I am using the TMPGE program after editing my video in Adobe Premiere. The files are in DV-avi format and look perfect when recording back to mini-dv or vhs. My problem is when converting to Mpeg-2 format for dvd the program seems to do something to the image. It becomes pixelated and the color (especially in the background) looks as if it bring the pixels out. It's hard to explain exact what it look slike but it's almost vcd quality.
The dv-avs files i have used are in 720X480 res and I set it to the same settings when converting. Any suggestions because I'm confused.

Thanks

Well there are a Few things that can Give your Image a Low Quality Pixelated Appearance..Like not haveing the Bitrate high enough, For DVD"s the Minimum Bitrate shouldn"t go below say 3000kbs and should average about 5000-6000kbs, and if you have the "Motion Precition Search" set to "High Quality" (Not highest)..and if your source footage has a Lot of Noise in it then the encoder will waste a Lot of Bits encodeing the Noise so if you have a Lot of Noise you should try to filter it out ....good Luck

I am trying to convert a DV AVI (Sony Camcorder) to Mpeg1/2. The problem is the clip is about 5:55 minutes, but Tmpgenc can only read about 4:56 minutes of it. Premier and MediaStudio can read the entire file. I have recaptured the file several times (through Premier). Thoughts?

Thanks

We too are experincing this same problem. Our video freezes at about 4:40 and the audio keeps playing. The video then picks back up about one minute latter. As long as the avi is long enough, it always picks back up. This has been tested with several different captures, on two different computers (both have the same harware/software setup). We are using a Pinnicle DV 500 and Premire 6 on Win 2000. We use Pinnicle's DV Tools for capturing. We get the same problem wether or not we bring the avi into Premier before we try to convert it. We have been using various versions of Windows Media Player to play both the avi's and the mpg's.

Anybody else????

Have you Tried going into the "source Range" settings and Seeing if you can set it to encode the file from beginning to end..This has worked with simular problems in the Past...

I had the opposite problem once: the encoder time was bigger then the avi length. I solved it with one run of the wizzard instead of loading it directly. Perhaps that solves your problem too. Haven't come across it in 2.520 though.
Cheer,
Hendrik

Yep, did the source range, still came out short. Upgraded to the latest version of Tmpg last night and the problem went away...go figure.

Thanks for the help.

Hello!
I've created a VCD (MPEG1) and tested it on my desk DVD player: it works fine...but I've some questions which I'm not able to answer to.
Please, could somebody help me? Here are the questions:
- I've encoded the source AVI file (aspect ratio 1:1 VGA) to output format 16:9 (as my TV is 16:9) and I've used Video arrange Method: Full screen (keep aspect ratio 2). My DVD player has set to output in 16:9 format but on my TV the VCD has the correct aspect only when set to display in 4:3 not when set to 16:9 (Wide Screen) as I expected! How could set TMPEG in order to have the correct aspect of the VCD when TV is in 16:9 format?
- The audio of the VCD (or MPEG1 file played on PC) sounds alot "metallic". Does it depend only on the quality of the source AVI file which is 8000 Hz; 16 bit; stereo (very poor quality, I know...) and can't be enhanced modifying the audio bitrate remaining in the VCD specifications?
Thanks for the help!

You don't say what your source is.
Is it a 16:9 leterboxed video or full screen.

>The audio of the VCD (or MPEG1 file played on PC) sounds alot "metallic". Does it depend only on the quality of the source AVI file which is 8000 Hz; 16 bit; stereo (very poor quality, I know...) and can't be enhanced modifying the audio bitrate remaining in the VCD specifications?

Not much you can do here I'm afraid with such a low quality audio source, but checking the high quality option for the sample rate converter in the Enviromental settings will help.

>You don't say what your source is.
>Is it a 16:9 leterboxed video or full screen.
Is a full screen video grabbed and encoded in AVI for best viewing on a PC, as I've said the source AVI file aspect ratio is 1:1 (VGA).
>
>
>Not much you can do here I'm afraid with such a low quality audio source, but checking the high quality option for the sample rate converter in the Enviromental settings will help.

