My camera outputs MPEG4 (fourcc is mp4s) .asf files. I want to convert them to mpeg 1 or 2 files so I can edit them in most widely available programs. I figured out how to do this with TMPGEnc, but it changes the format to suit VCDs or DVDs. I don't want to change the size or frame rate or anything. How do I set up TMPGEnc to change codecs, but not touch the video format?

Also, can TMPGEnc rotate the video while it re-encodes it?

Thanks!
-- Rich

You need to unlock the settings first.
Click the load button in the main window then navigate to the 'Extra' folder in the templates folder. Inside double click the 'unlock.mcf'
This will unlock all settings.

Why don't you just convert the AVI to a regular MPEG 4 AVI.
It doesn't make sense to convert to MPEG1 or MPEG2 as they are not designed to be edited. If you do you may have GOP layer editing problems.

Virtualdub_ASF http://www.divxland.org/files/VirtualDub14c_asf.zip can strip the ASF container leaving just an MS MPEG4 AVI which any AVI editing program, such as Virtualdub itself (which is probably the best AVI editor), can open as long as the MS MPEG4 codec is installed.

Or you can use ASFtools to convert to AVI.
http://www.geocities.com/myasftools/

Okay, I finally got the program to convert an avi to an mpg.

BUT, it converted it without audio! What happened to the audio?

AND, it turned the 350mb file, which would fit on a cd-r, into a 1.6gig file which will not fit on a cd-r.

So how do I convert a 350MB avi file into an under-700mb mpg which I can make into a vcd?

Also: when I tried to use TMPGEnc to edit the 350MB AVI file into 2 smaller files, before converting it to MPG, I get this message: "Invalid Pointer Operation" after I set an in and out point for the edit.

THEN, when I try to convert the edited file, I get some kind of message about how the edited file is not compatible. However, I do not get these messages if I do not edit the AVI.

HELP?

You may need an AC3 codec.
This one works with TMPG: http://fcchandler.home.comcast.net/AC3ACM/
The output size depends on the length of the movie not it's size.
VCD encodes at a rate of 10 MB/min which would mean your movie is over 2 hours long.
This does seem a lot though for such a small sized source file.
If your movie is not over 2 hours long post back here and I'll tell you how to fix it.

Thanks for the link to the codec.
No, the length of my original avi is only between 50-60 minutes, yet it's giving me over 1gig in the (audio-less) mpg.
As to the no audio problem, someone told me that I need to strip the audio from the avi using something like virtualdub first, then import that back into EMPGEnc before converting to mpg.
Is that correct?

If your movie is only 50-60 mins long and you are indeed encoding to MPEG1 VCD and not MPEG2 then it should be about 600MB.
Check to make sure that there is no blank video in the output file. TMPG sometimes has a habit of encoding blank video with somw AVI's, doubling or even trebling the size.
What does the wizard state as the final output size?

As for the audio ir isn't necessary to extract it to a wav unless you really have to.
The problems usually happens with AC3 or VBR MP3 audio.
Both can be solved by having the right codecs and raising the priority of the 'Directshow file reader' to 2 in the VFAPI plugins.

1) Yes, there is 1 and 1/2-2 hours or so of blank video in the converted file, it just sits there on the last frame after the 55 min or so of program material. So how do I get rid of that extra video? (Cannot edit the file with TMPGEnc; see below)

2)You say the audio problem can be solved by having the right codecs:
Which ones are the right ones and how do I get them and install them? When I use gspot to look at the avi file it says the file uses the Ligos MPEG Audio Decoder codec. I downloaded the audio codec you suggested and that doesn't seem to help. I also downloaded a divx package someone else suggested, and neither is helping this situation.

3) When I tried to raise the priority of the Direct Show file reader, I get the message "The File Cannot Be Loaded".

Further info as to what is happening:
When I open the AVI file in TMPGEnc and go through the wizard, and try to make an edit (say, just the opening credits) so I can experiment with just a segment of the video/audio, as sson as I choose the start and end point and then go to the next step I get an error message "Invalid Pointer Operation".

Then, when I click that off and try to start the encoding, I get the error message "File [xyz] cannot open or unsupported."

However, the same file HAS, in previous attempts, if I don't attempt to EDIT it, encoded, and made the above super-long MPG with no audible audio.

I say no AUDIBLE audio because the gspot examination shows that the resulting converted mpg does have the Ligos MPG audio codec. Someone told me if I went ahead and burned the vcd I'd hear the audio when I play it on my dvd player. However I cannot test this theory since I cannot get the resulting mpg file edited down to a burnable length.

