For the first time in my life I actually paid for a license for a software program before actually trying it out. WHAT A MISTAKE!

I assumed that anything coming from the brilliant brain of Hori would be the bees knees. HOW WRONG CAN ANYONE BE!

TMPGEnc DVD Author has a long way to go to warrant the cost of a license. The introduction of a writing engine is not exactly what the users are looking for. Pegasys, please get your act together!

Well I did the same - didn't try very long either before bying. But I am still glad of it. There are lots of things that could be improved, but I am confident that it will straighten soon.

Even the burning engine if it is far from looking professional is very easy to use (I have been Neroning up to now). I don't know what the percentage is for while burning a disc as it nearly takes half the time to burn the last 2%. But this is a minor detail I can live with.

The automatic creation of chapters while editing tracks works relatively fine if you don't use the botom option (interval). The option to clear all chapters would be fine if it read 'clear all chapters from this point' instead of clearing all chapters from the beginning, may be both options would be usefull.

I have tried a few other authoring softwares and I am glad to say TDA is the only one that gives me satisfaction using in it's price category. After the long job of capturing, editing, encoding, etc, authoring with TDA is the crowning, then I put my DVD still warm in the player for a few tests and enjoy the anticipation of watching the whole stuff in the near future.

You misunderstand. I bought the license before downloading the software, and I agree, it does have potential, but in it's present form it does not warrant the price.

As for waiting for the final 2% during burning. This is a bug that should have been rectified before the program was released.

I'll try it again in six months time when perhaps it may have reached maturity.

I'm making a one-cd-vcd temlate. But when I should save it there is no temlate alternative. Why and how can I save it?

Best wishes

// Masse

Well all you have to Do is do your Settings and Click "Save" in the Bottom Right corner, and if you are Makeing a Non-standard VCD template(God Knows Why as the Quality will be Crap) you have to set the "System" Setting to "Video-CD Non-Standard" or the File will be padded and will not be as small as you would like...

We downloaded avi files from Kazaa. I have down loaded and installed the free version of TMPG. How Do I get files converted to mpeg? Newbie would appreciate instructions on how to get a usable file. Thanks in advance

Well Have you Tried to use Tmpgenc Yet??? When you run the Program something called the "WiZard" will pop up and Lead you through the Proscess of setting up the Perameters for encodeing the file, It is Pretty self explanitory...If you are Haveing a Specific problem then Post it....

Yes that is were I get lost, The wizard comes up and the first screen gives you choiced vcd, svcd, dvd. I leace it on vcd NTSC, then hit next through browse next to video file I find my avi file then it says cannot be opened, or unsuported. This happens with all three avi files I down loaded. So were am I going wrong. Thanks For your help

You should have used the "Search" function before you Posted Cuz this is the Most common Question asked here...What you do it First get rid of the Wizard then go to "Options" to "enviromental Settings" to "Vfapi Plugins" and Raise the Priority of the "Direct show" to "2" this should get the Files Loaded...And downloaded Files aren"t the Best for makeing VCD/SVCD/DVD"s out of as they are Usually made with Wierd Non Standard Resolutions and Framerates and Use Unsupported Audio formats Like AC3 and VBR Mp3, Pluss Downloaded files have a tendancy to be Corrupted and cause a Lot of errors durring the encodeing Proscess...Good Luck

I am toataly lost, still no luck. I get a unsopported file format still

Well If Raiseing the Direct Show To "2" doesn"t work Then it could be that you do not have the Right codecs installed to decode the file ,But if you can Watch the File in Media Player then This is Probably Not the Case...I guess you can try Frameserveing the File to Tmpgenc with Virtual Dub or AVISynth But this is a Little Advanced..If you go to "http://www.virtualdub.org" you can download a Program called "virtual dub" and Look for instructions on "Frame serveing"...Maybe you can post the specs of the Files you are trying to encode, Like the Resolution ,Framerate,Codec, Audio format,ect, then maybe we might find what the Problem is....

Are there step by step instrctions for this software on how to convert a file from AVI to MPEG. I downloaded a an avi file and need to convert it to MPEG si I can write a cd with NERO and watch it on my DVD player

Read the Post above...

