Hi, I am new at encoding movies and making svcds. I have a question, or rather I am asking for advice. My dvd player does play the SVCDs that I make with TMPGEnc. Should I buy a lincence so I can continue making SVCDs or should I just make my movies VCDs? Is it worth it?

IF ur VCDS work on your DVD player, then obviosly your DVD player doesn't support SVCD.

What? That's not the question.
He just said that his player supports SVCD's.

@jperalta
It's up to you to decide whether or not it's worth it.

ASHY

SVCD is much higher video quality than VCD when done right so yes, it's worth it if you want higher quality video.

I wonder if there is a possibility to batch convert the audio streams of a bunch of mpegs.
normally I first have to demux the mpeg then convert the audiostream from 44 khz to 48 khz and then mux the mpeg. that takes a lot time. isn't there a possiblity to just give a file list and tmpeg then does all the rest ?

Hi, I am new at encoding movies and making svcds. I have a question, or rather I am asking for advice. My dvd player does play the SVCDs that I make with TMPGEnc. Should I buy a lincence so I can continue making SVCDs or should I just make my movies VCDs? Is it worth it?

I personally think the Quality of SVCD is Much better than you will ever get makeing VCD"s and if the Quality of the Movies you are Makeing is of a Concern to you then SVCD is the way to go, and if you ever get a DVD Burner and want to start burning DVD"s you will need a Mpeg2 encoder, so I would say Pay the Money and get the Liscence....

Can one insert text onto MPEG-1 Clips usins TMPGEnc 2.5? Like a title or a url? I just want to add plain text on the bottom right of the screen over the entire video. I know that VirtualDub has a "logo" filter but that requires a .bmp or .tga image which do not have transparent backgrounds to my knowledge. If not TMPGEnc, can anyone suggest an easy way to do this?

You can use AVISynth to do that. The Program and a Guide can be find here:

www.videotools.net

I live in Japan and I'm automatically given the Japanese version of TMPGEnc-2.510.49.157-Free. How do I download the English version??

Isn't it obvious. Go to the English TMPG site. http://www.tmpgenc.net/e_main.html

ASHY

Sorry, I just realised you have the free version.
Run TMPG, go to Options>languages>English.

If you can't read it because it's in Japanese.
Run TMPG click the second option in from the left at the top. A menu will pop up. Choose the second option down then change to English.

ASHY

Thanks for the tips Ashy, unfortunately I'm only given one language option, Japanese. The TMPGE download server automatically recognizes my machine as Japanese and uploads the Japanese version. I just deleted the Japanese language from my Internet Options' Language Preference. Maybe the server will think my machine is strictly English. Or maybe I need to reconfig Windows langueage option but I don't know how to do that, much less in Japanese...

That's unlikely seeing as both Japanese and English files come from exactly the same link.
Is your operating system English?

In the menu there should be 3 options 1. Automatic 2. English 3. Japanese
Even if it looks like Gibberish just choose the second option and restart TMPG.

If it still doesn't work then open the TMPGenc.ini file in the TMPG folder
Under [SYSTEM] change the 'Language ID' to: LanguageID=1033

ASHY

I'm using TMPGEnc 2.5 and I'm having a wonderful result encoding high quality MPEG 1 files derived from the .vobs on several of my DVDs. My goal is to use the finished MPEG-1s web delivery. (I don;t need to make VCDs, just cut them up into multiple MPEG 1 files) The files I create with teh default settings are NTSC 352 x 240 29.97 frame/sec. with stereo audio and they look great. The only problem is that they are quite large and maybe too high quality. They take up about 10 MB per minute of video, so that a five minute video is almost 50 Mb amd a twenty minute video takes up about 200 Mb. What are the settings that I can change in TMPGEnc 2.5 to wind up with a still decent quality but smaller file size? I'd like to try to get them half the file size if that is possible to do without scrificing too much quality. Thanks for any advice.

For web delivery, most video I've seen is 15 fps (or 14.985 fps) rather than 29.97 fps. I've played around with different codecs and different settings but I always end up there. Yes, the motion is not as smooth, but I think it's the least annoying way to cut down on bandwidth. If you keep it at NTSC framerate but cut down bitrate that much, you end up with more annoying artifacts, in my opinion.

the other way to enable bitrate reduction while minimizing artifacts is to use more aggressive filter settings (spatial filter and temporal filter: under "Advanced/Noise reduction/"still picture" and "time axis". This gets into a tradeoff between a blurry image and a more detailed, but blocky image.