Thanks fo the help!

>Is a full screen video grabbed and encoded in AVI for best viewing on a PC, as I've said the source AVI file aspect ratio is 1:1 (VGA).

It's impossible to have a full screen image in the correct aspect on a 16:9 TV. The aspect ratios just don't match.
The ratio you have is basically 4:3 and your TV is 16:9. There is no way you can fill the entire 16:9 area without either cropping the top and bottom of the image off or by compressing the image horizontally to fit.
The only way to get the right aspect ratio is to set your TV to 4:3 which should give you black borders either side of the image.

The only way to acheive a full 16:9 image on your TV is to have a true 16:9 source such as DVD.

I have a DVD that I'm trying to make a copy of. It contains audio in both English and French (you can choose which you want in the menu options). I'm trying to capture it to make a VCD of it, using DVD2AVI and TMpgEnc on the ripped DVD file.

When I *play* the DVD, I get the audio in English. When I *capture* it using SmartRipper, and then play the captured file (before doing anything else with it), it's captured it with the dubbed French audio track.

The only place anywhere within Smart Ripper than I can find that has anything to do with this is in the Movie/Stream Processing tab. Here, all of the stream options are checked, including Audio English and Audio French, although they're all then greyed out since "Enable Stream Processing" isn't checked. I tried specifically checking *only* the Audio English option and then checking the "Enable Stream Processing" option, but the same thing happened.

This is driving me mad...any thoughts?

Brian

Well this should be Simple, Just Rip the DVD with No stream Proscessing then in DVD2AVI under "audio" to "Dolby Digital" set it to "Demux All" then it will Extract all of the Audio Tracks to seperate AC3 audio files, Now listen to each of them Seperately and Find the One that is English ,Now you will Have to decode this AC3 audio file to a WAV File, you can do this with a Very good Free Audio encoder Called "Headac3he" ,You can even just decode the AC3 to Mpeg layer 2 audio then just mux it with the Video encoded from the D2V file...Good Luck

All you need to do is rip the DVD again, make sure all of the streams are checked.
Make a note of which audio stream is which. For example [0x80] is stream 1 and [0x81] is stream 2 then in DVD2AVI click Audio>Track number and select either stream 1 or stream 2 when you create the d2v.

>Well this should be Simple, Just Rip the DVD with No stream Proscessing then in DVD2AVI under "audio" to "Dolby Digital" set it to "Demux All" then it will Extract all of the Audio Tracks to seperate AC3 audio files, Now listen to each of them Seperately and Find the One that is English ,Now you will Have to decode this AC3 audio file to a WAV File, you can do this with a Very good Free Audio encoder Called "Headac3he" ,You can even just decode the AC3 to Mpeg layer 2 audio then just mux it with the Video encoded from the D2V file...Good Luck>

Thanks for your and everyone else's help. I got it sorted....I was assuming that it had only captured the one audio track, (the wrong one) not both, but its working OK now. I still don't know why the capture (or possibly the playback of the capture) defaults to the French soundtrack though. Oh well....

I think I got the basics of encoding down now but I still can't get the proper volume of SVCD. All the burned SVCDs sound way too 'quiet' on my system which is 600W and doesn't seem to be weak [even on MAX]. I've tried different files of cource. I use VirtualDub to get the audio out of DivXs... Changing volume in TMPG's audio settings helps but the output sounds terrible. Should I maybe use some other software for extracting audio or am I simply doing something wrong? Please help

Is your audio AC3? Check it by opening the file in Virtual Dub and then go to "File Information". If the audio compression stream says "unknown", then it is AC3. What I do is use AviMux4.0 and to extract the audio only (no video). Right-click audio and select "compression". Select "PCM" and then under the "name" drop-down menu, select "untitled". What I did was to select "CD quality" to give it higher quality with a bigger file size. In "Attributes", select "44.100kHz, 16 bit, stereo". Click "ok" and in the "audio preroll" and "interleave", enter 100 for both. Fill in your output filename and change ".avi" to ".wav"

When it's done, go into TMPGEnc, open your video source. For audio source, open your WAV. Set your SVCD settings. And in "audio", select "use audio edit" and go to "setting". Click on "normalize" and press the play button to test your audio. It usually works for me after I click normalize. So I then encode.

