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?

Definitely worth it.

Hi,

When coverting a video that has a 23fps framerate into a PAL VCD (25fps)format, the output video is slightly jerky (skippy).

I figure this must be because of the conversion from 23fps to 25fps. So in the setting menu i see an option under the "video" tab to change the framerate but all the options under the "video" tab are "greyed out" and i cannot change them.

How can I stop those options from being grayed out so I can change the framerate?

PS. I MUST convert into PAL otherwise it wont play on my PAL DVD player.

Cheers,

AnarKi.

Simply changing the framerate to 23 fps still wont make it play correctly on your player. You will still have the same problem.

You will have to speed the frame rate up to 25 fps then alter the audio with cool edit or sound forge to shrink the audio length to match the video.
An easier alternative if you know how to use it, is to use AVIsynth to convert the frame rate.

ASHY

Ok thanks but I have no idea how to speed up the framerate or how to use sound forge to shrink the audio so if you could explain it to me step by step or as best you can I would be extremely grateful.

All I have is TMPGenc and Sound Forge 6.

Here is a link which explains how to do it.

Read part 1a. Video conversion with TMPGEnc. and part 2b.Audio with CoolEdit
Ignore the rest of it unless you would like to use AVIsynth.

http://www.dvdrhelp.com/forum/userguides/78178.php

It seems every movie I have dl'd lately either has ac3 audio or VBR mp3. I tried using NanDub for to extract the VBR mp3 to wav but it always comes up 3-4 seconds shorter than the movie, which throws everything off sync. I've heard you can convert the VBR mp3 to CBR mp3 but I cannot figure out how. I stripped the audio from the MPG2 file and now have a good m2v. How can I get the audio mixed back in while staying in sync?

Well that is the reason why encodeing movies with VBR audio sucks ,and why downloaded movies aren"t really meant to be converted to Mpeg...and many Programs will change the length of the audio when converting the audio to WAV with VBR and AC3 audio..There are a Couple of things you can Try, Use AVI Mux to extract the audio to Wav and see if the audio changes length with it or you can allways stretch the extracted audio to the Correct length useing Sound forge or Cool edit, But the newest "Virtual Dub_Mod" is supposed to properly handle VBR Audio without any change in the length...

Thank you Minion. I'll try both of those out. Do you know if there is a way to correct out of sync problems due to a glitch in the .avi. Harry Potter 2 has a glitch that does this and so does Black Hawk Down. I wasn't sure if an antifreeze program would help or not. Thanks.

You can use Virtualdub to sort this out.
It seems strange but I'm currently doing the same thing myself with Harry potter because it also has a glitch and I encoded it myself, not downloaded it.

Open your AVI in Virtualdub. The find the pint where the audio goes out of sync.
Cut the good part of the file at that point and save it. Next move the slider to the point where the glitch is and click Audio>Interleaving add a delay or an advance value( an advance is acheived by using a minus before the value) to the audio skew correction setting, depending on whether the audio is ahead or behind.
The setting is in milliseconds, 1000ms = 1sec. First try 500ms then adjust it until the audio is in sync.
When happy with the result save the second part of the AVI.

Tip: give both parts of the AVI sequential names (I.E. AVI_01.avi, AVI_02.avi) then set TMPG to open the files in sequence and then encode as normal.

ASHY

Thank you Minion. I'll try both of those out. Do you know if there is a way to correct out of sync problems due to a glitch in the .avi. Harry Potter 2 has a glitch that does this and so does Black Hawk Down. I wasn't sure if an antifreeze program would help or not. Thanks.

Minion, I dl'd Avi Mux but it appears to only blend video & audio. I could not get it to extract the audio (and if I did it would still be in VBR mp3, right?) I tried stretching the .wav to the correct length with Sound Forge, but it turned out choppy with some static and strange background noises. Dl'd Cool Edit from home page but could only get the 1st 4 seconds worth of output. I'm dl'ing full version off Kazaa and will try that.

Ashy, tried clipping out the bad section. 1st part was fine, but 2nd part came out jacked up (slow motion in beginning and progressively became more out of sync). I was having to enter a skew of -45000 ms.

Well if you have Sound Forge then it should be able to extract the audio from the AVI to the correct length, I don"t know why it would sound bad after changeing the length Cuz I have stretched like 8 minutes in a 2 hour long audio file without Problems..

TMPGENC doesn't recognize a specific subtitle that I'm trying to load when converting from divx to vcd. I have tried many things. I've extracted the sub from dvd and saved it with a .txt format. The subtitle works fine with the BSPLAY player. But, since it wasn't working with TNPGENC nor Windows Media Player, I did convert it to the .srt format. Now, with the .srt format it doesn't work with TMPGENC, nor with Windows Media and nor even with BSPLAY.

What should I do to make it work?

Thanks in advance.

I had a problem with some avi files when outputing them to avi, in wich it doubled the encoded time, half of it with the movie the other half black screened. I solved that with the source range option, but no there is no sound on the file. The original file was encoded with VBR audio. if anyone can help me here, I'll apreciate it.

By the way, when selecting ES (audio only) on the stream type to get the soung only, the outputed file doesn't have sound either.

Tmpgenc does not support VBR audio, you have to use a different program to extract the VBR audio to WAV and use that as the audio source, you can do this with "Virtual Dub-Mod"...And the Black screen problem can usually be solved by raiseing the "Direct show File reader" to "2" in the "Vfapi Plugins"....

I has use the trial version of The TMpegEnc PLUS 2.5
It cab support the 856x480 16:9 widescreen DV input,But whin I set the mpeg-2 output to the 856x480 output, it can work.
IS someyhing wrong or the TMPEGEnc can't support to the widescreen MPEG2 output
Tell me anybody,Please

I have never heard of "856+480" I don"t think there is a Standard with that Resolution, and I"m pretty Sure the "856+480" is NOT a Valid Widescreen Resolution, if you are trying to make a DVD out of these files it will Not work, and I"m pretty Sure the Is No DV resolution of 856+480, But still I don"t see why Tmpgenc will not make a file with this resolution,...

Sounds pretty cool if a camera can output that resolution.

If that truly is the case, the video would need to be resized down to 720x480 to be DVD legal.

Rant: I'm not buying a digital camcorder until 4:2:0 or 4:2:2 color sampling is common. Going from 4:1:1 to 4:2:0 throws away HALF the color resolution!

For DVD bound material, a good Hi8 camera can produce 4:2:2 archival resolution and virtually lossless DVD encoding.

You need to change the Profile&Level to 'Main profile&High level(MP@HL)'

ASHY

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