Please advise.

Thanks for helping me sort this out!

Whoever told you that last part doesn't know what they were talking about as they are talking B...shit.
The LIGOS MPEG codec is just an MP2 audio codec.
There WILL be MPEG2 audio in the output however it will be just silence because TMPG was unable to decode the audio in the source movie.

Your problem is a common one. It usually happens with XVID movies.
This is the procedure to solve it.
First of all download FFDSHOW and install it.
http://athos.leffe.dnsalias.com/ffdshow-20040325.exe

Then as I said before go into the VFAPI plugins. Click Options>Enviromental settings>VFAPI plugin and raise the priority of the 'Directshow file reader' to 2. To do this you must right click on the name itself.

Now your file should load fine and the wizard should give you the correct size of your output file.

Do a test encode and check for audio.
If there is still no audio then download the proggy below and install it.
Right click the source AVI movie then from the context menu select 'AVI codec: detailed info' then copy and paste the audio info here.

Sorry forgot the link for AVIcodec:
http://avicodec.duby.info/

>
>Your problem is a common one. It usually happens with XVID movies.
Yes, it is an XVID movie.

>This is the procedure to solve it.
>First of all download FFDSHOW and install it.
>http://athos.leffe.dnsalias.com/ffdshow-20040325.exe
>
Did that.

>Then as I said before go into the VFAPI plugins. Click Options>Enviromental settings>VFAPI plugin and raise the priority of the 'Directshow file reader' to 2. To do this you must right click on the name itself.
>
Did that.

>Now your file should load fine and the wizard should give you the correct size of your output file.
>
>Do a test encode and check for audio.

There seems to be audio, now, I see an audio graph where there used to be nothing... But...

Once I edit the avi to just the opening credits so I can do a test, it now no longer gives me the "invalid pointer operation" error, which is good, and I choose my start and end time and "cut except currently selected area", and then click OK and then Next and then I am on the final window where it says "specify output file name" and I click on Ok and that says "Doesn't exist -do you want to create?" and I say OK...

THAT'S WHEN I GET THIS ERROR MESSAGE (a new one, at least):
"Can't load P3Package.dll".

I seem so close to getting this to work; but NOW WHAT?

Thanks for getting me this far, and I hope you can take me the rest of the way!

Okay, I found the help file on this, so am going to see if it works. For anyone else who might find this thread and need the same solution, here is the link to the help file on P3Package dll:
<www.dvdrhelp.com/tmpgenc#problems>
I'll post back here if this thing will FINALLY burn my xvid file after this fix!

You must make sure you run the TMPGenc.exe from the unzipped folder. It requires all the files to be extracted from the ZIP folder.

That procedure worked really well for me. I had used virtual dub to save the VBR encoded audio as a wav and then tried to convert the avi to mpg using the wav as the audio source. This didnt work well at all and the sound was off by as much as a couple seconds. Im not exactly sure what I just did installing the ffdshow and raising that priority level. Was it a decoder? Why was it necessary raise the priority? Just curious, thx for any help on the subject. Thx again for the advice it really helped.

FFDSHOW is an general AVI decoder, usually better than the original codecs themselves. It is open source and continually being improved and solves many problems with AVI's. If you lok at the configuration settings you will also find it is much more than JUST a decoder. It has many useful filters also.

FFDSHOW is particularly efficient at decoding uncompressed AVI and can make playback of these AVI's much smoother on less powerful sytems.

As for priority settings in TMPG. This is simply just the way TMPG handles installed codecs by giving codecs higher in the list priority for decoding than those lower in the list.
It prevents other codecs from interfering with the ones you use most.

I am new to this, never used a program like this before.
I have an .avi video file that I want to make into a vcd. I understand that I have to convert it into an mpeg first.
So I downloaded the free version of TMPGEnc and browsed to the video file with it, left the default settings and clicked GO or whatever the button was to make it start making the vcd.
It processed the video - it's about 50 min. so it took an hour or so.
When it finished - said "100%" - I thought I'd end up with a file that I could then burn as a VCD.
However, I see nothing. Where is the file it made?
In order to burn the file I have to know where it is, but it's not in the same folder as the original file is. Again, I changed no settings, so shouldn't it have made the new MPEG in the same folder as the AVI is in? Or am I missing something here?
Is there a FAQ somewhere or Help file that tells one EXACTLY how to make a vcd ready mpeg from an avi?
Thanks for any help you can give.