But then again, if you don't have AC3 audio in your file, just ignore what I said...

I'll try AudioMux.. And I do have PCM audio file - no compression

So...no AC3? Then...maybe you can try increasing the volume using TMPGEnc? Can you describe the output audio being bad?

Never mind the previous post... I looked at the File Info in VirtualDub and in the AUDIO STREAM it tells me the name of the speciefic codec. It's just an average DivX movie. So is it or is it not an AC3? And what do I do if it isn't?

If it was AC3 then you would Know as Tmpgenc can"t decode AC3(In most cases)..Just do what was Mentioned earlier, Use the audio settings to Boost the Vilume and maybe Normalize it a Bit incase it starts to clip..I usually usea Seperate Program to Encode the audio and it has a Gain Feature to boost the volume...cheers

A friend Emailed the TechTV page to me and when I read it I thought it said that the software would convert .avi files, but when I try I get error messages. Maybe it's just me, but I bought DVD Copy Plus and I can't get that to work either. I thought that I should try this one before I bought it in case I couldn't get it to work either. Any help?

Thx
B.

Maybe you should Post the error so then we Can tell you what is wrong..It is Probably something simple Like the "Can Not open Or Unsupported" Error or Maybe the "Can not Find P3P Package" error..There is also a "Search" Function here that would have your solution, You should try it before Posting..Just type the error in the Search Box and Go...

I was wondering if you were to encode a good quality AVI that is around the size 600x400, would it be wise for you to encode it to size 352x240 or 480x480. I can make a VCD or an SVCD now. So which one loses quality and which ones don't? Let's say, I will use constant bitrate with a quality of 100%! So...? I have always used SVCD format so the quality always comes out nicer. When I'm making normal VCDs, the quality is just so bad than the official VCDs that I buy from stores (not the bootleg ones). :( I don't get it HOW they make it that nice, even on a VCD.

Woops, the size 600x400 above is just a sample. My real AVI is 416x304. So?

No one's going to help me? :( I did a test. I burned 2 test clips, one at 480x480 and one at 352x240. The 480x480 one had more artifacts. Has anyone had problems with parts of the video going offscreen in 352x240? It seems I added too much borders and the video is a square the middle of the TV.

when i encode i keep getting this "-272762914 859034592" error does anyone know why or how i can stop this?

What type of File are you encodeing and is the error Just thos numbers or is there anything else..

AVI, yea thats all, i got the error to go away but theres no audio help me!

AVI, yea thats all, i got the error to go away but theres no audio help me!

Hi,

I have a real big problem and I'm testing and testing and testing since more then 1 week!

I want to convert 2 Anime Series, so that I can play them on my DVD Player. I've got one Series in "16:9 Format, XVid, 640x360"
and the other one is " 4:3 Format, DivX, 640x480".
Now I want to convert them to (X)VCD, I have tried EVERYTHING!!! It won't work!
When I start the conversion, everything looks fine, the Preview Pictures are all ok. When I play the finished MPG in Media Player, everything is fine too. The whole Picture is there... But when I insert the burned CD in my DVD-Player, the picture misses some parts on the left, right and lower edges.

I tried really often with the 4:3 Movie, and I realized, that with a MovieSize of 480x480 there are "only" circa 20 Pixels on the left, 50 Pixels on the Right and 20 on the lower edge missing. When I convert the movie with a MovieSize of 640x480, the missing parts are bigger.
I tried everything! I used all the "aspect Ratio" and "Video arrange" Methods, nothing worked.

