Hello everyone,

My osprey capture card- http://www.viewcast.com/products/osprey/osprey220.html arrived and I installed and captured with Virtual Dub, it works great.

I have followed the process of capturing via www.lukesvideo.com and it was very precise because he knew that capturing from composite cable/VHS tape will make a very poor movie. The filter settings cleaned it up very well. Then I encoded with TMPGEnc.

I don't want to have to go through filter hell everytime I caputre, so I am thinking of purchasing a

S-Video cable: http://www.crutchfield.com/cgi-bin/S-BqAaOGaSYUh/ProdGroup.asp?c=9&s=0&cc=01&g=23112

and a

VCR with S-Video output connector: http://www.crutchfield.com/cgi-bin/S-GOuGLLqrxen/ProdView.asp?s=0&c=6&g=56000&I=257HRS2901&o=m&a=0&cc=01

I have a S-Video cable that came with dazzle, but I see other S-Video cables selling with ( multi-strand copper center conductors, double shielding with braid and foil, precision-machined connectors with molded 24k gold-plated contacts etc.). Does all that substantually improve the signal as oppose to composite cable? Will it be a worthy purchase....

Any consumer advice would be appreciated.

Regards
Fess

Well S-Video has Much cleaner Signal so you should get Some Improved Quality from that..Right now all I have to capture is a Cheap BT878 Card and I used to use these Cheap RCA Cables that were Like 20 years old to capture and it Just looked really Bad and I allmost gave up on it But then I got some Gold plated double insulated RCA Cables that cost $30 for 3 feet and the Signal Quality Greatly Increased and My Captures were Much better ,Now I got an ATI AIW Raedeon 8500DV that will be here Next week so I can"t wait to see how well My captures Improove, So I would say That The Quality of the Cables you use while captureing are Very important to the Quality of a Capture..

I agree about the cables. I have a lot of Hi Fi and Video equipment worth thousands and the cables I use with it cost more than some of the regular Hi Fi equipment you can buy in High street shops. For instance my speaker cable is $10 per metre and makes a noticible difference compared to the standard supplied rubbish.

Quality cables definitely do make a difference to sound and vision. Remember the cable is the connection between the output and the input and no matter how good the source or the recieving equipment is, if the connection between the two is bad then quality is going to be degraded.

People often don't realise how important the cable is. Cables such as scart leads aren't all made equal. High quality Scarts make colors more vibrant, pictures are sharper and less noisy.
Cables supplied in the box with equipment are very rarely of any decent quality. What's the point of buying a high quality piece of equpiment and suppling crap cables. I'd rather the cables weren't supplied and this was then reflected in the price of the equipment, so I could then go and buy my own.

ASHY

Ashy & Minion,

Thank you for your input and advice. I will improve my capture session by purchasing the S-Video cable & VCR.

Regards
Fess

S-Video cables and an SVHS VCR will probably NOT help unless the source is component (SVHS or Hi8). In fact it could be worst, depending on the VCR.

You need to decide where is the best place to decode the composite signal. A decent capture card should have a better comb filter than most SVHS VCRs since those VCRs are really intended for playing component tapes. Data-Video TBCs also have an excellent comb filter.

Many SVHS VCRs today put a lot of really crappy and unresponsive digital processing in the chain (JVC). Mitsubishi's hard to find models give the best result but I still use composite output through a TBC when capturing from VHS.

The most critical item to sucessful capture is an outboard color corrector (Sima, etc.) In concert with the VirtualDub histogram display this lets you prevent clipping and also allows settings to be tweaked DURING a capture.

As for cabling, composite video over 75 ohm cable is a studio quality format even for long distances assuming a decent level of connector/wire quality. At 6 ft or less, almost any cable has no loss.

Minion, congrats on the 8500DV. Captures should come out perfect and the tuner is awesome, especially with a clean cable signal. Be sure to try 15Mbs Mpeg capture as an aquisition format for long captures.

>At 6 ft or less, almost any cable has no loss.