DVDrhelp.com

Why in 422P@ML bitrate is limited to 15 Mbit and DC component precision to 10 instead of 50 and 11 accordingly?

No idea, but you are right. This doesn't conform to the specs.
As you say the limits should 50 Mb/s and 11 bits.
The only way you will acheive those rates is to use 'High profile @ High level'

Hello. I'm having a problem with movie length.

Using the wizard, i'm prepairing a DivX AVI file that is about 24 minutes long for conversion to Mpeg. However, the "Movie Info" in the "Bitrate Settings" portion of the wizard reports that the movie is over 66 minutes long and will take upwards of 90% of a 4.7gig dvd.

I've tried changing the dvd format (cbr/vbr settings), changing the aspect ratio, and lowering the bitrate settings, but none of that seems to reduce the length of the movie to the appropriate time.

What am i not understanding about this?

Thanks in advance,
Ghoti

First raise the priority of the 'Directshow file reader' to 2 in the VFAPI plugins and install this codec: http://athos.leffe.dnsalias.com/ffdshow-20040325.exe

If that doesn't cure it then use the 'Source range' function to manually set the start and end points of your AVI.

That did it, thanks!

I have an AMD athlon(tm)XP 2500 processor, two HDDs (120 gig & 200 gig), 512mbs of RAM and NVIDIA GeForce FX 5200 (128mbs). I have TMPGEnc set at default settings, trying to encode from AVI to DVD format and I noticed some excessive blurring when I encode my movies....in some areas worse than others. I also had to change my XVID codec from nic's codec to a codec for AMD processors and I'm wondering if this would have anything to do with my AMD processor for the blurriness? Can somebody tell me how to get rid of this problem? I never had problems this bad like this and the movies I'm encoding are top quality AVIs (perfect picture & sound!)...and they're mostly DVDrips! Is there any adjustments or suggestions I can get from anybody about this problem so I can get better quality of videos?? I'd appreciate it very much!!

You need to explain what you mean by blurry in more detail. It could be you are talking about interlacing artifacts.
Where is this blurring most noticible?

Hi ashy.....I mean blurry as in...the background is blurry like you don't have your glasses on-type blurry. Sometimes you can't make out what is in the background (i.e.grass,dirt,mountains,etc.)....you can't tell whether or not it's grass or a blob of light green of something!...I tend to get a bit of distortion also as in the picture....Looks like it's getting ready to fall apart at times! It's mainly in the background of some scenes and sometimes it's the WHOLE PICTURE SCENE. You just can't make out what's what at times in some scenes. Like I said Ashy, before I encode these AVI movies into DVD format they're SUPERB(meaning....NO DISTORTION OR BLURRINESS!) Please help me out Ashy or somebody out there. I'd greatly appreciate it!!

My first advice is to remove you e current XVID codec and install the latest FFDSHOW which can be obtained here: http://athos.leffe.dnsalias.com/ffdshow-20040325.exe

Next go into the VFAPI plugins and raise the priority of the 'Directshow file reader' to 2 or 3.

You say you are using TMPG's default settings. Do you mean you are using the wizard and the DVD template?

What are the properties of your AVI? Is it interlaced and what's it's resolution.

Do you have any filters checked in the advanced settings?

Having text in one color is often quite drab. Sometimes I want to apply a gradient, or shading, to the font I'm using.

TDA does not allow for this, and I assume it'd be quite a bit of coding to do so. Instead I would like the option to import a transparent GIF file (or somesuch) with a graphical display I've created AS the "title" or "chapter text." I know you guys have more pressing issues to deal with, but please bug a feature request for me.

TDA (v. 1.5.20.62) will start an encode to a given DVD-OUT folder without checking for free space on the drive, even though it knows how much space the DVD will take; it encodes blindly. So I come back to the PC to find find TDA 36% finished with an encode, but giving me an error (I'm REALLY sorry but I can't remember the error and I stupidly exited the window somehow).

Bottom line, TDA needs to check for free space before it begins an encode.

Also the authors need someone who knows proper English to write their error messages; I saw an error message that contained "loose the file?" when I cleared up some space on the hard drive and started the output again.

"Loose" and "lose" are two different words, and the latter should be used in this case. There are other examples I've just laughed at (in the spirit of engrish.com ) but since I'm posting a message right now, I may as well mention it.