Why don't you just use a VBR method of encoding and reduce the audio bitrate and samplerate.

I have also had great success with modified GOP layers. I.E. more B frames per GOP than standard.

John Beale: First I adjusted only the audio to 44100Hz and 64 kb with all the same variables as in my original question and reduced my resulting 4:45 min MPEG-1 clip from 47.5 Mb to 42.0 Mb in size. So then I tried what you suggested and encoded with the same variables as above including the just mentioned audio change (352 x 240 NTSC MPEG-1, CBR 1150 kps) while reducing the fps to 14.985 fps instead of 29.97 and the file size was STILL 42.0 Mb? Shouldn't it have gotten smaller still?

Ashy: If I try your suggestion and change the rate control mode which setting should I use when I change from CBR to VBR- 2-pass, manual or auto? And what is a reasonable bitrate to try- half of 1150, ie 575?

And you might think about a different streaming Format other than Mpeg1 like Maybe Mpeg-4 or WMV/ASF, with these Formats you can achieve Exelent Quality at much lower Bitrates and Smaller File Sizes.. Just something to think about..

FYI- I tried encoding the same clip with a CBR bitrate of 575 (half of 1150) with the same variables and cut the file size for the 4:45 min clip from 47.5 down to 22.0. It looks pretty good at 352 x 240, although it quickly gets blocky if you try to blow it up to 200%. I guess that must be the best way to trade off quality with file size. The stuff that Ashy was talking about was a bit over my head.

PS- Minion, I may also offer streaming clips alongside the MPEG clips (in which case I'll be trying to figure out what is the best conversion tool to go from MPEG-1 to .wmv soon), but I'm definitely set on MPEG-1 for downloadable clips. So it's just a matter of finding the best trade off for the file size and quality.

Sorry, I made an assumption you were already changing the bitrate. If you encode at CBR (constant-bit-rate) of 1150 kbps (Video-CD rate) or other fixed value, then certainly you will have the same size result no matter what. If your material has periods of fast motion and then relatively little, it is an advantage to use VBR (variable bit rate). In any case, to reduce the file size you have to specify a lower bitrate. (If you started by loading TMPGEnc's VCD preset, it locks most things including bitrate. Load the "Extra/unlock.mcf" file to enable all the settings.)

My comments about filtering and framerate are just ways to reduce the visibiliy of artifacts, making small files look visually better. But to get the small file in the first place, you must specifically reduce the bitrate.

I am sending you a template which uses a VBR method of encoding and modified GOP patterns, bitrates and spoilage settings, seeing as it would take me too long to post all these settings here.

This template will give a file size almost half of standard VCD, yet maintain about the same quality image and much better than simply halving the bitrate of CBR which would give the same file size.

All you need to change is the frame rate. Just make sure it matches your source frame rate. This will prevent framerate conversion artifacts.

Also if you wish to increase the quality, simply raise the max bitrate. For each 500kb/s you raise it, raise the quality 5% also.
If audio is not important to you then you can further reduce the file size with this template by reducing the audio to 64kb/s

Let me know your opinion.

ASHY

Ashy:

I am very appreciative of you sending me that template to try, but unfortunately it only made the resulting file size of the encoded MPEG-1 file BIGGER (50.8 Mb), not smaller (from the original 47.5 Mb file with CBR of 1150)! Any idea why? The only thing that I have tried that lowers the filesize substantially is simply halving the bitrate for the video with CBR to 575 which made the resulting MPEG-1 about half the size (22.0 Mb) I have 20 hours of video to encode and I figure I'd better ask as many people as I can before I spend a lot of time encoding them just to wish I had done it differently later. So thanks to everyone who has responded so far.

Unless the content of your source is non stop extremely high detailed action at full screen then the file shouldn't be any where near that size.

If that is the case then there would be no point in using this template as the average bitrate would then be raised to that of almost the max bitrate setting in the template.

In regular movies, by this I mean movies which are not full screen and have a mixture of low detailed low action and high detailed high action scenes, this template works very well.

