Hi All,

OK. Here's the senario...

I use the Clip > Arrange > Center (custom) to plop a 640x272 avi (no black bars in source) onto a 480x480 frame. I enter the parameters to get what I want visually and naturally any area of the frame not covered by my avi show as black.

Now the question...

Does TMPGE encode the top and bottom black into the compressed video stream? Or does it only encode the active area and simply "tell" the player to blank-out the unused portions of the frame?

This is important (IMHO) because although a solid black field will compress to almost nothing, the transition from that black field to the active video will (I believe) take up valuable bandwidth.

Thanks

yes it does Encode the Black bars as Part of the image...

Thanks for the info.

Too bad you can't just encode the active video and let the player place it on the requested frame size on-the-fly. Kind of how a player reformats an anamorpic 16:9 for a 4:3 monitor. Actually, it would be an easier process for the player because it would not have to scale the video. Only add the blanking. Oh well...

Thanks again.

The the transition from the black bars to the picture doesn't take bandwidth if the picture has a size that is multiple of 8.

So if TMPG encodes the voids as part of the stream anyway, what are the pros/con between letting TMPG add the black verses giving it a aspect ratio corrected, full frame source which includes the black void (ie frameserving it from avisynth all ready to encode)?

I don"t think that it really makes a Differance But it would Be interesting to do a Test to see what encoded faster and which used the given bitrate more efficiently?...

If you're working on a 16:9 source, you may wish to make an anamorphic video.

Some TVs/DVD players are capable of taking a 4:3 image and scaling it down to 16:9 adding their own black bars. My TV is capable of doing this, and it increases the pixel density while doing it resulting in a sharper output image.

>If you're working on a 16:9 source, you may wish to make an anamorphic video.
>
>Some TVs/DVD players are capable of taking a 4:3 image and scaling it down to 16:9 adding their own black bars. My TV is capable of doing this, and it increases the pixel density while doing it resulting in a sharper output image.

I had hoped that it was possible to only encoding the active playfield instead of the playfield + voids (albeit that the voids take up very little room). Making an anamorphic means the video has to be scaled vertically then reduced during playback. Thats 2 conversions away from the original source material, not to mention the larger file size and added encode time. A high price to pay for not putting the voids in the source from the get go.

The DVD video standard has 2 aspect ratios, 4:3 and 16:9. Black bars are NOT encoded except for very thin ones when 1.85:1 movies are encoded at 16:9 (1.78:1).

A DVD element (menu, video title, etc) with the 16:9 setting is assumed to be anamorphic and the player will squeeze the picture and add black bars (when instructed that the TV is 4:3). The squeeze is pretty sophisticated. Four lines are averaged together to get three.

This method allows 16:9 displays to retain full resolution.

When DVD authoring software sees mpeg input files with 16:9 flags in the header(s) it groups them together in a video title set that will have a 16:9 flag. Mpeg files that are not 4:3 or 16:9 will not be accepted by authoring software. Most consumer software does not accept 16:9.

IFOEdit can be used to change the aspect ratio setting for "video title sets" after a DVD has been authored. This allows you to supply anamorphic material encoded at 4:3 to consumer authoring software and fix the DVD database before burning.

What you say is correct. However, in my original post, the source material is 640 x 272. This translates to SVCD size of either 480 x 272 or 464 x 272 depending on how anal you want to be about pixel aspect ratios. I did not know if the MPEG-2 spec allowed the stream to be something less then 480 x 480 (or 720 x 480 for DVD) and simply place in the header information to the player that the video needs to be padded-out on the fly. If that were possible then 100% of the bitrate bandwidth could be for the active video.

To "take advantage" of amamorphic abilities of the player to vertically squeeze & pad-out with black would require that additional vertical detail be conjured up (ie vert scaling). That would increase the source material from 272 vertical to 400ish. Then the player takes that 400ish back down to 272 and plops it onto the output frame. Neither of these 2 conversions are lossless and the new vertically scaled source material is larger and would result in a larger encode.

I am trying to convert an avi to mpg but all I get is a blank, black screen (audio is OK). I have read others with the same type of problem and they've been recommended to increase the priority of the DirectShow plugin. When I do this however the whole program crashes! Any ideas? This avi is the second of two and the first one was fine.
Thanks

I doun understand why tmpg is going wrong. it is my first time using this software. I tried to convert avi to dvd file(mpg). And there was a error pop out ( scan line is out of range error:404).
P.S Plaze help!!!!

Can someone tell me why the exact same version of TMPEG can decoded AC3 on one computer and not on another? The only difference between the versions is that one is registered and the other if the free version. The free version is the one that works but they are the exact same version otherwise.

Dan P.

....and one computer has an ac3 codec installed and the other hasn't.

ASHY

I have encoded hundreds of VCD's from avi files with this program before, but now lately, the program seems to be doing something very strange. I have a 349mb 44:00 video file, but when I try to convert it to VCD TMPGEnc says that the file is 142:00 minutes long and the program informs me that this is obviously going to be too large to fit on a CD.

