Hi,

I'm using the source range filter and would like to export the time codes contained in the .tpr file after I am done cutting the source up.

I have written a simple program that can dump all the records, but only in binary format so far. I need documentation of exactly what means what in the 12-14 bytes of the StartTime/Length records inside of Video.SourceRange.SubRangeList

Can anyone help? (Once I get this working, I might just have a good reason to buy TMPGEnc :-))

Thanks.

There is allready a program that exports the file with the settings in the TPR file to other programs like Video editors encoders ect in the Form of a Dummy AVI file..It"s called the "Vfapi Converter" and was written By the author of Tmpgenc, it is a Great tool for Frameserveing...

Ah, but I want to export it to something human-readable, so I can take the info and feed it into vcdimager for chapter information. I don't think I can just pass it through vfapi, can I?

All I really need is information on how the 12 and 14 bytes of the StartTime and Length data are structured... if anyone can provide this. It would be very helpful.

All I really need is information on how the 12 and 14 bytes of the StartTime and Length data are structured... if anyone can provide this. It would be very helpful.

Why don't you just simply use VCDeasy which as far as I know is an excellant GUI for VCDimager.
It automatically reads the time codes in the MPEG and allows you to set your own chapter points or import them from another source.
Seems like what you are trying to do has already been accomplished for you.

ASHY

You see, that's exactly it, I want to import my chapter info from tmpgenc source range cuts!! This is why I want the timecodes from the .TPR file.

(I am using VCDEasy, how can it detect where I made cuts....)

I don't really understand why you are making cuts in the source range when you can simply add the chapters to the whole MPEG.

The second thing is you can just load the cut MPEGs into VCDeasy as they are and burn. You will then be able to skip to the next mpeg just like you can if had created chapters.

If that doesn't satisfy you then loading then MPEGs into VCD easy then clicking the chapters tab you will see the time code information where it says duration.
It's just a simple case of choosing the movie you wish to read the duration info for from the drop down box. If you then add the duration time code information from each movie as a chapter then you will have a chapter point at exactly the place where each movie ends and the next one begins.

ASHY

Ah, let me clarify. I am recording TV shows and am cutting out the commercials. Where I cut out commercials, I want to insert a chapter mark.

So when I use the source range filter in TMPGEnc, I would like to be able to export the time values contained in the TPR file into something human-readable (or find a tool that can do similar).

I'd like to not have to use another editing application, because TMPGEnc already takes care of 99% of the functionality I need.

When I'm using the source range filter, I am not cutting the files into individual MPEGs... I need to know the exact post-cut length so I can calculate the bitrate I want to use to maximize the use of the CD's space.

I've tried cutting the raw 8mbps MPEG2 capture into bits using MPEG Tools-Merge/Cut, but it takes almost an hour on a 60minute, 8mbps MPEG2 stream with ~6 cuts, for comparison, encoding a 45min MPEG2 to the SVCD profile only takes me about 80minutes. M/C tells me the time codes I need, but it just takes too long for it to be usable

Ok I see what you are trying to acheive, but I have no idea how you can extract the info from the TPR file.

Surely though it would be just as simple to note down the info you need as you make the cut.
The timecode info is displayed at the top when you are using the source range filter. When you make the cut the timecode will change to reflect the position of the cut. I would have thought it is then a simple case of noteing down this info for each cut you make and then simply import that info into VCDeasy to make the chapters.

To know the new adjusted length of the movie just click 'move to end frame' you will then see the timecode is now different with regards to the original length.

ASHY

Yeah, I could do it while I'm performing the actual cuts... and I may resort to doing that.

I would like the "cleaner" method of extracting the final info out of the TPR file... I know it must be in there... I can extract the number of cuts and the text tags for the starttime/endtime source ranges, but I can't figure out how the binary data itself is arranged in describing the time codes. It'd be a bit less error prone, too.

Oh well, thanks for helping anyway...

I used claddvd to rip some dvds. the output file is *.d2v. the demo version(2.58) would have no problem converting these files. The full version(2.5) would convert one file only once then it would say "can not open; not supported." I then tried the demo and it says the same thing. Even when I try the file that originaly worked. I didn't change anything so I don't know what is wrong.

