I have a couple of avi videos, with 5 or 6-channel AC3.
When I encode with TMPGenc XPress, the audio is always extremely low, even if I use the volume adjustment.
It doesn't seem to be reading the center track, which normally has the main dialog.

If I demux the AC3 audio from the avi file, and try to merge it to the converted mpv stream, it's always out of sync.
The picture quality is great, so I'm wondering what to do... and what tools to use? How can I merge the original AC3 audio, with the newly encoded mpeg-2 stream, so I can author it, with it being in sync?

Any help appreciated... thanks!!!!!!!!!

Do you have AC3filter installed? TXP4 uses directshow for avi with ac3, so that means it will use external codec to decode. If you are missing the codec or if the setting for ac3filter is set to stereo then it might not decode the other channels correctly.

If you plan on muxing the AC3 to video then I suggest you tell TXP4 to output video in ES (Video only) it will create .m2v file that you can mux your audio with TXP4 MPEG Tool. Its an elementary stream so chances are you get better sync assuming you didn't modify the fps.

Thanks for replying.
Yes, I have the AC3 filter installed.
I did a test with a 6-channel AC3 source, and put the AC3 filter's output as 3/2+SW 5.1. What I got was a loud buzz. If I changed back to stereo, it encoded very low. I played around with different settings, but anything more than 2-channel got a loud buzz.

Too bad there's no way for TXP4 to mux the original audio, as it encodes the MPEG-2, rather than having to encode it again, or mux it separately.

If you have any other ideas... thanks!

Try going into Options > Preferences > File Input > and disable the AVI file reader. This will boost directshow priority and hopefully decodes your AC3 correctly. Once it does, you might want to tweak your AC3filter to boost the audio level, sometimes DD playback level is a little low.

I use TMPGEnc 4.0 XPress to encode for my TIVO,and have been doing so for at least over a year.

I just recently relized that I could also add subtitles, so now when I click new project | Edit filter list | and then try to add subtitles, the software hanges quite often. I'm sure this may have something to-do with memory or something along that line (or the fact that the HD where the video is is connected via USB2.0) - but regardless, I have no problems with encoding this and using the filter on my other machine (which has less memory, but an internal HD).

so my question is, I'd really like to be able to use this other machine to continue to encode the file(s). So is there a way via the commandline to write a batch file that will specify the avi file, the srt file and which template to use for the exported/output?

This would greatly simplify this and my worry for hanging the machine everytime I go to clip/edit. Also note, that I've never needed to use the clip/edit feature, so I'm not sure if this was always a problem or not - but I'm quite confident that this has nothing to-do with filters etc. (since this works on my other machine).

any help would be appreciated.
thanks

A bit odd for it to hang/crash when you add subtitle. Might want to check your processes running in the background, could be affecting TXP4 somehow.

But to answer your question, none of TMPG software supports command line.

Fruber - Is TXP4 opening VobSub?
Check this out, maybe it will help with regard to the hanging.
http://tinyurl.com/28wxhb

I had TMPGenc 4.0 Express working perfectly with a Pentium 4 930 dual core processor. Now I've upgraded my system to an Intel E6750 processor (just released) and a P35 (bearlake) motherboard and the program crashes before I can finish encoding mpeg and MP4 videos from homemade VOB files. Is anyone else having this kind of problem with the newest Intel processors and mobos? I have the most recent BIOS for my motherboard and have tried disabling and enabling all kinds of CPU, cache, and multithread options in 4.0 Express to see if I can get to the end of an encode without the program crashing. The only error I get is that "TMPGenc 4.0 Express has encountered an error and needs to close". The error report lists different modules at different times as the reason for crashing, so I can't pin it down to a specific module or error. My only thought is that it might be a problem with a new stick of RAM, but I am not getting BSOD's or crashes in any other programs with my new system build. I have the most recent version of the K-Lite codec pack and have disabled AVI in 4.0 Express to force it to use the K-Lite codecs when necessary.

