Is there a way to get TMPGenc to create an MPEG1 file that uses less than 10 MB/minute? No matter how much I reduce the video and audio bitrates and frame sizes, the resulting file is still the same size (although the video qulaity is obviously affected). All I want to do is cram 2 hours of low quality video onto a CD--- I don't need it to play on a stand alone DVD player.

Or... what's the best way to convert a VOB file directly to non-VCD compliant MPEG1 or a Windows Media file? I know I can convert it to DivX, but I want it to play on any PC without needing the DivX codec.

Thanks!

Well I just started getting in to this, but the way I'm doin it seems to work well. If you want to convert from VOB you have to extract the audio and make an instruction file for tmpgenc basically. I use DVD1AVI which you can get here http://arbor.ee.ntu.edu.tw/~jackei/dvd2avi/ . Which will make a .dv2 file (instruction file) and an audio rip. Tmpgenc needs both of these and then you can create an mpeg1 or mpeg2 audio/video file. Using the wizard just select vcd for mpeg1 or svcd would create mpeg2 file. If you select NTSC film it should allow you to change the bitrate and overall file size on the last setup screen. Just skip the bitrate part and go right to the bottom where it says % of disc to use...set it to 100%. That will automatically adjust the bitrate to what it needs to be. Remember, this only creates the video file...it can not be read on a dvd player without the correct directory structure/files. Which is what you wanted.

Z

What you need to do is under the "system" settings you have to change it to "video-cd non-standard" then Tmpgenc will allow you to make a "non-standard" vcd. without this Tmpgenc will add padding to the file so it won"t go below the Standard vcd bitrate......

PS: the quality of a standard VCD is bad enough so if you lower the bitrare it it will be TERRORABLE, I use more than Double the VCD bitrate and sometimes that isn"t good enough,trying to get more than 1 hour on a cd-r usually results in a Very blocky mpeg file, but I"m a quality freak........

Dont encode in CBR but CQ or 2Pass VBR.
With CQ you cant determine the final filesize without experimenting but its faster and slightly better in quality compared to 2Pass VBR.

I dont encode mpeg1 VCDs anymore since I can get much better quality SVCDs with an video bitrate of aprox 1800 KBit/s aberage. Add 2 160Kbit audio streams that are aprox 60-65 mins film per 80 mins CD.

Global Settings immantent for good compression without degrading the quality to much:
Gop Structure 1-3-3-1-15
Quantize Matrix "higher" than the default TMPGEnc Matrix.(I posted an link to a collection of good Matrixes for different purposes here some time ago ... search for it)
Use FitCD/Avisynth.
If you use CQ or 2Pass: DONT go under 700 Kbit Minimum Bitrate. You player will thank you and your image wont blurr/wobble so much in still scenes. Also enable padding not lower than minimum.
Play whit the CQ Value(Good starting point is 60) until you are satisfied with the quality and you stream fits on the desired number of CDs.
More than 75 mins SVCD or 90 mins VCD 16:9 PAL video WONT look good on an 80 mins CD.
4:3 movies need higher bitrate than 16:9 movies.
Forget the KVCD templates.

Sorry for being brief but Im short of time.

happy Weekend

M. Bastian

Thanks. I used the "non-standard" method at 600 kb/sec and reduced audio to minimum levels. I got over 2 hrs of MPEG1 onto one CD, and the quality was good enough for my purposes.

I'm trying to make an .MPEG from an .AVI and a .wav but i'm getting this message "Index of scan line is out of range (272)" Can anyone tell me what i can do to solve this problem. Thanks

I'Ve converted a few DV-AVI files produced with MGI VideoWave 5 to SuperVCD using TMPGEnc (with default settings). It looked fine on the preview window but not through Media Player. The few first minutes of video are pretty good but then it get worst and worst over time up to a point (after 1/3 of the video) where I see only garbage (big red and white squares).

I've also tried Nero's SuperVCD plug-in and it works pretty fine but I'd like to see if TMPGEnc could provide better quality. How can I make it work?

It could be that you are watching your movies with Media player it sucks for mpeg2 viewing try useing dvd playing software like Power dvd, I haven"t heard of a mpeg that starts out good and then gets worse as it goes, can"t help you there.

I upgraded my VideoWave 5 with the latest patch and it fixed the problem. It seems that VideoWave didnt produce standard DV-AVI files before the patch... BTW TMPGEnc rocks! The quality is far superior from what the Nero plug-in can do. The highest quality mode is worth the loooong wait!