OK Guys (And girls) I know you must have heard this question like a billion times but here it goes.

After 1% of encoding I get that particular error message. Allways one percent. I know the regular way to fix it is to make sure that there is enough memory in the outpoot folder. I am encoding it straight to C: and I have 20 odd gig left and I am constantly getting this error message. Incase it has anything to do with it, I used DVD2AVI convertor to change the dvd into a wav file and a d2v file.

Thanks in advance.

Well i spelled "Output" wrong and I am too lazy to edit it. Well anyway hopefully someone will help me :)

What is the best way to reduce a 780 meg file down to 700 (without deleting any frames). Trying to burn a SVCD and size is too big. Should I reduce the bitrate first?

Thanks

You do not need to Reduce the size as you can fit up to 800mb+ on a 700mb 80min CD-R, But Yes to reduce the size of a file you can either cut off the credits or Lower the Bitrate...

Thanks. I went ahead and tried to burn and was wondering how I could fit 770 on a 700 cd.

All 70mb CD-R"s can hold up to 800mb+ in SVCD or VCD Format This is Because VCD and SVCD does not use any Error correction, In regular Music and Data CD"s you can only fit 700mb because 100mb is used for Error correction..Because VCD/SVCD"s have to Error correction you should allways Burn the Disks at a Very Low Speed Like 4 or Max 8 speed or you will get a Lot of errors in the VCD/SVCD disk which can make the Movie Allmost unwatchable...

Thanks again for the tips. I burned a mini-dv tape on VCD and SVCD (1550) bit rate and couldn't tell a difference in picture quality. Wasn't real please with either. Thought they were a little less quality than a VHS.

I capture the mini-dv into moviemaker 2 and converted using 1.5mbps. Should this setting give me good quality?

Thanks

>I capture the mini-dv into moviemaker 2 and converted using 1.5mbps. Should this setting give me good quality?

LOL...You didn't serioulsly expect 1.5mb/s to be any good did you?
1.5mb is almost standard VCD bitrate which just doesn't cut it and it doesn't matter whether you encode using that bitrate to VCD or SVCD the quality will be the same.
Why do think DVD's are encoded with bitrates of up to 9.8mb/s?

You going to have to at least double your bitrate to acheive any sort of image quality satisfaction or better still use a VBR nethod of encoding.

And this would allow me to fit how many minutes on a VCD?

Since about 2.511-2.512, the variable bit rate either stopped working or started working differently.

Before, I could make a VBR file of decent quality at roughtly 75% size of CBR VCD standard. Now, CBR, AVBR, and 2-pass VBR all put out files of exactly the same size.

I could understand if there was a lot of action and the "variable" part never went down from max, but the videos I'm working with don't seem to be that way.

Am I doing something wrong? Is there a RTFM somewhere that I missed?

There haven"t been any changes that i know about or Noticed in the VBR encodeing, and you are The only one That Has mentioned this..When useing 2-Pass VBR ,if you set the Average to say 2000kbs the Size of the file will be the same as if you encoded at 2000kbs CBR....If you are Trying to Make a NON-Standard VCD and are useing a Bitrate Lower than the Bitrate of a Standard VCD then you have to Change the "System" setting to "Video-CD Non-Standard" or the File size will be padded so it is a Standard VCD...

I am having trouble reducing size of MPGEGs. I start off with an AVI, I have defined a template with lower bitrate so that film will fit on 700Mb VCD. I confirm through wizard that MPEG will fit on 700Mb CD but after conversion, it is more than 800Mb! I have selected stream type MPEG-1 video, size 352x288 (PAL), frame rate 25, I have tried rate control CBR, 2-pass VBR and manual VBR (makes no difference to size), audio 44,100/224 and MPEG-1 VCD (non-standard). I have also tried converting an MPEG to MPEG. Why is the resulting file bigger than it should be? Help!

