Hi, I've 2 questions,

Let's say I have a MPEG2 file, converted with TMPGEnc (f.e. bitrate 5000kb/s) : is or will there be a noticable difference in quality when I put this MPEG2 file on DVD and CDr? Or will the only difference be the length of the movie thats fits on both media?

I've made several xVCD's and SVCD's with TMPGenc and Ulead DVD Moviefactory. Works absolutely great! The maximum bitrate of my Philips (Lets make things better?) DVD710 player is 2748kbps (audio+video). What I've noticed is that the quality of my xVCD's (2590kbps video/128kbps Audio) is a lot better than the SVCD's (2590kpbs video/128kbps audio). Does this mean that MPEG2 needs a higher bitrate than MPEG1 to get the same quality result? If so, what would approx. be the minimum bitrate for MPEG2 to get an equal quality?

Thanks in advance.
P.S. My opinion is that TMPGenc is far way the best encoder I've tried!

As to your first question,yes,the only difference between DVD and CD(-R)
is its space.DVD itself is actually MPEG2,tehre will not be the slightest
quality decrease if you burn your MPEg2-file on DVD.
As to your second question,I'm not sure if you didn't type something wrong.
If the bitrate of your XVCD's and SVCD's are really the same,then their
quality should be the same,too.
I don't know if a MPEG1- and 2 file with the same constant bitrate will have
the same quality,but I think if you use MPEG2 with varibale bitrate,then
the quality of MPEG2 should be better than MPEG1,given the MPEG2 file
has the same average bitrate like the bitrate of MPEG1.

No, it wasn't a typemismatch concerning question 2.

By the way, this message I just found on:
http://www.dv-rec.de/technik/vcdformate/index.shtml (German website)

>Das Standard SVCD Format beschränkt sich auf eine Auflösung von 480x576 >Punkten bei Bitraten von bis zu 2600 Kbits für Video. Die Gesamtdatenrate >entspricht ungefähr der zweifachen CD Geschwindigkeit. Zudem führte man mit >dem Mpeg2 Format die sogenannte Variable Bitrate = VBR ein. Im Gegensatz zur >Konstanten Bitrate = CBR hat der Encoder die Möglichkeit mehr Bits für >bewegungsintensive Stellen zu verwenden, und Bits zu sparen, wenn Bildinhalte >gleich bleiben. Insgesamt kann man mit VBR die Bildqualität deutlich erhöhen. >Allerdings ist die subjektive Bildqualität von SVCD/Mpeg2 unter 2000Kbits >sichtbar schlechter als z.B. SXVCD/Mpeg1, welches eine auf geringe Datenraten >abgestimmte Encodierung benutzt.

Conclusion in English: "subjective quality of SVCD/Mpeg2 below 2000kbps is visually not as good as SXVCD/Mpeg1, which is based on lower bitrate Encoding".
This explanes probably my question or: gets me even more confused, but I'll do some more test to find out.

Thanks for the reply.

generally speaking if you have a vcd at 2000kbs and a svcd at 2000kbs the quality of the vcd will be better cuz the resolution of a vcd is less than half that of svcd, but if you have a mpeg1 file with the same resolution and bitrate as a mpeg2 file the quality should be pretty much the same with the mpeg2 maybe being slightly better quality, mpeg1 seems to give better quality for low resolution movies but mpeg2 seems to be better for high resolution movies, but a lot of it has to do with personal preferances and what looks good to you....

Hello,
Am having problems with the batch function...
If I start the wizard, and proccess 2 files into VCD or SVCD, PAL 16:9 they always end up "to tall" (4:3 ??)
But if I manually do each one, they come out ok !!!
I think there is a 4:3 setting I cannot "get at" when using batch...