Make another D2V file and try it again and Use DVD2AVI..and go to "options" to "enviromental settings" to "Vfapi plugins" and make sure there is a DVD2AVI.vfp Plugin listed there and make sure the priority is at "1", and if it isn"t listed there then you need to do into the "DVD2AVI" Folder and copy and paste the "DVD2AVI.vfp file into the Tmpgenc folder then restart Tmpgenc and see if the plugin is listed..I don"t think that Clad DVD Installs the plugin to read D2V files just creates them...

please help me... i dont know what the "system clock reference" is and where do i find it? thank oyu! ^_^

Your using that crap Roxio for burning your VCD aren't you?
This error has happened becuase you have cut the file or re-multiplexed it with the MPEGtools and used the wrong stream setting.
You must choose 'MPEG1 Video CD' as the stream setting if you are creating VCD and not use the default 'MPEG1 system(automatic)' setting.

Take my advice download and use Nero for burning VCD. It is much better at it and gives better warnings if you have done something wrong.

ASHY

I am having problems creating SVCD's from my home videos. Whenever I play it back there is a delay about every second that makes the video appear jerky. The MPEGs play fine on my PC but won't work on my DVD player. I am sure that it has to do with the buffering or the bit rate. I have tried TMPGEnc.exe, both the old Beta version and the new 30 day eval. I have played with the bit rate settings a lot but can't find a setting that works. I was only able to create 1 SVCD that would play continuously but it was with such a low bitrate that the video quality was terrible.

I have also tried to copy a DVD with DVDx and get the same results. I have normally use the SVCD option with Nero. I have also tried VCDImager. Could it be my DVD player? I have a JVC XV-S65. When I burn a stardard VideoCD I don't have these problems.

I don't think it's either the bitrate or the buffer. You most likely have encoded the movie to a different framerate than the original. TMPG won't do correct framerate conversion resulting in the problem you are experiencing.

Do more searching on this BBS. You will find a solution to do it correctly.

ASHY

Thanks for the hint. I am using an ATI All-In-Wonder Radeon card to capture the video. Is it possible that the video isn't captured at 29.97 fps?

What format is the source in?

ASHY

It's MPEG-1 I-Frame only 480x480.

Hey TombMaker,You Would get Much better Results If you Captured To AVI instead if I frame Mpeg1, First off because Mpeg isn"t a Very Good format to capture to If you Want the best Possible Quality and Another thing is you are Captureing to Frame based Format and then encodeing it to a Field Based format(mpeg2) and I don"t think Tmpgenc will convert the Frame into Fields so You won"t get a Very Good Picture..And the Stuttering effect could be caused By Dropping Frames while captureing...and I checked in On some reviews on your DVD Player and it has Problems with SVCD"s at bitrates above 2500KBS so if you get Bitrate spikes above 2500 kbs you will get jumpy playback and the audio cutting out, I guess it only has a 2 times speed Drive in it when Most of the newer models have a 4 times speed drive in them...If you decode to capture to AVI make sure you have lots of Disk space anywere from 7-20GB per hour depending on the codec you use, PicVideo Mjpeg and HuffyUV are probably the Best Codecs to use for this..

Hi Minion,

Thanks for the hints. Where did you get the reviews of the DVD players? The only way I can get it to encode without stuttering is to encode it at ~11000 Kbps. Which is way too low quality to watch. I'll try your suggestion.

Can any of you chaps help out here,i have used TMPGEnc to convert a film i downloaded from the net,everything is great apart from i get the lines at the top and bottom of the screen,i have the clip frame set to no margin keep aspect ratio and source aspect ratio set to pal and the video source type set to non interlace(what does interlace mean!).
Does anybody know of any other settings that i can make to put this right or any help at all would be great.
Thanks Daneyboy.

What sort of lines? You mean black bars?

If so you need to crop them out with the 'clip frame' filter and set the arrange method to 'full screen(keep aspect ratio) and the output to 4:3.

Bear in mind to crop black bars will need to cut out parts of the image from the sides if you wish to maintain aspect ratio.
Tick the 'resized image is used to display preview' when you do this to see how it will look.

ASHY

when i play back the film on dvd player through tv the lines at the top and bottom of screen,hope this helps!

Yout gonna have to be more detailed. I can't help unless you explain what you mean by lines.
What colour are they, how thick are they there when you play the file on the PC or just on your DVD player?

ASHY

i downloaded the free version. now i'm trying to enter the registration code, but when i select register under the option menu, it just puts a check there. i would like to use this program for more that 30 days. someone please help.

