Minion got my "No video out, only audio" problem fixed, oh joy, run TMPGE for an hour only to find strange colors and shading of only a few bits (I think). I have a screenshot at http://www.paulv.net/image2.jpg I have tried this now on two AVI files (DV from Pinnacle Studio)on both VBR and CBR. Same thing, although I got smart and am now testing on a very short clip.

Here is what I'm trying to do, maybe you can make suggestions or corrections.

I have old 8mm analog tapes, which by all measure is the same quality as gold old VHS. According to the Pinnacle default for VHS quality to MPEG, it is 352x240 @ 2400 bits, can't recall what audio. Makes perfect sense to me. But if I record that quality, my standalone DVD player (Apex 1200) won't read it as a VCD. OK, I understand that VCD is supposed to be 1150, although I've read that one can use as high as 1775 and still have it be read as MPEG1.

Since my goal is to put these 8mm's onto DVD anyway, I thought I would encode to MPEG-2, same 352x240, but VBR. I also set TMPGE for MPEG Layer 2 audio as my goal is to save DVD space, and although the old camcorder was recording stereo, let's face it, it is effectively mono.

Perhaps I should go back to MPEG1 @ 2400 bits. Would a standalone DVD play that, or would it, too, see it as a non-standard VCD? Or could I just change the header in MPEG tools to fool any VCD or standalone DVD? (I would burn a test disk, except I'm about out and waiting for the UPS man to deliver more.)

Many, many thanks for wading through this,

pzo

Well The screen shot you left was Just a Blank Media Player screen so i can not help you there.....
If you are Trying to Make a DVD but have Low Resolution files then useing 352+240 is a Valid DVD resolution it is called the SIF Format which means you can Make a Valid DVD useing Mpeg1 or 2 (I prefer Mpeg2 for Quality) and 48000hz audio ,the standard actually calls for Mpeg1 at a Max of 1800kbs but Mpeg 2 Works Just as well or better and Most DVD authoring Programs should author this Format without a Problem....Cheers

I want to convert a PAL MPEG1 or PAL MPEG-2 (which ever is easiest) into NTSC MPEG-2 or DVD (equivalent) VOB?

What is the easiest way of doing this? I really dont understand the frame rates issue and audio stretching! Is there some software out there which'll do all of this automatically? I mean if some VCRs and DVD player can easily reproduce these formats then why is it so hard to convert it on the PC?

Thanx

Hello!
I've encoded an AVI file with 16:9 aspect ratio to an MPEG2 file with the same aspect ratio in order to make a SVCD.
When I play such SVCD on my 16:9 TV with the desktop DVD player set to 16:9 output, the aspect ratio is correct but the left and right sides of the video are out of the TV border just like the video wuold be cropped out on these borders.
The video arrange method which I've set is Full Screen (Keep Aspect Ratio 2).
Does anybody know why?

Many thanks for the help.

Most Players don't Play anamorphic SVCDs right.
My Afreey does it the same way zu descriped. But there is a little trick, maybe it works on your Player too: Put a DVD (a REAL DVD) into the Player, start the Movie. Stop the Player an insert the SVCD.
After that, my Afreey plays 16:9-Videos on SVCD with the right size.

>Most Players don't Play anamorphic SVCDs right.
>Put a DVD (a REAL DVD) into the Player, start the Movie. Stop the Player an insert the SVCD.
>After that, my Afreey plays 16:9-Videos on SVCD with the right size.

Thank you very much for the suggestion.
I've tried that but, unfortunatly, it doesn't work on my DVD player.
Just one more question: does it depend only on the desktop player, considering that a software one (ie. PowerDVD) works well?

Many thanks, again.

Why don't you just create your SVCD's with a res of 720x480 instead of 480x480.

I create all my SVCD's with this resolution and not had any problems on any players.
Your player should have no problem playing it.

I am evaluating TMPGEnc Plus, and will probably buy it, but please consider this suggestion to smooth out my workflow.

I am capturing a number of 3 hour VHS tapes via AVI, to archive to mpeg2 files and create DVDs. I want to split the 3 hour AVI shorter mpegs. To do this I am using the Source Range function to set up each job, then run them all in batch mode.

This works fine, but is rather tedious, as for each file, I need to go through the whole wizard, mark the start and end points, including writing down the end point so that it can be used as start point of the next section.