You gotta be joking. I know this NOT to be true. Ordinary cable has high resistence and high inductance which can dramatically reduce high frequency signal loss.
It's not just the loss which is a factor, but factors such as noise induction and magnectic influences from other sources. High quality cables also have lower capacitance than ordinary cables to ensure good clean color reproduction.
All in all a good quality shielded cable will mantain the quality of a signal.

I have tested many cables in my time with my equipment and I know for a fact cheap cables DO NOT cut it at any length no matter how short.
Most of my cables are less than a 2 metres long and even at this length they DO make a difference. I don't pay $100 for a pair of cables for nothing.

The cable is an important factor in any any equipment so why compromise a good clean signal by transfering it over cheap quality crap.

ASHY

>You gotta be joking. I know this NOT to be true. Ordinary cable has high resistence and high inductance which can dramatically reduce high frequency signal loss.

This should read:
You gotta be joking. I know this NOT to be true. Ordinary cable has high resistence and high inductance which can dramatically increase high frequency signal loss.

i got the Your program that evry1 say its the "best" so i use : p4 2.4 512 ddr
asus board so.. when i use your TMPG like the Wizad syle i use : es/system
after along time of Rendering the End Is NO SOUND AT ALL not in the mpeg and not in the wav. I capture from Dazzle and on there prog its work and all off the prog. i use ? SO WHY IN THIS WORLD THERE IS NO SOUND AFTER I FINISH RENDERING !!!! i got the last ver and no other ver i use its work and i took
MPEG-2 and want 2 Encode its bitrate from 4000 to 2000

plz if u say your prog can do the audio just say so i dont spent any money on it

What Format are you captureing to With your Dazzle set up???

ok...tmpg doesnt do certain types of audio
just extract the audio to wav with virtualdub...use full processing mode in audio setting
then insert audio an video seperatly in tmpg

Are you making sure the audio field is filled when loading your file?
If not this is your problem and you may have to extract the audio to a wav file first.

ASHY

hi all hope someone can help me on this one,when i have a avi file and encode it through tmpgenc.the sounds gone out of sync and towards the end of the film it keeps freezing.im using nimo codecs and ulead to put the mpeg on a vcd. thankyou for any replys

u dont say wot source file is....probally xvid
close wizard....go to option/enviromental settings/vfapi plugins
find direct show...right click on it an pick higher priority
keep doin this till it raises it to 2
then encode....but do not u wizard at this point or it will bypass direct show

thanks for your help i will try that its normally avi and xvid what does it but i will try what u said

Hi
During my troubles encoding (now sorted) I finished encoding from .avi to .mpg (or so I thought)but ended up with an .01 file I know this is listed a WinPhone book file and realise it was because I didn't set output file correctly, but what use is an .01 or even .02 ?
Info appreciated
Jo

TMPG doesn't create files with these extensions. These extensions don't relate to anything and I don't really know how you have ended up with them unless you specifically gave the file these extensions.
Just rename the files to .MPG

ASHY

I have a ? for you guys. I am trying to convert avi's to mpeg's and I get an error message that says unsupported format. WHen I set direct show Multimedia file reader to 1 or 2 i get the send error report to microsoft. THen I tried opening it in media player and it says codecs error. I have divx 5.03 installed. How do you know if the codes stuff is installed. Really would like this to work. Thanks for the help.

Every File has a Codec to decode it so you have to find out what codec the AVI file was encoded with then install that codec..But if this File is one you downloaded off the Net and have never been able to watch it cuz you keep getting an error then there Might be something wrong with the avi file..This is Very common with Downloaded files..But first find out what codec it was encoded to and install that Codec......

How do you determine which codec it uses?

look for a little proggie called "avi info"

Usually with AVI Files you can Just right click on the File and go to "Properties" and it will say what the audio and video formats are..

probally an xvid codec anyway...loads films being done in this codec now so try looking for an xvid codec an install that

Just install FFDSHOW this covers most AVI codecs and is usually a better decoder than the actual codec them selves.
http://cutka.szm.sk/index.html

ASHY

Mishy,

Ok I am a newbie at this so please bear with me. If I use the FFDshow do I need to use the PMPGEnc to or will that program do the conversion. I am new to the codecs stuff and very unsure. When I first started doing this it went great. I thought no problem. Then I got a wakeup call. Thanks to all for the help

OOPS sorry meant Ashy. I have another ? on another board and her name was Mishy. sorry for the incorrectness

FFDSHOW will just allow you to open the file in TMPG and play it in mediaplayer. Still use TMPG to do the conversion.