Remember, the Video looks nice and right on PC, everything is there in the File, but the DVD Player won't play it! He cuts off the picture on the Frames. But he does also on the normal VCD resolution (352x288). I tried ALL Presets, they won't work. It's all the same. I tried to play the CD on 4 different DVD Players, all the same SHIT!

So if anybody knows, how to solve my Problem, please write me, because I'm nearly on giving up!

Oh I would like to mention, that I HAVE already worked with TMPGEnd and converted some Movies already, everything worked fine, but THESE two Movies won't work. Maybe the resolution of them??? I don't know!

PLEASE HELP ME!!!

THX!

I'm having the same problem with my DVD player. It was very el-cheapo so I didn't bother. Perhaps some of the other guys know the technical explenation to this cropping behaviour when playing VCD 2.0 in our DVD player.

It isn't a cheap one (or better, it WASN'T a cheap one, when I buyed it). It's a Sony DVP NS-400D. But I tried also on a newer Sony a CyberHome and another one... (forgotten).
Waiting for help ....

When I use nero vision 2.0 and build a slideshow the main screen a rectangle near the border. I assume that that is the screen region were are talking about.
I'm happy to hear that it's not my el-cheapo DVD player.
Maybe it is by design, but then why are the standard resolutions
352x288 and 352x240 if the edges drop off?

After 50 more tries, I found out, that if I create a Video of the Size 720x576 (DVD-Size) and using Video-Arrange-Method Center at a Size of 640x480 (the Size of my AVI). I get the full Frame, but then I've got a big black Border around it, so that the Video looks very small.
Then I tried something like 656x496 and 640x480 inside, or 640x480 and 480x480 inside. But NOTHING worked, the cutted Edges where there again! I HATE IT!!!!
And I don't understand it! what settings are wrong???? I think I will give it up. This is so boring!

Make a picture with the size 352x288 and draw some reference lines with text (lets say 0 to 100%) on it, both verticaly and horizontaly. Make a avi of it (can tmpgenc do this?) and then convert it with tmpgenc into a 352x288 mpeg. Make a videocd from it. Not so much work i think.
Play the sucker on your dvd. Wacth the percentages on your screen. No you know exactly ho much of the screen drops over the edges.
Lets say that the part of your screen on the dvd player is 300x200 (just a sample).
Now encode your original avi like you used to do it with 352x288. Choose for the video arrange method "center custom size" . Now you fetch your calculator. lets say your source avi is 600x200 (aspect ratio 3:1). 300 must be the width and that makes the height 100. I don't know if this is exatly correct but fiddle around with it. use preview to see the result.
Perhaps this help.
Cheer.

Hi all,

when creating a SVCD from a DVD, I create MP2 files from the relevant AC3 tracks. These MP2 files are already in SVCD format (224KBps, 44,1KHz).
Is it ok to just mux the track with the video mpeg-stream?
Would save a lot of time and HDD-space rather then creating a temporal wave file which has to be reincoded.

Thanks.

SP

In a Word...YES, This is what you should be doing as re-encodeing the File will Just degrade the Quality so you Should just encode the Video then Mux the audio to it after...

Hi All,

I transfer the video from my Victor DVHS recorder to my pc. The original source
is 1920x1024 20Mbps 29.9fps interlance. The size too big and can't play smooth at my pc. So I try to use Tmpgenc to encode it to 1024x576 at 15Mbps CBR.

I have some questions about the encoding.

1)can i encode it to non-interlance? I have try to set the encoding method in non-interlance. But it have some "wave effect" in fast motion.

2)can i encode the original souce to 59.9fps to make the video more smooth.

Please advice.

Thanks,

Chisato

First all can I ask where you intend to view this MPEG and what for?

>1)can i encode it to non-interlance? I have try to set the encoding method in non-interlance. But it have some "wave effect" in fast motion.

The artifacts you are seeing are interlace artifacts.
You can encode it to Non-interlace(progressive), but you will have to de-interlace it first. To be honest there is no point as you will lose quality unless you intend to watch this MPEG on a PC or other progressive display.
Depending on how your DVHS records the material you may simply be able to IVTC the material to return it to a 23.976 fps progressive source. This will allow you to encode as progressive and will prevent any interlacing artifacts and won't affect the quality.