What happens to an MPEG1 file with a high bit rate, a bigger frame size and re-compressed it to MPEG1-VCD standard bit rate?

VCD standard bitrate (1150 I think) will generate an mpeg file that has noticeably more macro blocks than the source file.

One option is to create an XVCD (non standard VCD) where you have a bitrate somewhere between the source file and VCD standard. This would improve the quality. You didnt say whether you would be using standard VCD resolution. If you increase the resolution (and bitrate) you will have a non standard VCD but it should look better than standard VCD assuming your DVD player will play it.

VCD standard bitrate (1150 I think) will generate an mpeg file that has noticeably more macro blocks than the source file but with a smaller filesize.

One option is to create an XVCD (non standard VCD) where you have a bitrate somewhere between the source file and VCD standard. This would improve the quality. You didnt say whether you would be using standard VCD resolution. If you increase the resolution (and bitrate) you will have a non standard VCD but it should look better than standard VCD assuming your DVD player will play it.

When you have a video on regular original size it looks awesome. Then when you maximize the window or burn it to vcd and play it on a dvd player the picture gets stretched out and has worse quality. Is there a way of preventing this?

It all depends on the resolution and bitrate of the original.
Resizing to a resolution bigger than the source resolution will always result in a blockier image - there is no way round this.

If your source file is relatively low res you may want to stick with standard VCD resolution for encoding - just choose a standard VCD template. You could of course increase the bitrate as well to ensure that you are not losing quality , but then you would be creating an XVCD ; not that that is a bad thing, you just have to make sure your DVD player will play XVCD. Go to www.vcdhelp.com and search for your player in the player list.

My avi wont convert cause it comes up with a "decimal error" or somfin like that!!!!! please HELP!!!!!!!!!!!

Thanx

If you type 'floating' (without the 's) in the search box you will get a variety of solutions to this problem

I have recently started using windows xp os and it works the same as 98 when encoding to mpeg from avi, but when trying to de-multiplex the created file it does it within a few seconds and generates a much smaller useless file.
I didn´t have any trouble with win98, does anyone know how to fix this?
I use the latest version of Tmpgenc

The easiest solution is to use a different program to de-mux the file, as you have noticed there are no real settings in the mpeg tools that would correct problems like this or any problem so if it don"t work then there is nothing you can do to get it to work ,no special tricks or settings that are hidden from view.. you can download a muxer and de-muxer called Xmuxer from here :http://moonlight.co.il/products/Xmux.shtml

i ripped a dvd using smartripper & dvd2avi and everything went as planned until i got to tmpgenc. when asked to browse to the video file, it gave the error "****.d2v can not open, or unsupported". can anyone help me?
thanx in advance.

First check and see if you have the "dvd2avi.vfp" plugin installed, go to "options" to "enviromental settings" to "vfapi plugins" and check and see if there is a dvd2avi plugin in the list and if there is change the priority to "1" or "2", and if it isnt then copy and paste the "dvd2avi.vfp" file in the dvd2avi folder into the folder that Tmpgenc is in..and if none of these are the problem then you have to make sure that you didn"t move or delete or re-name any of the vob files or the d2v files in the path between dvd2avi and tmpgenc...

I tried this but no luck. This happened arter a refomat. Older version was working fine. now no version will work. I changed enviromental settings also. Any other ideas?

I compressed a one hour video in one Cd using KVCD template(VCD-NTSC), i was satisfied with the result and it worked well with my DVD player. Wanting to improve the quality i compressed it in two cd's. I increased the min. to 3000 and max. to 4000, quality to 100% and motion setting to highest(slowest). When i played it back in my DVD the video has improved but the whole file was stutered.

Did i exceeded the bit rate for VCD? or would it make a difference if i stayed at 1.856 mbps and max the quality to 100%. Any advice will help thanks.

That is what it seems like,you have gone over the max bitrate allowed by your dvd player, or there is a small chance it could be those Crappy KVCD templates..If you go to "Vcdhelp.com" you might be able to find out what the max bitrate of your dvd player is in there DVD player review section, if you dropped the minimum down to say 1500kbs and the quality to 85 you will get simular quality but might not screw up your Player, if you are going to use 2 cd-r"s anyway why use those Kvcd templates, there GOP structure makes it very hard to edit or add chapters or even fast forward through the movie cuz of the Lack of I frames......

