens on these regular intervals?

I managed to change one file to AVI and then recode and THAT worked but I tried it with another file and it ballooned in size from 200Mb to over 2Gb before it ran out of HD space.

Now I've used VDub to save the WAV portion of one of these trouble source files and have told TMPG to use the original MPG file and the new WAV to construct a new MPG file. We'll see if that works, I hope it is what was meant by "demultiplexing".

Any further advice or suggestions would be very welcome.

Thanks,
Boris

The demultiplexer is in the MPEGtools section of TMPG. It will seperate the audio from the video and rewrite the headers in the MPEG.

If TMPG worked fine when you encoded the MPEG from the AVI that Virtualdub created then you may have a decoding problem.
You could try using the MPEG2 VFAPI plugin. Yes I know it says MPEG2, but it will decode MPEG1 also just fine.
This codec is highly compatible with TMPG and gives excellent results.
http://www.marumo.ne.jp/mpeg2/m2v_vfp-0.6.51.lzh

Failing all the above then your only other alternative is to use Virtualdub as a frame server to TMPG. Seeing as the AVI you encoded to MPEG turned out fine then the frame server should also work.
First of all play the MPEG in Virtualdub. If it plays OK then that is exactly how TMPG should encode it.

Thanks, I'll give it a try!

ashy, I know that this is likely a stupid question but how does one go about installing the above mentioned MPEG2 VFAPI plugin as a plugin in TMPGenc?

Just put the plugin in the TMPG folder. When TMPG runs it is automatically loaded.
You can verify it is there by looking in the VFAPI plugins list.

Well I've tried several of these things and now I want to try the earlier advice to use VDub as a frameserver to TMPGEnc. Trouble is I can't get TMPGEnc to pick up the stream. Any suggestions on how to do this? It's probably a syntax issue but I just don't know how to get it to pick up the start of the thread.

I'm using TMPGEnc v.2.524.63.181 and Virtual Dub v.1.5.10.

Thanks,
Boris

What do you mean you can't get it to pick up the thread.
What problem are you having? What errors are you getting?

It's ok Ashy, thanks for all your help. I've finally had success with the "de-multiplex then re encode" method and all is solved.

Thanks again for all your help in this matter, I really appreciate it.

Boris

ps. Just to resolve my previous post, I was able to start the frame server in VDub but I didn't know how to tell TMPGEnc where to find the file it needed to work on. The interface seemed to require me to specify a file location but there was no file yet. I tried specifying the network address and name of frame-served file but that didn't work. In other words I had the server but didn't know how to point the client at it. Again, I've got it working the other way so I don't need to use this method. I am, however, still somewhat curious as to the answer... how do you tell TMPGenc where the file being served by VDub is?

You don't need to specify anything.
Virtual dub starts the frameserver for you. All you need to do is simply give the frame server signpost file a location.
After starting the frame server just click through everything until the final stage where it asks you for a name and location to put the frame server file.

Give it a name and an .AVI extension. Then simply load that file into TMPG as you would any normal AVI.