Well First off Do not Rely on what Tmpgenc says the file will be, Get your self a Bitrate calculator...And you can Fit 800mb on a 700mb CD-R in VCD or SVCD Format..If this is a Whole Movie 80 minutes or more you really should put it on 2 CD-R"s and then Maybe increase the bitrate so it fills 2 Full CD-R"s this way you will get Much better Quality, Cuz Putting a Whole movie on a Single CD-R will just leave you will a Terrorable Quality movie with a Lot of Blockyness and Artifacts...If you are Makeing a Non-Standard VCD then you have to set the "System" Setting to "Video-CD Non-=Standard" or Tmpgenc will pad the stream so it is allways VCD Compliant

Go ahead and burn that apparently oversized file as a video-CD (VCD) The Burner changes the way it is copied to the disc, so it uses up less space on CD than it appears to be. Basically, ignore file size that appears too large, if you did it right with TMPG than it'll fit on the size disc you want it to.

>"I confirm through wizard that MPEG will fit on 700Mb CD but after conversion, it is more than 800Mb!"

As long as the MPEG is less than 820mb you can overburn it on to an 80min disk.

I'm burning an .wmf 650Mb file to mpeg 2 and it is taking 11 hrs. Is that normal?

Thanks

Maybe yes, maybe no.
It does not depant on the Filesize of the Source-Video, only on the Picture-Size and the settings in TMPGEnc.

Oh, and you are not "burning" an wmf to mpeg2, you are encoding it ;)

BTW: It's a good Idea to extract the Audio-Part from the WMV-Video. Tools like dBPowerAMP can do this.

Also, please refrain from posting questions as bug reports, ok!

I am trying to use this for the first time. It was pretty easy to set all the settings but now when I am ready to press start it tells me "cant load P3Package.dll I dont understand this. Did I install it wrong? It seemed as if there was no installation onlt an extraction from a winzip file. Is this correct? Please help.

OK...All of the Files that Come in that Zip file have to be extracted into a Folder and None of the Files can be sitting on your desktop..This error is Because the Main EXE File and the "P3P Package.dll" File are not in the Same Location, and that location has to be in a Folder...

I would like to make a vcd for my dvd, but I want to put subtitles in it.How could I do this?One fellow told me that I have to put them into the picture, as one file, but I don't know how to do this! Pls answer me, and if you can send me an e-mail; calavera@abv.bg. 10x

UM..You allready asked this Exact same Question over 6 hours ago, and The answer you got is about as good as it is going to get, as it would take a LONG time and a LOT of work to explain every single step in every Piece of Software you will have to use and I don"t think someone is going to put in the Time when all you have to do is go to the Site Posed and/Or this site:"http://www.dvdrhelp.com/" and Look for a Guide on how to Add Subtitles to a File with Tmpgenc and Virtual Dub, or some other Subtitle Utility, and Like I said you have to Have the Subtitle File for your Movie and it can be Quite Tricky to get the Subs to look Right and in Sync and this is why it can be difficult to do correctly....

using smart ripper... then using DVD2AVI software then using TMPGE i can not seem to get my audio to match up.

it seems to be off by a few seconds I think I have everything set right and have changed a few settings to see if it would matter and does not seem to help.

is there something better to use to rip the audio to get it to match?

anything I should try first to see if i can get the sound to match.

before encoding it plays great and everything matches up.

Well What I do is in "DVD2AVI" set it to "Demux" instead of "Decode", Which will give you a AC3 Audio file then I use a Freeware Audio encoder called "Headac3he" to encode the AC3 File to "Mp2 audio", then i Just encode the D2V file like normal without the audio, after you are done encodeing the Video you will have a "m1v" or a "m2v" , File depending on if you are encodeing to Mpeg1 or Mpeg2, then go to "File" to "Mpeg tools" and go to "Simple Multiplex" and Load the Video file and the Mp2 audio file in and then choose the correct setting from the dropdown menu(either the VCD or SVCD Setting)then Click "Run" and it will Mux the audio and Video together to a Mpeg file that should be in total Sync...You can also use a Program called "Vob2Audio" to extract the audio from the Vob files to a Wav file..But I have allways had some Sync Problems with Tmpgenc Because It think that it uses the same setting For Drop frame 29.97fps and Non-Drop frame 29.97fps which can cause sync Problem over Long movies....