Any help most welcome, Thanks

Rooster

Somewhere in the wizard there is a button where you can access the
"settings"dialog.Make sure that the aspect ratio is set correctly.
If you can't change the aspect ratio,then click on the words
"aspect ratio"themselves and choose unlock(this works only the most
recent versions of Tmpgenc,however).Then you can make the right setting.
Save the project file only after you made all settings right and add it
to the batch processing list.

I did exactly what you recommended and was able to encode.(I changed the environmental settings and set the VPAI Plugin to priority of 2). The problem now is the mpeg is no longer compliant ie: 30 fps and 2 channel audio. Ok oh great one what did I do wrong now!!

I burned the cd "as is" to see what the non compliant cd would create and the sound was ok but oh the "picture" was worthless!!

What frame rate and type of sound should it have?What does your source file
have?What do you want to do?A vcd or something else?Why don't or can't
you make the right settings in Tmpgenc?

>I did exactly what you recommended and was able to encode.(I changed the environmental settings and set the VPAI Plugin to priority of 2). The problem now is the mpeg is no longer compliant ie: 30 fps and 2 channel audio. Ok oh great one what did I do wrong now!!
>
>I burned the cd "as is" to see what the non compliant cd would create and the sound was ok but oh the "picture" was worthless!!



This is the part one of yesterdays question. I was unaware my post would already be out of view.Please accept my apology for being so brief but nevertheless I still need HELP!!!

1st Message:



I have found this product an excellent encoder and has worked with many divx formats. I am trying to encode mp43's, Divx3 and divx 4 to mpeg1 format for burning with Nero 5.5.I am in the United States and want to make a VCD 2.0 for viewing on my DVD/CVD Player.

I have ran into a road block and keep getting messages stating that MP43 are not supported. Am I doing something wrong? Is there another product or process I must take before encoding these? Seems Divx 3 and 4 may be the same problem.

Any suggestions on how to get5 over this hurdle would be appreciated!


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Minion replied:
Your answer is in post # 9552

But the problem now is the Fps rate changed and audio was affected. I did not not use Virtual Dub first to make a compliant wav. file so that is probably my audio problem!!

Hi All

I am incoding NTSC DVDs to MPEG2. I am using "Forced Film" in DVD2AVI,
producing a frame rate of 23.976fps. I encode in Tmpgenc at 720x480,
2200 CBR with 3:2 pulldown. The output is perfect and plays on my TV,
via a hollywood+, great.

I then try and use DVDit!2.5PE to generate a DVD. DVDit! goes through
all the steps, but fails on the last stage with a "GOP structure" fault
in the 1st frame, "Unable to generate VOBU".

NTSC 29.970fps and PAL 25fps both work fine, its only NTSC 23.976fps
3:2 pulldown which fail.

Do any GOP experts have any ideas? Maybe a change to the GOP structure
setup in Tmpgenc?

Many thanks

VHDL-man

I think you have to set the max number of frames in gop to 18 cuz the default is unlimited frames per gop and dvd"s can"t have an unlimited number of frames per gop and try the sequence header for every gop option..This is just a little question cuz im curious, why do the "forced film" in dvd2avi cuz ntsc dvd"s are 29,97fps, and if you do the "forced film" then why do you do the "3:2 pulldown" cuz the forced film allready makes it 23.98fps, unless you mean the "inverse 3:2 pulldown" but that defeats the purpose of the "forced film" wouldn"t it be proper to just do the dvd straight 29.97fps????

Hi

Thanks for the reply.

The guide I have states that "Forced Film" is required if the NTSC source
is either "Interlaced" or "Hybrid", but 'Forced film' generates a progressive
stream at 23.976fps. I thought that the '3:2 pulldown on play' converted
the 23.976fps to 29.970fps on play.

If I encode with 'forced film' but not 3:2 pulldown, the produced mpeg is
very jerky (medium speed left<->right) during playback on a 50Hz PAL TV.
(it almost looks like the field order is wrong)

I use SmartRipper215, DVD2AVI and Tmpgenc 12a (No MPEG2 limit).