You Can"t register the "Free" Version you have to register the "Plus" version..You can download it by double clicking the banner below...

I have encoded several AVI files with TMPGe set to output elementary steams of audio and video. When attempting to author a DVD with DVDit SE version 2.5, DVDit ressponds that a .mp2 decoder is not available. Any suggestions? I am using Windows XP.

Well Try to play the MP2 file with media Player and if you get an error that the Decoder can"t be found then it could be a common problem with WinXP, sometimes the "MP2" Decoder gets corrupted for some reason and you need to replace it...but this is just a Guess cuz it happened to me rescently....

Minion, Thanks for the quick reply. I played the TMPGe mp2 file on Window Media Player 9.0 and it plays just fine. Any other suggestions?

This question has come up numerous times on this BBS. Unfortunately I can't quite recall the solution. Maybe you can find it by using the search box above.
I do know it is related to this specific version of DVDit though so try something like My DVD instead.

ASHY

Ashy, I did search BBS using "DVDit and Elementary Stream" as queries - no luck though.

Firstly am I correct in assuming the error is actually 'MPEG2 decoder not available' and not 'mp2 decoder is not available'

Ok I may be wrong but its worth a shot. Apparantly your problem may be due to either having the Ligos player or codec on your system which is causing a conflict with DVDit or more commonly the wrong setting in TMPG.

Here are some TMPG settings which are supposed to be successful in working with DVDit.

http://pwp.netcabo.pt/0165394101/TMPGEnc_Template.html

ASHY

Ashy, Sorry I didn't reply sooner. I was on travel and just returned. You are correct, the error message was "mp2 decoder is not available". I do have a Ligos codec installed. Any more information on the incompatibility with Ligos? Is it necessary to uninstall the Ligos codec in order that DVDit can function correctly with elementary video and audio files generated with TMPGe? Thanks, Bill

It seems the Ligos codec trys to take over decoding of MPEG2 files, so it causes a conflict with other programs which have to compete with Ligos to open the file causing problems.
All I can say is just try uninstalling Ligos and check the result if that doesn't work try the settings in the link above and create a short test file with them.

ASHY

Ashy, I found out the LIGOS decoder was embedded in DVDit SE (version 2.5). If I get rid of the LIGOS decoder, I lose my DVD authoring package. I guess I will stick with outputting MPEG2 files from TMPGe instead of video and audio elementary streams. Oh well. However, thank you for your assistance.

When I cut with the tools option, my 2 parts of mpg have good image but sound only for a few minutes and no more. Who can help me?

This is one of the many bugs in the mpeg tools ,The solution is to use something else to Cut your files with if this happens...

Hi,
I have been trying to encode a movie so that it would fit on one CD. So from the duration of the .avi (captured MJPEG) I calculated the required bitrate.
The encoded file is too long, appr. 5800 sec instead of 5100, and as a result also too large to fit on the CD.

Where does this change come from?
(I capture PAL, 25 fps using freeVCR and encode to PAL xvcd, 25 fps)

Thanks!
AppelK

What is on the extra 700 seconds??Is it black space or does it just say that there is extra Time when there isn"t?....

Sorry, I've made a mistake... Apparently I have trouble counting.
It's not actually TMPGEnc that blows up the file, but VCDeasy that pads the mpg with zeros.
Has this anything to do with how I have encoded the mpg? I've encoded 8 files separately, and joined them together afterwards with the MPEG tools in TMPGEnc.

Hi 2 all. Please can someone recommend a bitrate calculator to me? I wish to write svcd files. I downloaded a calc, told it the length of the file, and that i wished it to fit on 2 80min cds. the resulting output was 1.71Gb!

Perhaps I did something wrong, but my logic tells me, i stand a better chance of success if I use a calc already used successfully by somebody else.

Thanks in advance,

Mac

Try FitCD, it's the best Calculator ever written.

http://shh.dvdboard.de/

Thanks for the advice, I have dowmloaded it and will give it a whirl. (major thanks for the web address)

Mac

hi, Fitcd says bitrate of 2319 for the 81 min file. TMPGEnc says approx file size 1.3Gb which would work, but when it had finished encoding it was 1.7Gb!! (the first time i tried this file). do i only have to change the bitrate or do i have to do something else.

thanks

mac

FitCD gave me the following:

81 Minutes of Video, 2 80 Minutes CDs
Encodet with TMPGEnc, Authoring with VCDEasy

192 kbps Audio
2512 kbps Video
Which results in approximate 1600 MBytes of Video (2pass VBR)

This is the one I use and it have never let me down..http://www.dvd-digest.net/downloads/files/encode/xvcdc111.zip ...