Klite might not help in this case since you are dealing with VOB (MPEG2). I highly doubt it is the proc or mobo that is causing TXP4 to crash. Best way to know for sure why its bailing out is to use SystemInternal FileMon.

Use memtest86 to verify your RAM, it might not always give you BSOD but a bad RAM read/write can crash TXP4 which is CPU and RAM intensive.

For precaution, try resetting K-Lite settings back to default, they have a simple tool for that.

Thanks for the suggestion on memtest86+. It probably is faulty RAM. Unfortunately none of the memory testers that I know of are compatible with the new P35 chipsets yet. But I'll try it. I am going to swap out with the ram from my last computer to see if it fixes the problem. I'll probably try tweaking the voltage on my RAM just a bit higher too (to anyone reading: only mess with your RAM voltage if you know what you are doing!).

The problem was a faulty stick of RAM. I had my first successful encode last night after switching out each stick until I found the culprit. Rock on Xpress 4.0! Stuff that was taking me 20 hours to encode with my dual core Pentium 930 and 533 Mhz DDR2 RAM is now taking me 4 - 5 hours with an Intel E6750 proc and 1066 Mhz DDR2 RAM. Amazing.

You must be encoding HD or a very long file for it to take 4-5 hours on a high spec PC like that, but good to know that it all works. Normally it takes me 1 to 2 hour for a 2 hour movie using DVD Template output on my Core 2 Duo E6600 and 2 Gb DDR2.

I'm encoding raw VOB movie files to MP4 (AVC level 3.1) at 720 by 480 resolution and 2-pass variable bit rate at 3000 kb/s average. I'm also applying a de-interlace filter (inverse pulldown). I end up with a great format that can be streamed wirelessly to my PS3 (using as a media server) for viewing with no problems and decent quality. When encoding to mpeg2 with just a single pass it usually only takes an hour with a bigger file size to get the same quality as the MP4.

nTekka: I'm curious if you have any suggestions for what is a good bitrate for MP4 and mpeg2 movies. I've kind of picked 3000 kb/s because my media server can handle it fine and file size isn't such a big deal now with the price of storage dropping. But I haven't done detailed experimentation to see where a higher bitrate doesn't really matter. I think I remember reading that DVDs are encoded at somewhere around a 6000 kb/s bitrate.

DVDs are actually encoded around 9200kbps and can't exceed 9800kbps for both video and audio because older DVD models can't keep up if its higher. Of course that doesn't matter now with newer DVD players.

I'd keep my bitrate at around 7500kbps, I didn't notice much difference between 7500 and 9200 but the size difference was noticable, so I guess 6000kbps is good.

i'm trying to convert mpeg4 to wmv and get to the convert process screen to get the 0x80070005 error msg. HELP?!
how to fix?
Bypass?

Is there more to your message or just that very very informative number? Something like Access denied? No stream? etc etc... I'm assuming you are using AVI container with MPEG4 codec, in which case you may want to check your system for the right codec. Also check under Options > Preferences > File input and remove AVI file reader so this will force DirectShow file reader to take over, which usually performs better.

it is the "ACCESS DENIED" error.
wha is the "right" codec for this and how do i check i have it?
thanks in advance.

Try using GSpot to check your video, then find what codec it uses and download it online somewhere. Its not recommended but you should just download K-Lite codec pack, will likely solve all your codec problems.

Before your RE:, I went ahead and got the most up-to-date KLITE pack and it seemed to cure the problem!?
thanks for everything on this!
:D

Okay this is really naffing me off. I could swear vitriolic hate towards TMPGEnc at the moment. Why can't their f***ng packages update properly when they release a f***ng upgrade. Senseless idiots! I thought (more fool me!) I would upgrade to the latest version 4.f***ng3.f***ng1.f***ng222 but now everytime I try to go into the damn thing, it keeps saying "Necessary files for the application could not be found or properly readed. We f***ng advice you to uninstall and reinstall the application"

I HAVE UNINSTALLED FROM THE ADD/REMOVE PROGRAMS (because TMPGEnc thought not to have it's own f***ng uninstall option from within the programs menu)... but everytime I try to reinstall the latest upgrade program, I keep getting the piss taking 'We advice you to uninstall... ' message above.