The results have been exellent for PAL 25fps and NTSC 29.970fps progressive
DVDs, I just need to sort out NTSC non-progressive DVDs.

I tried Ulead DVD factory and Premier 6, but find DVDit!2.5PE the easiest
to use.

Many thanks

VHDL-man

I didn"t realize you were on the "Pal" system ,here in "ntsc"land you don"t need to use the "forced film" option.....

I convert me avi to mpeg1 and then burn using nero but i get a black and white movie! help me plse this is driving me crazy

Hi

I don't know if this will of any help.

It sounds like you are playing an NTSC MPEG stream on a PAL TV which does
not support NTSC. What have you set the 'encoding resolution' to in the
VCD template part of Nero?

Later

VHDL-man

well i used tmpenc and loaded the pal thing first but that gave me just sound and no picture then i noticed on me dvd player that it said ntsc so i loaded that and converted from avi to mpeg again and this is what gives me picture but no sound. U think if i try my dvd player on another tv it migth work??

I've made several Mpeg VCD with TMPGEnc. The picture quality is great. But the audio lags and gets out of sync after the first few minutes. I've made several video demo reels that I've created that are anywhere from 12 minutes to about 30 minutes long and the audio sync is off by at least a second and more like several seconds on the longer .mpg files.

The audio and the video consistantly start out together but eventually it looses sync. The video plays first and the audio follows later. It's bad--unusable.

What am I doing wrong?

My source video is an NTSC interlaced AVI at 29.97fps. My source audio is a 44100Hz 16 bit Wav file. I've exported a mono and a sterio Wav file as the source audio. Neither worked.

At the bottom of the TMPGEnc software interface, there is this information displayed: Video-CD NTSC (MPEG-1 352x240 29.97fps CBR 1150kbps, Layer-2 44100Hz 224kbps).

I tried making an SVCD and the audio was significantly later... by more than 5 seconds right at the very beginning.

I read the post about out-of-sync audio but it seems that the problem is differnt--my audio and video are NTSC and were linked and in sync in my video editing software. I went to vcdhelp.com and looked for an "avi frame rate converter" but didn't find one. I have Cool Edit Pro, but to shorten the audio is just a guessing game. Regardless, it seems stupid that I would have to do that since the AVI and the WAV came from the same 29.97 source.

Any suggestions?

Thanks for your help. Any ideas are appreciated.

Jim

Hi again,

Ok, so I have a few more questions... some of these settings have vague instructions with them. Maybe one of these is the solution?

1. Under MPEG Setting>Audio>Audio Stream setting, what is the difference between MPEG1-Audio Layer I and -Audio Layer II?

2. Under MPEG Setting>Audio. Will checking the Error Protection put keyframes in the MPEG that the audio can sync to?

3. Will checking Options>Environmental Settings>Sampling Frequency Converter improve anything if I go to Shibatch and download the Sampling Rate Converter?

Will doing any or all of these things improve anything?

My files are so big and take so long to render that any little adjustment or test takes me a very long time... several hours. So any advice you can offer will save me a great amount of time.

Thanks very much.

Jim

OK first off every thing you mentioned in your second post will not affect sync, you mentioned "it takes so long to render" does that mean that your files are "captured avi files" from a tv card or through DV fire wire?If that is what they are then it is caused by dropping of frames while captureing, but you say that they play fine on your computer?That doesn"t matter cuz some captere software puts in blank frames for every dropped frame but tmpgenc will not recognize these frames so you have to do the shrinking thing with "cool edit" but it shouldn"t be a guessing game it should be an exact sort of thing.So you have allready encoded the file so you should know exactly how long the mpeg video file is, and when you load the wav audio in cool edit it will say how long it is,and you should be able to use the tempo setting to slow down your file to the exact same length as your video after that is done you encode the audio to mp2 then mux it with your mpeg video file....I have done this a few time and it is a game of trial and error........good luck

Hi

Thanks for your response.