@Minion

"Your" Calculator is not bad. But FitCD can do much more than "only" calculating Bitrates. It's a perfect Resize-Engine, it creates AVISynth-Scripts and it is able to calculate correct Bitrates for different Authoring-Tools. And the next Version (not longer Freeware) will be able to calculate correct Bitrates for DVD and MiniDVD too.
It's a kind of Swiss-Knife for MPEG-Encoding.

Has anyone had trouble using CBR and spikes at the end of encoding. the end of the file is a black lead out and the last frame spikes to +11000. The same file encoded using VBR does not have this problem. just curious to know why this is happening. any thoughts would be appreciated.

jim

Are you useing "Bitrate viewer"?
If so, then you should know it's a bug they have... If the movie doesn't end with a complete GOP(for example, you have a GOP of 25 frames and the movie ends with the GOP having only 2 frames) then the program shows as if the bitrate is high in the sky (or some times shows it ending with a 0bps, depending on how many frames there are in the last GOP)...

"Bitrate viewer" is the only program that gives such info (at least that I know) but I don't like it because of it's bugs (Also, seems like the program hasn't been updated for a long time...)

ABS

Yes i am! Thanks for the info as i will look into it further knowing this. the only reason i checked it with bitrate viewer as i got an error in a build using DVDitPE which i have been using for sometime now trouble free. i'll give the file another chance soon and see what happens.

Thanks
Jim

What error does it give?

I have noticed this also with bitrate viewer that if an MPEG doesn't end in a complete GOP that there are sometimes bitrate spikes at the end, but I have also noticed that cutting a few more frames (or adding) off the GOP can sometimes solve the bitrate spike problem even though the GOP is still not complete.
How do you know this info to be true ABS just out of curiosity?

ASHY

How?
Because I tested it again and again on several files and got that...
Besides, according to the Encoding log everything is OK (frame sizes and bitrate specified are just fine), and having the last second with 0bps as "Bitrate viewer" sometimes show could be nothing but a bug...

Maybe these things don't exist when you buy the program because they note in their web site that if you do, the calculations are more accurate. Sorry, but I wouldn't take my chance on that... Also they have an even more expensive program now that they sell so seems like they rather focus on that then on "Bitrate viewer" (the more expensive one has no demo...)

ABS

How what?

How to chop a few frames off?
I have tested this myself and it works.
With some files which I have edited and cut there would sometimes be bitrate spikes at the end.
By simply moving the cut a few frames the spikes would disappear.

Also the demo is exactly the same as the full version as I have it.
The demo simply needs a file inserting in its folder to make it a full version.

ASHY

Is there any other program that can display such graphs? Annoying to think no one else bothers doing such program...
ABS

ABS,

The error I have been getting goes something like this. "Video Picture Size Larger Than Buffer" then the DVD build fails. Sonic explains the error as follows:


Title
Video Picture Size Larger Than Buffer

Description
DVD Legality Error

Symptom
Video Picture Size Larger Than Buffer error when attempting to build a project in DVDit or MyDVD

Solution
At least one MPEG file in your project has at least one peak that exceeds the buffer model defined in the DVD specification, making the file illegal for DVD. Try to create another file to see if it's a problem with your encoder or it's settings. If you continue to have problems please contact the encoder manufacturer.

Additional info:
The file format is DV captured with Pinnacle DV200 and edited in premier then frameserved to TMPG enc. I just encoded the same file using VBR instead of CBR and had no problems building the DVD.

Jim

There is a program called MPEG analyzer and shows practically everything you could want to know about an MPEG, but it's not free, there is a demo though.
http://www.mpeg-analyzer.com/

ASHY

Have plus2.5 and no matter what I do every AVI file I try to open says
Can not open , or unsupported this haeepns on all AVI files I try to open I can open mpeg files byut what I want to do is convert AVI files to Mpeg so I can burn on my Pioneer Ao4.
All help is appreciated..

John

You should have looked through the forum for your answer before posting because this question gets asked a few times every single day..Go to "Options" to"Enviromental settings" to "vfapi Plugins" and raise the "direct Show" to"2"...