Maybe there is an easier way that I haven't found?

What I would like to see, is that the Source Range function is able to mark several 'cut' points that are then used to set up the batch jobs in one hit, from one screen. This would save a huge amount of time.

Otherwise great product, and so far the only one that I have tried that hasn't crashed!

>Maybe there is an easier way that I haven't found?

Yes...just don't use the wizard.
Unless you're an absolute amatuer you shouldn't be using the wizard.

So you want to encode to DVD? Easy...first click the 'Load' button in the main screen and you should find yourself in the TMPG template folder, if not you will have to navigate there.
Once there double click DVD(PAL) or DVD(NTSC) template.
Next load your AVI then click the 'Setting' button.
Under the advanced TAB set the 'source aspect ratio' to either '16:9 Display' or '4:3 Display' depeding on your source and the 'Arrange method' to 'Full screen(keep aspect ratio) then click the 'Video tab' and right click on the words 'Aspect ratio' and unlock it.
When unlocked change the output ratio to either 4:3 or 16:9 whichever is desired.

Now click the 'Setting' button then the advance TAB and finally double click the 'source range' filter below and set your first cut point then click File>add current project to batch list>MPEG select the output and it will add to the list.
Go back to the source range and set your next cut point then follow the same procedure for adding to the batch list. Do this for each cut point then just start the batch encode when done.

If that still seems to complicated then go ahead and use the wizard to set up the process, but after setting the first cut point don't check the 'batch encoding' box and uncheck the 'start encoding' box and click OK.

This will take you to the main window. Now click the 'Setting' button then the advance TAB and finally double click the 'source range' filter below and set your second cut point. Click Ok in all the boxes then in the main window click File>add current project to batch list>MPEG file and choose the output.
Perform the proedure again for each cut.

Thanks so much. That is a huge improvement. Effective if not intuitive!

My modified suggestion is that you add a 'Add to batch list' button onto the Source Range screen. This will further reduce the moving back and forward through the screens.

Thanks again.

Thanks so much. That is a huge improvement. Effective if not intuitive!

My modified suggestion is that you add a 'Add to batch list' button onto the Source Range screen. This will further reduce the moving back and forward through the screens.

Thanks again.

Are there any plans for AMD64 optimizations?

Hi, I'm new to and trying TMPGenc (just how does one try to say that?)but can't get to first base. I can get audio, but no video, it is just black as coal. I've looked around on the board here to no avail. Probably just blind or bad luck.

Here's what I've done and what I've tried as experiments.

The basic is run Pinnacle Studio 8, convert to DV type avi, same frame size, rate, PCM audio as original DV input to the computer.

IMPORTANT NOTE: My original tapes are basic 8mm analog (believe it or not, my camcorder back in 1986 used a vidicon tube!). My Sony Digital8 plays the tape and sends the output via firewire as a digital avi file. Works perfectly in Pinnacle, outputs fine to anything I want using Pinnacle. I have also tried the raw digital avi file from the camera for conversion in TMPGend without any success, either.

I have also tried MPEG-1 output, same thing. I have tried the Wizard, which defaults to separate vid and audio, don't want that, no Wizard, output to single file. Nada-ski's. I'm about out of options that I can think of. Since I have PowerDVD, I should be set for the codec, even without one built into my trial version. MPEG-2 created by Pinnacle play back in WMP.

Why TMPGenc? I want more control, and the MPEG2 encoding in Pinnacle sucks. Lots of pixelation, no control on bit rates, etc. And since my analog tapes are of relatively low quality, I'm intrigued with T's 1/4 scale low quality DVD setting.

Any thoughts? Please feel free to email directly, paulXXXv@paulXXXv.net, delete the X's, of course.

Thanks, pzo

You Should be able to Fix this by going to "Options" to "Enviromental settings" to "VFAPI Plugins" and Raise the Priority of the "Direct show File Reader" to "2"...Tmpgenc seems to loke certain codecs more than others so if you are useing DV Codecs then Try the Microsoft DV Codec or a VFW DV Codec like MainConcept or Sony/Panasonic DV Codecs, and try not to use any Pinnacle Proprietary Codecs....Cheers

Thanks, Minion. I look into this over the next few days. Where could I find these codecs? I have several of those generic multi-codec packages installed and have a selection of maybe 30 under the Pinnacle "Make AVI" setting. The DV codec in Pinnacle I presume came with Pinnacle. I would presume it OK because I think it just takes the appropriate frames from the AVI files made during capture. i.e., doesn't change or algorythm anything, grab and run. It blasts right through the encoding.