ASHY

Ashy,

So then when you open FFDshow does it open the file and then open the TMPGEnc program or do you open them together. Just want to be sure how to to this so I do it right and dont have to write for any more help. LOL

Ok look, I'll expalin.

To open any media file such as an AVI in software such TMPG there has to a codec installed for that type of file.

The software uses the codec to decode the media file. Without it the file would cause an error. Once the codec is installed the software will automatically use whichever codec it needs to open the file. You DONT have to select it your self.

FFDSHOW is a codec. Once installed TMPG will use it automatically. All you have to do is load your AVI into TMPG and thats it. OK?

ASHY

Ashy,


I got it. Thank you so much for the help. You have been great. It actually works. LOL Thanks again.

Jim

OK, I downloaded FFDSHOW, now what's to install? Put it in the same folder as TMPG? All of a sudden I'm getting errors when I attempt to load avi's and start the conversion. The program crashes and shuts down.

Thanks

What do you mean you put it in the same folder as TMPG?
Why?
Just run the .exe file and it will install itself.

ASHY

By the way: Do you have any idea why my PC almost every time I encode into mpeg2 with tmpegenc freezes at some point during the process (to encode 1 hour of avi takes me roughly 8-12 hours normally). My operating system is win 2000.

Before I used to encode directly from the DVD burning programm which came with the DVD burner. The quality of mpeg2s was shit, but at least the computer did not freeze during the process.
Tx,
Tom

By the way: Do you have any idea why my PC almost every time I encode into mpeg2 with tmpegenc freezes at some point during the process (to encode 1 hour of avi takes me roughly 8-12 hours normally). My operating system is win 2000.

Before I used to encode directly from the DVD burning programm which came with the DVD burner. The quality of mpeg2s was shit, but at least the computer did not freeze during the process.
Tx,
Tom

Thats annoying, maybe you don't have enough RAM to cope with the operation.

Encoding a 1 hour avi would take me less than 2 hours, it shouldn't take anymore than 3 hours, and should definetely not take 8 hours.

Find your answer at: http://www.dvdrhelp.com

Tom
I sit here on my rattling old 550mhz 9GB 128RAM W98SE and it can take me 12 hours overnight to encode an hours worth of .avi to mpg :(
Even then I have to close everything running in the background and leave it untouched while it plods through process.
Jo

Usually if you get an error at the same spot in the File the Problem has to do with an error in the File you are encodeing...

Matt, the speed of encoding depends on your system and encoding in a couple of hours takes a fast system.

A P3 500 would take about 10 hours or more to encode a movie whereas a P4 1.7 takes about 2 hours.

Tom, you may just need to increase the priority of relative plugin in the VFAPI plugins. Increase the priority of the directshow reader to '2' and install FFDSHOW. http://cutka.szm.sk/index.html

ASHY

Well, probably my question is somewhat trivial for you:

I have encoded my original avi. file --> the result are seperate wav. and m2v. files.

I would now like to produce one consolidated mpeg2 file to burn it to a DVD.

How do I do that?

Tx,
Tom

Well you Can"t..If useing WAV audio for the audio to make a DVD your Authoring program has to support loading the audio and Video seperately into the Authoring Program..If you want to make a DVD Compliant Mpeg 2 file you will have to use Mp2 audio in the File..Most Higher quality authoring Programs support loading the audio and video seperately...

This might be a stupid question, but can you burn dvd-r's off of a reguler cd-burner? I just got into burning movie's so I was jus' wondering. Thank's!

that would be great if it were possible. Unfortunately u need a dvd burner which will cost u a few hundred bucks!

if you are downloading movies, and u want to view them on ure dvd player, you have to split the file if it is less than the capacity of your cd accordingly.

