Ok... I am getting a little confused so you young ones help me if you can.

I shoot home movies on a DV cam and then produce a great AVI file. I then use TMPGencoder to convert that AVI to MPEG 2 (NTSC 480x480)

I have asked what settings are best to encode with and I get confused by the answers. I want to be able to get a good quality movie. (No longer than 30 minutes usually) I hate when it pixelates in fast motion....

Many of you you suggest VBR, 2 pass VBR, CQ but the settings you suggest to me doesn't make sense. You talk about a average, maximum, and minimum bitrate. For example I think one gentleman said he preferred CQ with a setting of 4000 max, 2250 average, and 500 minimum. Another gentleman said use 2 pass VBR with a setting of 5000 max, 2250 average, and 500 minimum.

My question to you is I thought the SVCD specs to be able to be an SVCD was max 2520. If I set the max to over that (unlock) will this not then be some areas of the MPEG2 that goes over the 2520 and then not an acceptable MPEG2 SVCD file.

(I tried many of the settings and the burining proggy tells me this is larger than SVCD specs, do you want to creat a XSVC?)

I hope I make sense...?

Yes, it won't be a standard SVCD but lots of players are able to read XSVCD (and XVCD too) which is the best way (in my opinion) to convert movies...
I personnally use CQ because it gives me the same or better results than with 2 pass without losing the time of a 2nd pass encoding.
The best things to do (for me) is to set the motion search precision to High Quality (highest does not give real improvement and is much longer) and to set your templates to CQ Max. 4000, Min. 1800, CQ 65 (or more as your movies are short, CQ 65 gives me +/- an hour of movie). This will give you a really nice picture without losing time and disk space. I made a mix between ASHY's template, kwag's templates and some personnal discovery. If you want, I can send it to you...
As I already told you more and more DVD players are compatible with XVCD or XSVCD, to check to you can go to http://www.vcdhelp.com, there you'll find a compatibility list with the most common players.

I would add that it may be helpful to you (as it was for me) to make a bunch of small clips at various settings and burn-and-test them. Make a short avi (say, a minute) that includes typical content especially the motion you're concerned about. Convert it to MPEG as many times in as many ways as you want, and burn to CD or CD-RW whatever and try in your player. Note these may all play on your PC just fine but your set-top player is the true test. I was for example able to burn a "non-compliant" SVCD with all these clips on it, and then played it back & was able to observe quality differences, audio problems, stuttering,etc.

I learned for example that my player likes SVCDs just fine, but I can't exceed by too much the 2600bps bitrate standard.Also, my player (a Sony) apparently needs 44.1kHz sound for VCD and SVCD and 48kHz for DVD, again it wants "standard" formatting.

Hi,
I have now encoded an AVI File, but I cannot here any sound.
(The program does'nt identify any audio stream)
The originial file has sound.
What can I do ??
Regards
Norbert

The audio from your avi file is probably a incompatable format for tmpgenc to encode, you will need to extraxt the audio from your avi file to a wav file with "Virtual Dub" then just encode the audio and multiplex it with the video you allready encoded......

I like to check out these template too, can you send it to me at
rvue@earthlink.net

Hi all, just found this board after looking around for help with VCD creation. Anyway, I got questions...

1. Is it me or is TMPGEnc a bit tempramental? I can't figure out why, but it sometimes works and othertimes doesn't. On 2 different PC's too! How can I make TMPGEnc run more smoothly? I've heard many things such as disable USB ports, NICs, all other apps etc. but it seems to make little difference. I also tried using Win2k over XP but that didn't help at all. Anybody got a tried and tested solution for creating the best environment for it to run in?

2. Stutter! Can't get rid of it when creating VCDs. I use DVD Decrypter=>DVD2AVI=>TMPGEnc5.5=>Nero5.59. I've tried swapping the field order in DVD2AVI and reducing the bitrate to stupidly-low in TMPGEnc, but it makes little difference. I still get this regular video stutter. Audio is fine, it's just the video stutters every 40 frames or so just enough to annoy. Is this a problem with the DVD decryption, the TMPGEnc encoding or what? Is there a way to stop it?

I'm running a P4 1.5, GF2 Ultra 64Mb, 384Mb RDRAM with WinXP. The film is NTSC but I think I converted it to PAL in the encoding.

Any help on this would be great,
regards,
E

I can answer the stutter question for you .....
The stutter is there because TMPGenc does not do framerate conversion very well. I have sent you my guide for doing framerate conversion outside of TMPGenc to eliminate the stutter.

regards

Olli

Firstly, all video software is tempramental!

Watch out for this: swapping fields is NOT the same as making sure your field order is set properly. The swap operation in most tools affects WHERE field lines appear on the screen. Setting a field order determines WHEN they appear.

"Stutter" sounds like a field order problem and to fix it you need to make sure the top/bottom setting in the "source" video sheet matches the actual video.

A foolproof way to check field order is with avisynth. Use DVD2AVI to source the mpeg. (My scripts are not handy so this might need corrections.)

loadPlugin(".../xxxxx") # I forget the file name!
video = mpeg2source("input.d2v")
video = video.assumeFrameBased.SeparateFields
return video

Step through the AVS file with virtualDub to inspect the motion from field to field. Proper motion means the video is "bottom" field (avisynth's default). Stuttering motion means the video is "top" field. My ATI card captures with top field order so I found this out the hard way.

To fix this in the video file would require swapping fields AND delaying one field to the next frame. Better to let the player handle that.