I have used and tested this template myself.
In breif what it does is use a VBR method of encoding which means it only uses the bitrate it needs to use whereas with CBR methods bitrate can be wasted in low action,low detailed scenes thus increasing the file size unecessarily.

With the settings I have used the bitrate cannot go over 1500 kb/s or 15mb per min, but the bitrate is allowed to drop to 0. Unlike in standard VCD CBR where the bitrate would be stuck at 1150kb/s.

Also the GOP layer has been altered to contain more B and P frames.
B, P, I frames are what an MPEG is made of. I frames do not compress as well as P and B frames, therefore increasing the amount of B and P frames means less I frames in the MPEG and thus acheiving better compression in the MPEG.

These settings usually produce an MPEG from a regular movie which approximatly has an average bitrate of 575 kb/s. Thats almost half of 1150 at CBR and therefore should accordingly produce a file size which is half that of 1150kb/s at CBR.

The audio has also been reduced to 112kb/s which again is half the standard for VCD, but still maintains reasonable quality.

If your source is full screen and contains high amounts of action then you will find it VERY difficult to compress this source with any kind of reasonable quality and small file size because this would require high bitrates which is why the template produced a larger file size. It attempted to raise the bitrate in an effort to compensate for the scenes.

You could try and play around with the template I sent you by reducing the quality percentage and the max bitrate and then see the result, but my guess is you won't see much benefit over a CBR method because of what seems to be the nature of your source.

My advice is to use another format. MPEG1 is not really a good format for web delivery seeing as much higher compression to file size ratios can be obtained using other formats such as WMV and even MPEG4.
My personal choice would be DIVX/XVID MPEG4 as it is a highly optimized format and produces excellant quality at low file sizes which MPEG1/2 cannot match.


ASHY

Hi all,

I have converted an AVI (captured with Abobe 6.2) to mpeg-2 with standard
DVD (PAL)template.TMPEnc version 2.5. Haven't used any settings in for instance the 'advanced' tab.

Generally, the audio and video are good but whenever there are fast cameramovements there is some flickering/noise during those movements.

Is there anyone out there who has the golden tip how to solve this?

Kind regards from The Netherlands.

Henry

It sounds like you have gotten the Wrong Field Order, this Can happen Quite often if you don"t check it First, Sometimes it can be hard to figure this out by yourself Luckily if you load your File into Tmpgenc useing the "Wizard" it Should analize your File for the Correct Field order then Set it accordingly, and don"t change the output field order different than the Input field order..

Hi,

Thanks for your response. I will try with other fieldorder.
That should solve the problem

Regards

Henry

I am trying to convert home made videos to MPEG2 using TMPGENC.

On most of my files I get a "Read error occured at address 0047F7B1 of module 'TMPGEnc.exe' with 0378E638". Address seems to be always the same whereas 'with' changes everytime. It never occurs twice at the same frame. It can happen during the analysis pass (2 pass VBR) or during the 2nd pass.

Converting my videos to MPEG1 works fine.

I tryed most of the solutions found in this BBS and others:
- defragment HD (and remove some other videos to make so free space)
- set direct show filter to priority 2
- disabling everything except directshow
- disabling every CPU option except 3DNow!
- copy video to a 120Gb brand new HD!
- convert my canopus DV video to MS DV codec on another drive
- frame serve the video to TMPGENC using Virtual Dub 1.5.1
- checked that there was no bad frame in my video file
- tryed to change the 'speed' of the encoding from very slow to slow or even normal and ultra fast...

My config is :
- Amd Athlon XP2000+
- Windows XP SP1 (media player 9 installed)
- destination driver 100Gb free space approx.
- temp drive 4Gb free space approx
- "small video" to encode (3/4 mins) or "long" videos (45 min) same problem

I am trying to create MPEG2 2 pass VBR (avg 6000, max 8000) elementary streams (tryied system but it is the same)

I tryed a windows xp fresh install without SP1, windows media player 9, etc. (just installed canopus and GeForce drivers in fact). Same problem.

HEEEEEELP!!!!

I'm running low on ideas on how to convert those video to MPEG2.

Well it is Widely known that you will NOT Get any Better Quality useing the 2-Pass Method with Tmpgenc as opposed to the "Constant Quality(CQ)" setting accept that 2-pass takes twice as Long..If you have tried everything to fix your Problem then Maybe you should use a Different encoder, There are Better encoders and Much Faster like CCE for instance and MainConcept is Very good also and Much Faster....