Hi, I have an AVI with a size of 640x360. In Gspot, it says: (1.78:1)[=16:9]
What does that mean? Is it letterbox or anamorphic? I want to convert it to DVD and to preserve the widescreen. I am using a 4:3 TV though so I would want the black bars on the top and bottom. In the source video, the black bars are not present. So how would I go about converting it into MPEG-2?

It's anamorphic. You don't need to worry about the black bars. Just set your source as 16:9 and the output to 16:9. The DVD player will add the black bars.

Ok. But what about video arrange method? I'm worried about overscans on my 4:3 TV. It won't be too much overscan right?

To be honest Sakuya I think it's time you saved yourself some messing about and got that TV sorted if it's that bad. If you know anybody with a bit of technical knowledge you can ask it's just a matter of adjusting a simple preset in the back of the TV.

However if you don't want to go down that route then the procedure is the same as before.
The thing you should understand though is that most TV's have a certain amount of overscan so some of the movie will be clipped compared to what you see on your monitor.
You shouldn't really worry about this because it is unlikely you will miss anything that is at all important to the movie.
Every program you will see on TV will have some part missing from the edges and this will be accounted for by the program makers.
Even at the cinema there will be a small part obscured in the black area around the screen to help account for distortion in the edges of picture.

What I am saying is that there is a small percentage at the edges of any movie which is expected to be lost anyway that you are not really meant to see even though you are able to view it on your monitor.

Regardless of the explanations, elsewhere, of captured video and audio frame rate mismatch and which should be the "Standard" I believe that the methology used in TMPGEnc DVD Author is flawed. I captured 6 video tape segments using ADS Instant DVD 2.0 capture unit at 4000Kbs (Hardware compession/multipexing)creating 6 separate mpeg files. The total duration of these is 150 minutes. Each "clip" was added as a new track with main and track menus in DVD Author. After authoring there is an accumulated 1 second audio/video mismatch at the end of the last track. This tells me that there is a rate error, somewhere, of 1/9000, or .00011%! This is so close to perfection that nothing better should be expected in the real world and certainly not of my capture device! Since the original mpeg files are perfectly synchronized, and can be perfectly authored with programs from Ulead and Nero, there is pertinent audio/video synchronization information that is not being used by TMPGEnc DVD Author. It is also odd that the error accumulates over the total time of the 6 files and not each file individually?
Thanks Dieter

I tried an ADS USB capture box and it was rubbish. By capturing video through the box, and the sound through your sound card, you are absolutely asking for sync problems.

I sent mine back and got an ADS A/V Pyro that captures both sound and video locked together through one firewire connection without the sound card being involved at all. The result - it captures hour long (and more) files perfectly without a hint of any sync problems. The USB model couldn't even keep ten minute clips together. Utterly useless device, which ADS should drop from their product line and hang their head in shame over.

TMPGenc DVD Author makes perfectly synched DVDs from my A/V Pyro captures, no matter how long, how short, or how many there are. But no matter what I tried I couldn't get sound and video to sync with the USB model, which had nothing to do with TMPGenc DVD Author and everything to do with the useless ADS USB box.

Regards

Mark

>I tried an ADS USB capture box and it was rubbish. By capturing video through the box, and the sound through your sound card, you are absolutely asking for sync problems.


I really don't think that's the issue; if it were the user would realize it from the source file (!). I use a PVR-250; if you're unfamiliar, it's a hardware MPEG-2 encoding card, which is supplied both audio and video in perfect sync (necessarily from a coax feed), and produces MPEG-2 output. However, sync issues still occur, but only with TDA; by the end of 1 hour and 45 continuous minutes from one source MPEG-2 file, the sync is around three to four seconds (estimation) off. TDA just doesn't pay attention to the timestamps, I guess; I can play the video I record with WMP (for example) and sync is perfect all the way to the end of the video even when I skip ahead. I burn the DVD with TDA and I've just created a coaster; the sync is gradually lost through playback until it's terribly off at the end of the file.

I will state the following:

TMPGEnc itself doesn't accept the file, else I'd try transcoding it. Can't remember the error, TMPGEnc's MPEG-2 support expired and I still have about two weeks' trial left with TDA.

The source file was encoded VBR 6mbps low to 9mbps high with a hardware MPEG-2 encoding tuner card, the Hauppauge WinTV-PVR-250.

I used Nanocosmos' MPEG-2 editor to cut the commercials out.



But, again, WMP plays back the file perfectly; I have the Elecard MPEG-2 codec installed on this machine. As the only MPEG-2 codec installed, doubtless WMP is using this to decode the video.