You say that you converted from NTSC to PAL in the encoding.
The stutter is not due to the field order or field swapping or whatever, but is because of the framerate conversion as Olli correctly pointed out. TMPG does not do correct framerate conversion. You need AVIsynth to do this or you can do it the traditional way by usiing AViframerate changer and cooledit.

ASHY

I'm looking for older versions because the current one isn't too stable on my PC. It crashes way too often.

I don"t know of any place specific but if you type Tmpgenc into google search engine then you will probably find something.

Just attempted to encode an DVDivX .avi file which is around 700MB. after about 4 hours (at 29%) it was at the end of the movie, but I ended up getting the error (approximately) "0048715A Write error occurred, TMPGENC.EXE in 007C60000"

The file was actually created, but without sound (picture was fine).

Can anyone offer any explanation for this (whether it's regarding the was the .avi was created or the way I am trying to encode the mpeg)

Thanks.

The error you were getting probably didn"t have anything to do with the audio not being encoded, the problem most likely is that the audio format on the Divx file was not supported in Tmpgenc, it is probably "VBR MP3" or "AC3" you need to extract tha audio from the Divx file to a wav file with either "Virtual Dub" if it is "VBR MP3" or and AC3 decoder if the audio is AC3...

AC3 Audio
==========

I know how to convert AC3 to wav using Virtualdub and heac3he, but I have also found that the following works.

- Decompress the avi using avi2vcd decompress utility. Load the uncompressed avi into Vdub and choose full processing mode and save as wav.

Can anyone explain to me why this works ?? I thought AC3 wav files had to be converted to wav. How can a utility that decompresses audio produce a file which can then be saved as a straight wav ?

Which way is the best way to do it ? ....I tried both and the file output size was nearly identical.

- Can I specify an AC3 file as the audio source for encoding an XVCD or does the audio always have to be a wav file ?

- The AC3 file I have is sourround sound (I think) .. is there any way I can keep sourround sound when converting to XVCD ? What settings should I use in the Audio tab of TMPGenc ?

thanks in advance


Olli

You can't use Ac3 with TMPG unles you have an Ac3 filter installed.
The best and quickest way I have found is to use VOB2AUDIO to create a wav straight from the vobs or AC3DEC to convert VOBs or Ac3 files to a wav.

Most utilities that convert VOBs or Ac3 files to wavs simply downmix the 5 track Dolby digital audio to Dolby prologic surround audio.

ASHY

Please help me!!! I'm almost there and need to know what to do!! Someone help me in this desperation!!

Please type "P3Package.dll" at the top of this BBS and press "search" you are almost there!!!

Are TV tuners also video capture cards? Or I need separate video capture card? Thanks!

Usually they are, but is better to read your TV tuner manual.

By the way, which capture card would you recommend for a poor little student (so understand with not a lot of money...) ???

Hi...what is the equivalent of this program for a MAC? Thanks.

No! There is nothing on the Mac... and I'm not an anti-mac. I'm a former Mac user, I switched 6 months ago to Win XP and I have to say I don't regret it at all. I had a very nice P4-2,53Ghz computer for half the price of a prehistoric-G4. Win XP is very stable and has a "not so bad" interface. And when I see the stinking .mac strategies, the processor technology not evolving and the fact that you have to fully pay Jaguar... it really doesn't want to make me switch back! So, I'm now living in the dark side of force... and I love it :-p

Sorry for this "guy who has been very disappointed with the Mac" interlude" :-D

ok i have quite afew movies and been converting them to mpeg
any way to cut a long story short
every time i convert the movies end up in letterbox format
is there any way to keep them full screen or if in letterbox to increase height so that i can watch in full screen
i am in pal by the way
thanks

In the advanced settings under "Clip Frame" you can arrange the screen so there are no black borders and you can use the "video arrange setting" to help you do this also....

I use the TMPG Enc to cut my video cd movies , but after cutting the mpegs files I didn t found the files in the out put. I have try many time , but almost the same problem . I hope you can help me thank you!!!

Hi all,

I'm trying to encode a 10gb avi file to an mpeg2 svcd.

I have captured a few different captures from my dc30 card under windows 2000.

when ever I try to reencode these files to mpeg 2 using tmpgenc 2.57, it seems to lock up at 00:11:54 minutes into the source video or 17873 frames.

if I leave it go, it will recover but all video after that point if black.

is this a tmpgenc issue or an issue with going over the 2gb avi file limit ?

Should I try and split the avi file up into 2gb chunks and then merge them together once they are mpeg2 ? if so, what tool should I use ?

Thanks in advance.

Can you playback the file with Windows media player?
If not, TMPGEnc would not encode it.
If yes, go to "options" > "enviromental settings" > "vfapi plugins" and raise the "direct show file reader" to "2", this might help.

anyone else had any luck with avi files over 2gb ?

I can use vdub to rebuild the index but it then makes the audio/video out of sync big time.

I have same question as ffast has.
Can you playback the file with Windows media player?

And which OS and filesystem are you using?

no i can't play back with media player.

but tmpgenc does the first 11 minutes with out any problems at all.

It's windows 2000 with NTFS.

I have used vdub to rebuild the missing index's in the avi file but that then leads to audio/sync being way out by several minutes by the end of the file.

> no i can't play back with media player.

If the file can not be playback with media player, it can not
be encoded properly. This is 1st minimum condition to be
encoded properly with TMPGEnc.
You may need certain codec to play first anyway.

thanks

that's the thing, tmpgenc opens the file and will convert the first 11 minutes.

I know that it's because of the avi missing the key index frames after the first 2gb.

is there anyway of getting tmpgenc to ignore that the key index frames are missing ?