So now I've got a program I have paid $45.95 for and can't use.

Has anybody got any suggestions to get round TMPGEnc's upgrade screwup, before they receive an email from me, they really don't want to receive.

Many thanks in advance.

Jebus, Calm down before your vein pops! I know their installer is a complete package so its not really an update package you download. So it simply overwrites your older version not add new items to your old.

You probably got some conflict or problems with dll driver and its not helping TMPGEnc run. Try using SystemInternal FileMon to find what is causing it bug out. My guess is you probably got a corrupted codec or ffdshow filter. Another thing is don't use codec packs with any encoding software, they will cause problems unless you are an advance user who can manipulate the scripts to correct any issues.

You see I don't know about dll's and ffdshow filters. I even tried to revert back to a safe system restore point, before I attempted to upgrade. What I have now done is downloaded the trail version again, hopefully I still have a valid license key, so I will just use that on the trial version when it expires.

If I were you, I'd have a technician take a look at your whole system. It might be filled with junk and corrupt DLL or conflict galore, once its cleaned up it might just run faster and better.

My systems fine. Spyware and virus free. I run programs frequently to check for this type of stuff. I have a 4200 Dual Core Processor with 1GB memory and it flies through every task I ask it to do. So it's not in the least bit unresponsive. Thanks for reply.

See http://stash.miloonline.net/dvd_read_error.jpg.

I get this error whenever I do Source -> Source Wizard -> DVD-Video, DVD-VR or DVD-RAM -> Next... -> [Select VIDEO_TS folder from DVD].

Isn't TMPGEnc 4XP supposed to be able to read video and audio straight off DVDs?


-- M. Cooper

Don't you just love that thing they invented for DVDs? those annoying useless CSS encryption? Sounds like you probably didn't bypass it if you plan on making a copy of it? So to answer you, No TXP4 can't read directly off an encrypted DVD. It can read directly if its a custom made disk with no encryption.

no its not just ecyrpted dvd's, its happening to quite a few dvd's

I merged a movie (an AVI file of 761.962 kB) with its subtitles. This resulted in an AVI file of 81.630.032 kB...
Is there a way to reduce the size of such files?

I'm a bit confused, might just be different formating standard, but the period between your numbers are throwing me off. 761,962 KB? that's equivalent to 761 MB which sounds about right for an AVI movie of 2 hours. The new avi file you encoded to is probably uncompressed so you screwed up on the settings somewhere. I think AVI template has uncompressed as the selected default, so just change it to Xvid or DivX and you should be ok. But kind of a waste of time to re-encode a whole movie just to have subtitle when you can simply use VirtualDub to do a quick pass through with subtitle takes about 10 min.

I loaded a source avi which I want to re-encode.
After successfully starting the encoding a preview of the source video
is displayed in the Xpress window.

How can I turn off the displaying of the currently encoded video (part)?

Peter

Right click the window > Preview Frequency > No Preview.

Hi all,

I'm using TMPGenc 4.0 Xpress 4.3.0.220 to encode a lot of MiniDV camcorder clips from AVI (captured by Ulead VideoStudio 9) to DVD-compatiple MPEG.

Encoding any one file works fine. Trying to encode more than seven or eight in a project (or batch tool), though, XPress crashes. If I re-run the project it doesn't crash on the same file; sometimes sooner, sometimes later.

Has anyone else experienced anything like this? I've got about 500 clips to encode!

Thanks for any advice...

(I'm running XP Pro SP2 on an E6600-based PC with 2GB RAM, lots of disk space etc. - the PC can handle it, basically.)

Also happens with 4.3.1.222, by the way...