Secondly the bitrate and resolution you are encoding to are quite high and will take quite a powerful machine to render. So unless this MPEG is only for archiving purposes and not for general viewing for others, then I wouln't use such a high setting.

>2)can i encode the original souce to 59.9fps to make the video more smooth.

In a word NO. Firstly it WON'T make the video play more smoothly, no matter what fps you set it at, as a matter a fact if you change the frame rate from the original it will play less smooth because of the conversion.
Besides 29.07 fps is high enough to produce a smooth playback any way and your playback problem is not due to the frame rate, but your high resolution and bitrate settings.

Hers's an answer from someone who does this ALL THE TIME. Me.

As stated, 1920x1088x60i (interlaced) is a very cumbersome format and is overkill when the goal is to archive for DVD and/or view on computer Mpeg players.

I convert 16:9 video source to 960x544x60p (progressive). A bitrate of 9Mbs seems adequate and saves file space. The result is stunningly smooth AND crisp when played with WinDVD. Furthermore, this format can be easily converted to 720x480x60i for authoring on DVDs.

The key is AVISynth. I use a new version of DVD2AVI (DVD2AVIT3.zip) and the mpeg2dec3.dll plugin to source transport streams.

A very subtle point is that video (non-film) source material MUST be "Bob()" deinterlaced in AVISynth first. This fixes the 1/2 pixel jitter which would occur if you just did a "SeparateFields()" to go from 60i to 60p.

Here is a script outline (assuming mpeg2dec3.dll is used):

Mpeg2Source("video_file.ts").YV12ToYUY2().AssumeTFF()
Bob() # convert to 59.94p
BicubicResize(960,544)

For film, the script needs to do an inverse telecine:

Mpeg2Source("film_file.ts").YV12ToYUY2().AssumeFrameBased()
SeparateFields().SelectEven() # convert to 29.97p
BicubicResize(960,544)
Decimate() # convert to 23.976p

(This is not my usual coding style so the above syntax may be off a bit.)

Legacy 4:3 broadcast material which is "windowboxed" can be cropped and sized down to 720x480 instead of 960x544 without any loss of resolution.

Now to the original question. Absolutely you should encode at 59.94 to get video which is smooth. For this you need to select the MP@HL profile in TMPGEnc. Extend the number of frames in a GOP to about 36 and select a bitrate of about 9Mbs for normal motion video. TMPGEnc will automatically select progressive when loading source at that frame rate.

Film material which has been reduced to 23.976fps can push to even lower bitrates.

The real fly-in-the-ointment is audio sync. You will probably be muxing the original AC3 back into the video. Frames can be trimmed or black frames added to the start of the video by AVISynth in order to compensate.

Or use AC3Delay.exe to adjust the audio file itself.

Converting to 720x480x60i for DVD also requires some subtle manipulations to put back the 1/2 line offset for each field. My script is not handy but goes something like this:

vid = Mpeg2Source("file_960_544_60p.mpg").BicubicResize(720, 479)
vid_ff = vid.SelectEven().AddBorders(0, 1, 0, 0).VerticalReduceBy2()
vid_sf = vid.SelectOdd().AddBorders(0, 0, 0, 1).VerticalReduceBy2()
vid_new = Interleave(vid_ff, vid_sf).AssumeFieldBased().AssumeTFF()
return vid_new.Weave()

(I may have the AddBorders() parameters swapped. Experiment with this. Note that adding 1 line to 479 lines gets you to 480 and reducing that to 240 gets you the needed 1/2 line offset for each field.)

My AVISynth scripts shown above failed to include a ConvertToRGB24() at the end which is needed by TMPGEnc.

Even with that, these scripts are sometimes rejected by TMPG and I have to go through VirtualDub first.

> First all can I ask where you intend to view this MPEG and what for?