Then use nero to burn the mpg files onto vcd. If you still are not sure, you can learn everything u need to know at : http://www.dvdrhelp.com

Yeah. I know how to do all the dvd stuff, but I just wanted to know bout the dvd-r. Because I don't like burning 2-3 cd's.

Thank's

Your right it is a bit of a daft question. If we could burn DVDr's on regular burners I think we'd all be doing it.
I'm afraid your gonna have to shell out a couple of hundred if you wanna burn DVD's.

ASHY

I've been Using Tmpg for the last year or so, with rarely a problem and getting the newer versions as they come out. Well Friday of last week, it starts giving me read and write errors while I was making a batch list of svcds. I eventually got a couple of them to finish, but I still have several that will not go over 3-70%. My computer will either freeze at some point or reboot. Well I also record a show off my tuner card every few days to make it into a vcd, and it started doing the same thing yesterday.

I have uninstalled and reinstalled Tmpg and still get the errors, here is a sample list of them:

Read error occurred at address 100066E0 of module 'dvd2avi.VFP' with 02D777A1

Read error occurred at address 016A6BF2 of module 'P3PACKAGE.DLL' with 02F31BDF

Read error occurred at address 004722E7 of module 'Tmpgenc.exe' with 20222625

Sometimes the Read Error is a Write error if it gets over 50% complete (I'm using 2passVBR). Like I've said it has just started happening in the past few days and I have not changed my computer's hardware configuration in 5 months. I do not believe I have added any software lately.

I did transfer the actual source files I was using as audio and video inputs to my laptop, put them in its dvd2avi and then processed them in the same version of tmpgenc with no problem whatsoever, except that it took twice as long as it does to encode on my desktop.

I have looked on every board I could find for a solution and apparently a few other people are having similar problems to mine. But I can't find a solution, besides its bad source files(not true here), or don't overclock your computer(which I haven't), and finally I ran memtester to check my ram for several hours and it never showed a problem with my ram.

Thanks for any help
Stephen

How about trying an earlier version??

When was the last time you cleaned up your PC and defragged your drive?

This is likely your problem. TMPG does not like fragmented sources nor does it like writing to framented drives.

Most people who are well experienced with Video encoding and editing soon learn that a seperate defragged hard drive is the best way to go, but if you only have one then creating a seperate partion for video purposes only is the next best thing.
Just make sure you use the partition for Video only and keep it defragged.

ASHY

Thanks for reminding me about that, it had been a while(over 2 months) since I done that.

I have defragged my 2 drives/3 partitions. After doing the defrag I went to pcpitstop.com and ran a system check on my machine and it showed that even after the defrag my D and E drives were still very fragmentted, probably because of the large files still on them. Some of the files that went through the defrag are still giving me problems, some of them eventually processed. Like I originally mentioned, I record a couple of shows for vcd conversion and after the defrag I recorded another show but half of the files will not process fully (still getting the same errors). I'm probably going to totally wipe (format, defrag, etc.) 1 hard drive and 1 partition on my other hard drive this weekend then load tmpg on the devoted drive and see if that helps.

Thanks for the tips
Stephen

Looking at the changes for v2.59 and above, it says "Included sampling wavelength transform engine with high quality." Does this mean the "tinny" sound produced by older versions will no longer happen? That is, most people here have told others in the past to use an external audio encoder (such as SCMPX) to avoid the "tinny" effect, but does v2.59 fix this problem?

(I know some of you are going to say "just test it" but I don't have the material anymore to re-encode for a test). :)

Well that was Probably the Idea when putting in a Higher Quality sample Rate converter, I personally haven"t really tried it Cuz I allways use a Seperate audio encoder so I can get the Best audio Quality I can..

Good news: I was able to find a copy of my source material and yes, this new setting gets rid of the "tinny" effect! Great work, TMPGEnc! :)

i can't insert a file which is edited effect by peremiere 6.5 with rendering avi format.
how can i solve this problem?