TXP4 uses directshow for AVI(DV) files so you might want to check your external codec for any issues. Your external codec might not be able to handle multiple projects at a time so it bails out on TXP4. If I were you, i'd load up ffdshow or k-lite and have it attempt to fix any corrupt codec or use ffdshow to stream to txp4, the newest version fixed some of the compatibility issues with txp4.

I want to re-encode an avi video with TMPGEnc Xpress.
After loading the avi I have a couple of possibilities to set the target size:

In "Source"
in "Format"
In "Format"->DivX codec Settings"

Which one is taken ?

Similar question with "crop" values: I can set cropping values in "Source"
and in "DivX-Settings" Which are taken for the encoding process ?

It seems to me that the values in DivX-Settings are NOT considered ?

Further question: Is the video cropped at first and then resized or vice versa ?

I'm assuming "Source" = "Filters" with Picture resize and Picture crop. Another thing to clear up, which output template are you refering to with "DivX-Settings". There is only two available templates, DivX file output and AVI file output which you can select the external DivX codec.

Now that the confusion/terminology is cleared up, i'll start with the Filters.
Picture resize will modify the source pixel video resolution, same with cropping.
When you select Format output, the resolution here would be your "viewing" resolution. Here's an example, 720x480 pixel video is the source, lets say i resize it to 352x240 with the picture resize filter. Then during the format I use the size 720x480 then this will be my new viewing resolution and the source video (352x240) will be in the center of the 720x480 viewing resolution. Another aspect to all this is the aspect ratio, which doesn't modify the resolution, but simply stretches the pixel to fill up 16:9 or 4:3 ratio.

I hope that answers your question, I recommend not touching the resize filter and simply change the viewing resolution in Format tab, it will automatically resize the source video to fit within this viewing resolution.

I converted a mpeg2 PAL to a mpeg2 NTSC and the problem that I have right now is that the audios from the PAL version don´t fit with the NTSC video...normally, when you convert a movie the audio is going to work with any of these two formats...but in this case the audio is getting desincronice during the movie...and at the end the result is 3 or 4 seconds delay.
Also, the PAL version movie is : 02:05:55:19 and the result to make it on NTSC is:02:05:48:06...?????The normal result could be more long than the PAL version....
If some body knows something about it...let me know

Ciao!!

Edu

TXP4 usually does a good job with converting PAL <> NTSC, most cases it depends on your source file. Give us some details to your source file, like bitrate, codec for video and audio, VBR/CBR?, etc.

I'm assuming your source is AVI, I think i've said this before but AVI is open source so it doesn't have much of a standard so there is more problem with this format. However, it is also easy to fix. Just download the correct codec then go into TXP4 Options > Preferences > File input > uncheck both the DivX and Avi file reader.

That will put DirectShow file reader as the primary and it will use your PC's external codec to decode. This has worked for me so give it a try, if not then you could always demultiplex your audio and convert it to WAVE.

I've always wondered why TMPGEnc3.0 and now 4.0 XPress [i'm using 4.2.3.193] never had a mpg joiner built into them under the MPeg Tools part of it. All it has are the Multiplexer and DeMultiplexer tabs but in the freeware version, the MPeg Tools has the Merge & Cut tab.

if i have a bunch of mpg's i want to join back together then i end up using the freeware version of TMPGEnc.

since it would make sense to put that function into XPress as well.

tnx for reading.

It would make sense to have this option, but its not necessarily the correct way. MPEG joining or any type of video joining will cause problems down the line and isn't very accurate. On the surface level it might sound easy if you have 2 MPEGs with similar setting so naturally you would think its ok to join them, but what if the GOP are slightly off, what if the audio and video are variable bitrate? how would the program know how to correct these differences to create a smooth video. Ultimately, you may end up with audio/video desync or degrade in quality. Professionally, you do not want to ever merge two separate clips, you would want to re-encode them to have a consistant video.

So to put it simply, I can understand why TMPG would remove a feature that could cause problems because they want to maintain high standard like the Pro's for a commercial software. Freeware = anything goes.