I will play my video at projector and pc. :D

Thanks ashy and wcpaul. I will try in coming hoilday.

>Now to the original question. Absolutely you should encode at 59.94 to get video which is smooth. For this you need to select the MP@HL profile in TMPGEnc. Extend the number of frames in a GOP to about 36 and select a bitrate of about 9Mbs for normal motion video. TMPGEnc will automatically select progressive when loading source at that frame rate.

Hmm...
Are you referring to originally encoding the source to 59.94 or actually converting the original 29.97 source to 59.94?
If this is the case this is bad advice.
Surely you realise any kind of frame rate conversion is undesirable and will cause playback artifacts and won't make the playback any smoother. Even if you did convert the frame rate to 59.94. It would still actually be 29.97 material.

"Hmm...
Are you referring to originally encoding the source to 59.94 or actually > converting the original 29.97 source to 59.94?
If this is the case this is bad advice."

Ashy, have you ever worked with 1920x1088 HDTV source material?

Each FIELD is 1920x544. And they arrive at a rate of 60 FIELDS PER SECOND!!!! That is FAR HIGHER resolution than DVD at twice the frame rate.

Resizing these fields and running them progressively results in 960x544 video at 60fps. No computer screen is 1920 pixels across so the horizontal resizing is not significantly lossy.

Viewing my 960x544x60p material at full screen with WinDVD looks as good as any Hi Definition TV display I have ever seen because, when viewed at proper distances, the apparent resolution of HDTV is in this ballpark.

When you compare a Leno Show music performance at 960x544x60p (31 MPixels/sec) to any DVD film material at 720x480x24p (8 MPixels/s) the result is totally amazing. 31Mpixels/sec IN NO WAY goes beyond what the eye and brain can process so you get a picture with 4x the information (along with kick-ass AC3 audio).

Right, first of all, this wasn't the god damn question!
I will quote the question:
>2)can i encode the original souce to 59.9fps to make the video more smooth.

Ok? My answer was to this question. Not to the fact that using Avisynth scripts and BOB de-interlacing the source would double the frame rate thus resulting in 59.9 fps

I was referring to frame rate conversion and not simply turning each field into frame and doubling the frame rate using the BOB filter.

This is your answer:
>Now to the original question. Absolutely you should encode at 59.94 to get video which is smooth. For this you need to select the MP@HL profile in TMPGEnc. Extend the number of frames in a GOP to about 36 and select a bitrate of about 9Mbs for normal motion video. TMPGEnc will automatically select progressive when loading source at that frame rate.

You did not state in the above answer that the frame rate should be set at 59.94 in TMPG only when using your script.

I was assuming that the source was going to be directly loaded into TMPG and you were suggesting to simply set the frame rate at 59.94.
As any body knows frame rate CONVERSION is a bad thing with TMPG or any other process for that matter.

It's fine to use 59.94 if loading your script into TMPG, but you did not make this clear and this is why I posted the reply I did.

>Each FIELD is 1920x544. And they arrive at a rate of 60 FIELDS PER SECOND!!!! That is FAR HIGHER resolution than DVD at twice the frame rate.

Don't you mean 60 frames per second. 60 fields per second would be the same as DVD seeing as NTSC video material is 29.97/30 fps which equals 60 fields per second.

Maybe it's just a misunderstanding, but maybe you should clarify yourself in future before having a pop.

Well, I think it is fairly obvious in my post that I was advocating conversion to 59.94fps progressive outside of TMPGEnc then using TMPGEnc to encode without any tranformation. Hence the script examples and instruction to use MP@HL.

I never use any of TMPGEnc's crude filters or conversions and did not think to make a distiction up front.

None of us have the time to write dozen page technical white papers on these techniques. We can just hope to point people in a direction and let them sort out the low level details.

I am having problems with mpeg tools. Last night it worked fine but today it just hangs. What i am doing is trying to merge to files together and after i load them and hit edit it just freezes/goes white. Anyone have any suggestions ?

Thanks in advance