And, again... Sync + TDA = suxx0rz! I just want a resolution.

Just to clarify and to add to "Nohbdy's" comments. I am using the ADS Instant DVD 2.0 capture unit that does not use the sound card for audio. It hardware multiplexes the audio/video to the USB2 (or 1) output. I can verify the manufacturers claim of "Perfect Lip Sync." even with very poor quality video input sources. In fact I, and at least one other user of this device, have never seen an audio/video mismatch in the resulting mpeg file. I also agree that the mpeg file must contain a continuous time stamp that "locks" the audio and video together. Otherwise we have a situation akin to projecting motion picture film with sound play-back from a reel-reel tape recorder and hoping, by some miracle, that the two will stay synchronized.

My apologies then. The model I tried used the sound card for sound and was dreadful at keeping sync.

Also, I use other programs to create the MPEG2 and WAV files from a DV source (the ADS Pyro A/V link in my case) such as TMPGenc or Procoder, and TDA seems to be able to keep these synced perfectly, even turning them into AC-3(2.0) whilst it does it, now that I have the AC-3 plug in. Never a hint of sync loss.

Perhaps feeding MPG files to TDA rather than MPEG2/WAV combos is the problem?
Though I'm sure I've tried a few experiments of reading DVDs and messing about with the files before re-authoring them and there was never any hint of sync loss there, either.

What hardware spec are you running? I'm using a 2.8 P4, 512Mb RAM, two 7200rpm
70Gb drives, Nvidia Ti4200 graphics card, Audigy 2 sound card, and a Sony 500 external firewire burner.

Regards

Mark

>Perhaps feeding MPG files to TDA rather than MPEG2/WAV combos is the problem?

This is how you attain perfect sync? To the best of my knowledge, TDA will only accept mpeg-2 files...

I'm using a Pinnacle PCTVSat card for capture of DVB-S streams. The captures are made with WinSTB in a very raw format (MPEG2 transport-stream) where sync is tracked every few frames (you may even cut out a piece of the file with a hex editor without loosing sync!) These files are demultiplexed with ProjectX which corrects eventual sync problems (i.e. caused by transmit errors) by adding or dropping audio 'frames'. The demultiplexed streams are then directly put into TDA which remultiplexes the video and audio streams to VOBs. The DVDs created this way had never any sync problems. Maybe you should try it with demultiplexed streams...

Hey,

I'm currently converting a few DivX files to MPEG using TMPGEnc. However, a lot of the source material contains color bleed where bright colors clash. Is there any filter or special setting I can apply in TMPGEnc to *attempt* to reduce the problem?

Thanks in advance :)

No, but you will find filters in Virtualdub that can help with this.

I created a DVD using TMPGenc, but found that my field order was reversed so i extracted the mpeg file from the Video TS back to Mpeg and tried to open it with TMPGenc. Now the file would not open (error message, unable to open file).

I was able to demux the file using Tools, but not open the file for encoding. I changed the priority of the Directshow to 2 as previous mail suggested, but no luck. Why is the programme not recognising a file which it created in the first place?

(btw I extracted the mpeg from the VOB using Ulead's import function, it's the only way I know how)

Rgs
Al

Like Media Player or other Tools, TMPGEnc needs an MPEG2-DirectShow-Filter to open MPEG2-Files. Windows does not include such a filter. You have to install a Software-DVD-Player or a Tool like ffdshow.

There's no need to re-encode your Video just for the reason of Field-Order-Changing. There are several Tools like ReStream or Project X, which are able to patch the File within seconds.

PULLDOWN.EXE and it's GUI will also reverse the field order.
As for extracting MPEGs from VOBS, you can use TMPG to do this with individual VOBS or to do it with a complete set you can use VOBEDIT.

An MPEG2 codec for TMPG can be obtained at the link below:
http://www.marumo.ne.jp/mpeg2/

Thks v much for tips, Ashy and folks. I have downloaded Pulldown and hope it works. Meanwhile, how do u extract the MPEG from VOB using TMPGENc? I tried looking once but couldnt figure it out.

Thks again!

>An MPEG2 codec for TMPG can be obtained at the link below:
>http://www.marumo.ne.jp/mpeg2/

To demux a VOB with TMPG you need to use the de-multiplexer in the MPEGtools.
However this only works for individual VOBS. To demux a set to a complete movie file you will need to use VOBEDIT.