The video was captured with professional video editing hardware at 640 x 480 at 150 kb per frame (29.97fps video) and 2.94kb / frame audio (44.100 Hz Mono 16 bit) wav files. Each frame has 2 fields that are interlaced. There are no blank frames. When playing the video anywhere else, it's all in sync.

Under normal circumstances, this should encoded in sync, right?

If I accidentally selected "stereo" when the audio file is mono, would that cause the audio to slow down?

Is there anywhere that I can learn the benefits of the 3 questions that I asked in my last post? Do you have a help file that I can access? When I downloaded the program, I paid $24.95 rather than downloading a freebie ... isn't there any help file that comes with it?

Thanks,

Jim

The actual price when downloaded from this site is $48 and includes a comprehensive help system.

If you purchased elsewhere for $24.95 you have probably bought a pirate copy.

Buyer beware!

Hi, you say there are no dropped frames, but if the audio gets progressively out of sync that means that your audio is not the same length as your video cuz if it were it would not get progressively out of sync, there is no other explanation that I can think of, but what ever the reason is for the audio being a different length than your video the solution is the same.as for your audio questions mpeg 1 layer and 2 layer are just different formats for mpeg audio 2 layer is better, and putting key frames in doesn"t seem to effect sync in my experience ,and the "ssrc"(sample rate converter) does increase the audio quality if your audio source is a different frequency then you are encodeing to, but your audio is allready 41000hz so it don"t matter and makeing mono to sterio wount affect sync either,That version of "Tmpgenc" you got for $24.95 was it a plus version?Cuz if it isn"t then it is a cracked pirated version, and the real plus version has a help file to answer most questions,and if you didn"t buy it from "pegasus" then it is a pirated version....good luck

Thanks for the answers. I think I figured it out - I'm rendering somethin now as a test. My AVI file is really 30fps and the original edit software must compensate somehow. The AVI file used outside of the hardware/software edit suite shows up as 30fps but 29.97 in the edit suite. Go figure.

No I didn't purchase the TMPGEncPlus, although I've considered it just for the support. I purchased TMPGEnc from SpiceyComet.com. I somehow stumbled upon SpiceyComet's popup ad while looking for something else on the internet and the software looked good. SpiceyComet gave me a User ID and Password to unlock some vague instructions and FAQ's. I guess I figured that I was purchasing some genuine software, but I think I got scammed into just purchasing their instructions and FAQ's and downloading software for free. Oh well, live and learn. Have you heard of SpiceyComet?

If nothing else, I learned a lot about TMPGEnc interface while trying to figure this out. We'll see if everything syncs up now.

Thanks again.

Jim

I want to fit two 45 minute movies on one CD. In other words, 90 minutes.
What would be the best settings for that?
And what would be the best settings for putting one 45 minute movie on one cd?

~Strat

If you are useing the CBR encodeing method it is pretty easy to figure out, for a 45 minute movie 2250kbs will get you pretty close to 800mb, and you can fit 800mb on a 80min 700mb cd-r..The equatio I use is divide the amount of minutes you want to put on a cd-r and divide it by 100,000 and that is about the bitrate you use to fit on a cd-r, you can download the bitrate calculator for xvcd at "vcdhelp.com"

How about with CQ?

There is no way to tell with CQ it is a bit of a guessing game....

How can I put the caption into the file, when I transfer the Divx file into Mpg file? thank u!!

What do you mean by "Caption"?Do you mean "Subtitles"?There is a subtitle plugin you can get for "virtual dub" but you will have to frame serve from virtual dub...Go to "www.virtualdub.com" and read up on how to do it and you can probably download the plugin there to....

Is it just me or does it normally take about an hour and a half to encode about one half of a movie? Are there any tips you can give me on how to cut down some of this time? There has got to be a faster way without giving up too much of the quality. Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks
laura

You are lucky that it encodes so fast it takes about 8-10 hours to encode a 90min movie on my 800mhz p3(overclocked to 1ghz)system and that is on the fastest setting.I"m jelous you must have a fast system....