2 pass VBR does not improve image quality but should reduce file size. Nevertheless I have the same problem whichever compression mode I try.

Using a very very old version of TmpgEnc (beta 1.2e found on a magazine CD in july/august 2001) I managed to encode my files with the same settings.

Quality is probably not the same, and it might be slower, but I don't mind as long as I can encode my files. The problem will be the 30 days limit but I think I will not buy tmpgenc as long as I have this read error problem.

Thanks for all your help (with this message and all the others where you have already answered).

Yours
Guillaume

I have just noticed you have changed your TEMP drive to a 4GB drive.
*DO NOT* do this as this has been known to cause this problem.

Change your TEMP drive back to the default TEMP folder for your operating system.

Also I would remove that awful crap Media player9 which causes nothing but problems in TMPG and install FFDSHOW.

ASHY

I am getting the same error "Read error occured at address..." too. My setup is very similar. It always happens on the second pass of 2pass vbr.

I don't have media player9
I have the temporary set on the C: drive (boot drive) with 6gig free

Hi

I would like to know if there is any way of converting a xvid file to VCD. I have two problems.

1: Tmpgenc does not show the audio when I go into the settings, advanced, source range.
I have installed the following codec (FFd show, xvid. divx, Nimo pack)


2: I managed to fix the above problem by running a audio decompressor but not sure if this was the right thing to do. My problem now is I keep getting the NT.dll error message or memory errors.


I am running XP Home version with Tmpgenc version 2.54

Any help would be great

How did you manage to do a Double Post 8 hours apart???

Hi

I would like to know if there is any way of converting a xvid file to VCD. I have two problems.

1: Tmpgenc does not show the audio when I go into the settings, advanced, source range.
I have installed the following codec (FFd show, xvid. divx, Nimo pack)


2: I managed to fix the above problem by running a audio decompressor but not sure if this was the right thing to do. My problem now is I keep getting the NT.dll error message or memory errors.


I am running XP Home version with Tmpgenc version 2.54

Any help would be great

Well the Reason why you aren"t getting any audio is because the audio in the XviD File is Probably AC3 which Tmpgenc and Most other encoders Can not Handle, you need to extract the audio to Wav format and Use that as the Audio source, you can do this with Virtual dub or AVI-Mux, for your Other Problem I don"t know exactly what the cause of it is, it could be anything from the File being Corrupted to any number of things, you might try Frame serveing the File to tmpgenc with V-Dub or AVISYnth...

I had some MPG files that i wanted to burn to VCD's but apparently they were not compatable, so i tried converting them to VCD files and on the finished file, there was no audio, picture quality was fine though, but no audio, any help would be greatly appreciated.

You have visited this site enough times to know how to fix this Problem, Just demux the audio from the Source Mpeg file and Mux it with the File with no audio...Why aren"t the Source Files VCD Compatible?? and they the correct resolution and Bitrate?? You might try Just running the Source Mpeg file through the Muxer with the "Video-CD Non-Standard" setting and then try to burn it to disk, this could fix the file so you don"t have to re-encode it and degradeing the Quality, but if not Just demux the audio from the source Mpeg file and Mux it with the VCD File with no audio...

I know i've visted this site alot and asked alot of questions but the truth is i have no idea what alot of the options on this program besides merging and cuting and simply converting files do, i have no idea what "Mux" means, i have no idea why the source files aren't VCD compatable, i use B's Recorder Gold 5 to write VCD's they show up as mpeg-1 files which i thought were compatable but they just won't burn, maybe it's my recording software, i really don't know but when i converted the files, it had video, but no audio, but they were VCD compatable, i downloaded the source files with WinMx so mabey that has something to do with it, if muxing the files will help please let me know what that means, thank you for your help.

hello everybody, there is something wrong with my tmpeg program. after the whole encoding session from avi to mpeg. the finished mpeg shows no video, the only thing it does show is video. i have done countless uninstalls and re-installs on this program. when i had first got it, the program had worked beautifully but now its not working as it should be. i follow all the instructions and do everything right. but it still comes out as a mpeg with no video and just sound. can anybody help me!?

"Options" to "Enviromental Settings" to "Vfapi Plugins" raise "Direct show" to "2"...