Hey Minion, thanks for the tip...the thing is i only learned about KVCD from this forum and it was highly recommended. I have your or Ashy's? template but i load all of them in the folder and there were tons of templates i dont know anymore which templates is who's except KVCD's.

Going back i already check VCDHelp re: bitrate for DVD player and it only indicates there for SVCD/XVCD? no info for VCD bit rate. Also, i tend to go to the max with this, if i use 1.856mbps and 100% quality whats the equivalent of that? Lastly, if you find KVCD's templates crappy which one would you recommend.

Thanks Again.

The templates I would recomed is to make your own or don"t use any..I have never used a template cuz every movie has differant characteristics so there for needs differant settings..If you do your settings manually then you will learn what works and what doesn"t instead of relying on a template that might or might not give you the best results.I don"t understand the question about what is the equivelent of 1.856hbs at 100% quality...

thanks.... as for the 1.856mbps at 100% quality whats the equivalent? what i meant is...if i use 100% "quality" will the result of my MPEG1 file, as far as quality is concern, will be the same like encoding the file at 3000 or 4000mbps at 50% or whatever "quality"...(i hope this makes more sense).

When i try to convert movie files with .avi extensions i keep getting number errors such as -537403781 0 does this have to do with my hard drive space or something else?
thanks

I am trying to convert an AVI file to VCD. It works fine except that there is no sound. What could be the problem? Thanks a million.

--takumi

Your audio is an unsupported Format, you need to extract the audio to a wav file and use that as your audio source........

I am trying to encode a avi file to vcd...usually i can encode about 60 min which usually only ends up to be around 650 to 700 meg file...but now i am encoding 65 min VCD at CQ..max 4000 min 1800 quality 100, and audio @ 224 i get 830meg file. The file specs are 14 fps, data rate 44kps, video compression ms-mpeg4 v3. I have tried turning the audio down to 192 or 196 which ever it is with only about 20 megs different in size as well as turning down the quality to 80, with not much luck. I am under the impression you can only fit about 830megs on a 80min cd...its coming up 850...why is this avi coming up so big?
Another question is if you overburn with nero will they still work on my dvd player? I can play vcd svcd and xvcd fine but does it change anything when you overburn...and if so what is the limit in size for overburning for them to still work?

Thanks a bunch
Jules

There is probably no way you can get 830mb on a 80min cd-r, the max I have ever gotten(without overburning) is 807mb, and the reason your file is so big is your minimum bitrate is too high, with 65 minutes of NTSC movie the max bitrate you can fit on a 80min cd-r is 1557kbs with 128kbs audio , this is a bit higher if you are useing NTSC Film,or the Pal template, but you will probably experience very Choppy playback on your dvd player cuz you are encodeing a non-standard frame rate, 14fps is a VERY non-standard frame rate, which means that if you are useing the NTSC Template then Tmpgenc has to make up more than half of the frames of the mpeg out of nothing so you will have a massive ammount of frame duplication which will give you a extremely choppy playback, it might not look as bad on your monitor but on your TV you will definately notice it...Overburnt CD-R"s should play fine on most DVD players but burning them can ruin your CD burner...You should get a Bitrate Calculator so you have an idea what your bitrate should be set at.......

ok so how should i encode it then as a ntsc? How do i change the framerate so that i can encode to a ntsc 29 fps?

thanks
Jules

You can"t...I used to TRY to encode movies that i download off places like Kaaza but the results were allmost allways the same, jumpy playback, and out of sync audio....You can try to encode these movies they are watchable but there will usually be parts in the movie that just look bad..Poeple put these movies out for download with these wierd frame rates cuz the files are half as big as they would be if they would use the proper frame rate, so they can be downloaded quicker.I quickly learned that if I wanted trouble free and high quality vcd/svcd"s then I needed a DVD-Rom and start ripping..they are super Cheap like $70 or less......

Agreed ... if you want perfect results all the time you have to rip the DVD yourself, but for me for instance, the reason why I started encoding to VCD was because I had downloaded films which I didnt necessarily want to rent or buy. I only ever use DVD rip DivX sources,

As for the weird framerates ... I used to use Kazaa, but you never know what you are downloading so for the past year or so I have been using edonkey and couldnt be happier.

The reason why I like edonkey is because there are websites with links to movies on them, so you know the movies have been tried and tested and are good quality. I never use search functionality, just website links.

So if you dont want to rip yourself I would recommend edonkey for getting good quality DivX's