Hi

I use a P4-1.7GHz Compaq and "Black Hawk Down" (2hr 45mins) took 22 Hours!!
(2200CBR-Slow(High quality)-Noise Reduction on)

Later

VHDL-man

Hi vhdlman,did you make sure that your cpu optimizations are on? I just did "A beautifull Mind" to vcd 2 hours 20 min, on high quality in 8.5 hours and mt system is half the speed as yours, and I haven"t noticed and real quality differance between high quality and highest quality accept that it takes a lot longer to encode.....

All ya'll need to chill ;|

It takes me 50-60 hours to do a 120 min movie. Be happy with what you have, it could be much, much worse.

mGuru

Minion,

Heres the rule on the Motion Estimate:

1. For Proressive sources, never use Highest Quality as it overcompensates. High Quality will give you the best results.
2. For Interlaced sources, Highest Quality gives best results, but in most scenes it will be indistinguishable from High Quality. Highest Quality tends to double the encode time over High Quality, so its a big toss up. Probably best to do a test encode with both settings on a high speed section to see if it is worth it...but you probably already know that ;)

Greetz...
mGuru

50-60 hours??!!
Throw that 486 away and get a proper PC.
If you aint got a 486 then there is something seriously wrong with your settings.

ASHY

1. I have some trouble keeping the video and audio in sync with eachother. I thought that it was the fps, which I tried to fix. I got a movie that is 25fps, and I was doing it at 23.976fps. So I fixed that, and it got better, but it was still a little bit off. I thought it may be because I set a constant bitrate to where the movie would fit on 2 CDs, so I put it on Constant Quality, but the movie would end up on 3 CDs, and 2 CDs is plenty enough. Any suggestions?
2. I have a movie that is 20fps and TMPGEnc does not accept the avi. What do I do? I used other programs, but the audio and video were out of sync when I encoded the movie into an mpg.

When you encode to a frame rate different than your source file that is what happens, and to fix it is a bit tedious but I will try to tell you the basics,first you need to extract the audio from your avi file , then you download a program called "avi frame rate converter" and change the frame rate of your avi file from 20fps to 23.98fps, this will in turn make your audio track longer than your video file so you will need a good audio editing program like "cool edit" it has a feature that will allow you to shrink your audio file, so you will need to find out "EXACTLY" how long your new avi file is and use the shrinking function in cool edit to shrink the audio file to the exact same length as your video file, once you have done that the audio and video file "should" sync up, to find out exactly how long your new avi file is you load the avi into tmpgenc and go the the source range and the length should be displayed there..I think you can find the frame rate converter in the "tools" section in "vcdhelp.com".This procedure is not for those who do not have much experience with these sorts of things but you got to learn some how, but one little tip is it might be easier to shrink the audio to your video after you have encoded the video to a "m2v" file.If you want more detailed instructions you can e-mail me and I"ll try to help out, and to get your avi loaded into tmpgenc (you said tmpgenc wont read your file) "options" to "enviromental settings" to "vfapi plugins" and raise the "direct show" plugin to "2"...good luck....

i converted .avi files to .mpg but when i watched them the resolution greatly decreases (when not full screened) making the grafics also decrease. is there any way i can make it the same graphics/resolution as the original .avi file?

In the main settings screen at the top you just choose the resolution you want, you might have to load the "unlock.mfc" template from the extra folder to unlock the settings......

Hello:
I am trying to convert some MOV files to mpeg so I can make a VCD (these are the BMW films). I get through to about 1:30 into the movie and it stops and says there isnt enough memory. There is about 900 MB on my HD and I have 382 MB of RAM with a Pentium 3.
Can anyone help me with why it might say that?
Mehul

You need to increase your virtual memory.

ASHY

How do I do that?

Whats your operating system?