Interestingly enough, I have a 140mb video file of the same length and it encodes perfectly...but I have been downloading more and more of these higher quality avi's and seem to keep running into this problem.

This file that is giving me problems is 512x384 24bit @ 23fps, and windows tells me the video compression is DIVXMPG4 V3. The audio is MP3 at 109kbs.

Any help you folks could give me would be much appreciated.

Well, guys, it looks like I fixed the problem...sort of....if I use the source range option and I set the end point just a few frames away from the very end of the file, suddenly TMPGEnc suddenly decides that I have a 44 minute video file instead of a 142 minute video file...is this a bug in the program of just something crazy going on with my crappy computer?

The Thing with Downloaded files is that they Get corrupted from being downloaded repeatedly so there are probably corrupted Frames or the header is corrupted and that is why it is giveing you this and other problems ,Downloaded movies aren"t the Best way to make High Quality VCD"s and Svcd"s out of..It is Best to Rip them yourself...

TMPGEnc seems to have problems with avi's that have VBR sound.. reencode it as cbr and itll be fine.

Jim

I am a newbie at this game, how/what program do you use you to do that ?

Hello, I'm having loads of trouble while trying to encode MPEG-2 with. I get loads of DLL errors, what i get is 'Write error occured at address 77F546F7 of module "ntdll.dll" with 00000000' and then run time error 216, please please please can someone help me ?
I'm using version 2.59 on a P3 700 running XP Professional.

Same problem here, narrowed it to XVID codec. Have WinXP with SP1, WinMediaPplayer9, tmpgenc .59. Can easily create from div3, xvid crashes... any help?

Yes the file i trying to encode is an XviD too :( Sometimes, very vgery rarely will it work fine, as i have done a few XviD encoding on .59, but none for a while because of this problem. I trying using ME, and 3 other computer with no joy :(

I read somewere that to properly encode Xvid files you have to change the Four CC code of the Codec to the Four CC Code of DivX...

I used TMPGEnc very often without problems but not I can't encode AVI files into mpeg anymore. Everytime I try to do it and i click to start the process a window opens saying that the file can't be opened or supported....It's quite strange because these files are normal DivX....can anyone give me a help please?

Have you raised the Priority of the "Direct Show File Reader"????

Where's that found? I'm having the same problem and I can't find any show
"Direct Show File Reader"...

I can't open any divx file with TMPGEnc, I could a few months ago when I last used it on an old version. I downloaded an old version and no go either.

hi i`m having problems with aiv and tryin to put it in mpeg and its sayin
cannot be opened or unsupported" i can watch it in windows media and its a avi file .but just wont let me put it into mpeg ..i hope anyone can help me and know what i`m on about ..do i need any over progs to do it
thank you all byr julie

Had this problem when I installed xvid codec removed it ok now

hey there,
I try to frame serve an AVI with VirDub using the Avery Lee subtitle plugin. When I start TMPG it says: error: divide by 0 !
What goes wrong?

innojoin

When I'm trying to open *vdr generated by virtualdub tmpgenc say : file unsuported :( could someone help me ??

Make sure that the vdr file is a Good files, Meaning that the Frameserver is working properly, you can do this By opening up another instance of Virtual Dub and loading the Vdr file in and see if you can see the image..

ok it's not good vdr file what now ??

:)

ok i'm useing vd 147 now & the vdr file is good but tmpgenc don't won't 2 open it same error :(

If the .vdr will load back into Virtualdub this means the frame server is working ok.

The problem must be TMPG. Try disabling the the 'directshow reader' filter in the VFAPI plugins and then raising the priority of the 'VFW reader' filter.

If that doesn't work then download this plugin.
http://www.math.berkeley.edu/~benrg/avisynth/tmpgenc-readavs.zip

ASHY

I can't seem to convert Windows Media Files anymore. I have Windows Media Player 8 and the Divx 5.0.2 Codec installed, so I'm a little stumped. Anybody able to give me some pointers, cause I know I'm missing something!

Captain Splendid

Try Raiseing the Priority of the "Direct Show File Reader" in the "Vfapi Plugins" and if that don"t work It could be cuz the File is corrupted Cuz WMV Files are easily corrupted Cuz they are so highly compressed So use ASF Tools to repair it and that Might help But if you are totally stumped you can try converting the WMV to AVI then encode it to Mpeg...

I was getting a nasty read error pretty consistantly with many files on XP with my Asus A7V266 motherboard system. Even after re-installing XP and Win2K, tmpgenc would get about 1/3 through the file via frame serving with Avisynth from Premier and then error out. Disabling Norton gave a slight improvement. But what finally made it stable was upgrading the BIOs to version 1011.
Email me for details.
rdt

When Ever I try to Incode a DivX File to Mpeg it sometimes incodes it without audio. Why is this? What can I do to Fix it so that I can encode without Probems?

DivX 5.0.2
TMpg Enc 2.59

It is Because the audio format in your Divx file isn"t being decoded by Tmpgenc, the audio is Probably AC3 or MP3 VBR , you need to extract the audio to a Wav file with something like Virtual dub or AVI-Mux and use the Wav file as the audio source..

Cool Thanks Minion