Anyway, thanks for your response and I'll let you know after some tests.

Paul

Aaargghh!
Big mistake, never install those crazy codec packs. These things have killed more systems than they have helped. You will just end up with codec conflicts.
Installing one is bad enough, but several?

Thanks, Minion! That did it, even if it took me awhile to figure out how to increase the priority, duh.

Dear all, please help me !

I have success converted from avi file to mpg file. But when I want to merge from 2 to 1 file, some time is success, some problem the program can not work and have faild massage : "the file .mpg is not compatible with other MPEG file".

So, what does it mean of this faild and how can I fix this ?

If you want to merge 2 Files into 1 File Both Files have to be exactly the same...The both have to have the Same "Video/Audio Format,resolution, Framerate,Audio Sample rate and audio Bitrate.....

some time when I convert file to VCD file, the program say : "write error occurred at adress 77F83905 of module 'ntdll.dll' with 00000000". What does this mean of this error, and how can I fix this error.

And some .avi file I convert to .mpg file has problem : the video signal is black in amost time (sound still ok) but suddenly appear in the end of file (just a few minute). Could you please help me fix this problem

Well for the Problem with the Video being Black you can usually fix this by going to "Options" to "Enviromental settings" to "Vfapi Plugins" and Raise the "Direct show File Reader" to "2"....The Problem with the ntdll.dll error is Probably because your Source File is compressed useing the XviD codec and Tmpgenc doesn"t seem to like files compressed useing this codec so the only possible solution is to install the "FFdshow Decoder" and configure it to decode Xvid files and if that doesn"t help i would try Frame serveing the file to tmpgenc useing something like "Virtual Dub" or "AVISynth"......Cheers

I'm seeing an issue with an AVI I've encoded (using Tmpegenc) and created a menu with chapters using DVD Author.

When burned (on a NEC 1300A firmware 1.08) and played on my standalone DVD player (Samsung DVD-S221), some chapters (when jumped to) slow to a very low framerate for 1 to 2 seconds. During this time, the screen gets blocky and the sound gets distorted.

I've tried burning the disc (both Verbatim DVD+RW and Memorex DVD-R) from both folders and ISO. Both show the same problem.

I believe this is an issue with Tmpegenc because I've burned the same AVI (with chapters at the same locations) using Ulead Moviemaker. Moviemaker produces a flawless disc.

I've also tried burning the ISO generated from DVD Author with Moviemaker, but, it still has the same chapter problem.

Any suggestions as to how to work around this issue would be appreciated.

What did you use for Encoding the Video?
Did you use open or closed GOPs?
What's the Bitrate-Settings of your Video?

There are many issues to produce problems while jumping to other Chapters, some of them are problems, the players have, some of them are produced by Authoring-Tools.

I used Tmpgenc Plus 2.520.54.163. I'm rather a novice at this, so, I let Tmpgenc make all the decisions.

I did choose DVD/CBR/MP2. Whereas, with the "auto" options selected, it chose a 7368 video bitrate with a 384 audio bitrate.

As for GOP, it chose a structure of: IBBPBBPBBPBBPBBP (standard) and it had Closed GOP selected and Detect scene change selected. Force picture type setting as not selected.

I see "Closed GOP" means that the MPG can be "reedited with other software at a later time". What does this mean exactly? Does it mean that it can be edited later, but, only with Tmpgenc, or, does it mean that it can never be edited?

Do some players have problems with certain GOP settings?

Thank you for your reply.

On open GOPs, the last B-Frames in a GOP do refer to the I-Frame of the following GOP. This makes it really hard (not impossible!) to do some Editing or to set exact Chapter-Points.

I, by myself, do use open GOPs, because you can spare some Bitrate with open GOPs. The disadvantage is a "weak" Chapterpoint setting.

OK, that's the Theory, the real world do provide other problems: The DVD-Players, there are big differences. Some will do a proper Jumping to Chapters, some will not. It depants on a lot of parameters, like GOP-Structure, Bitrates and so on. Some Players do have very small Buffers to spare Production-Costs, such Players are very sensitive to the settings. Maybe your Player is one of this kind.

Hint: Thre are DVD-Authoring-Programs with Frame-Indexing-Technics (like DVDLab), they are mor exact on setting Chapter-Points - but: that's not a guarantee!

IÃÎ definitely interested in supporting the lowest common denominator as far as DVD players. (My DVD player has never had a problem with chapters on movie DVDs.)

As I mentioned before, Ulead MovieMaker produced a DVD for me that didnÃÕ have any problems with chapters. Of course, they make it very difficult to know exactly what their MPEG encoder is doing.

In your opinion, what would be the best settings to support the widest breadth of DVD players on the market? (I.e. what are the ÅÔafestEsettings?)

Is Open GOP one of these settings?

It turns out that I found an excellent article about how to configure Tmpgenc for best results (including DVD player compatibility). It is here:

http://dvd-hq.info/Compression.html

After following this article, not only does my video work flawlessly on my standalone DVD player, it looks better than it did before.

I still this is an issue that the authors of Tmpgenc need to address. The default settings to produce an DVD-compatible MPEG are incorrect. My DVD player is pretty mainstream and the settings simply don't work.

Thanks for your help.

I am putting MPEG-2 video files on a CDROM for desktop pc playback. I am not concerned with DVD player compatibility, and I have decided against using divx. I will be packaging an MPEG-2 encoder on the CDROM so everyone with a pc can watch the videos using windows media player. The videos are small (about 14 minutes long total) so file size is not a concern.

My question is what video bitrate should I use to get the absolute maximum quality pc playback - but not so high that an 'average' computer can't play it. By average I will say a 1 gigahertz computer. Currently I'm using a CQ setting with 100% quality.

Since I am aiming for CDROM delivery (as opposed to making them copy all the files to their hard drive), I realize one bottleneck will be the speed of the CDROM drive. At this time I am planning on making a system requirement of an 8x CDROM drive, so this should give me a 'cap' of 9600kbps to work with. But I'm afraid a video bitrate set this high will cause an 'average' computer to stutter. Any ideas as to what a 'safe' bitrate setting might be? thanks!!!

craig

I'd say that 6-8 Mbps should be no problem at all to handle for a 600MHz+ CPU, provided the graphics card is overlay capable (all modern ones are) and DMA is enabled for the drive (W2k defaults to PIO!).

Another problem might be the size of the file: a CDR80 gives you a mode 1 capacity of roughly 703 MB (79:58 x 75 x 2048 / 1024 / 1024). Divided by 14x60 that makes a max of 856 KB/s or 6.8 Mbps, running the CD drive at ~6x.

Nils

8 Mbs is way too high for CD-ROM playback. The CD rom is not fast enough.

A 1x cd rom is 150Kbs.
A 10x is 1.5Mbs.
A 20x is about 3 Mbs.

There are 50x+ drives out but 99% of the peopel don't have them and that is just a burst speed. I have to see a drive sustain 50x playback especially on a CD-r.

Just because you can fit it on a CD does not mean you can play it back in real time off of it.

I would not go above 4 Mbs on a cd.

If you use 5 - 6 it will play back fine at first but as the laser moves to the edge of disc it will be choppy and sound out of sync.

Your best bet is to use SVCD bit rate or slight above.

Video Guy

ok wait a second here, cause i'm getting conflicting info.

is a 1x cdrom drive 150kbps or 150KBps ? ie kiloBITS or kiloBYTES ?

i can find several references on the net that say that it is kiloBYTES:

http://www.faculty.iu-bremen.de/birk/lectures/PC101-2003/12optmass/Mass%20Storage/cdrom.htm
http://www.weirdwildweb.com/homebrew/
http://www.piesoftwareinc.co.uk/textonly/cdrom.html

that's where i got my estimation from:
150KBps = 1200kbps X 8x cdrom = 9600kbps max data rate.

Craig you're absolutely correct.

The term KB/s with regard to CDROM data transfer speeds is refering to KILOBYTES not KILOBITS.

Kilobytes is expressed as KB/s, Kilobits is expressed as Kb/s


Also data transfer speeds refers to audio data transfer and MPEG data is transferred at the same speed as audio as they both use the same size sectors and no error correction.

Look at it this way it only requires a 1x drive for VCD playback which has a data transfer rate of:
10 megabyte/min
10240 Kilobytes/min
170 Kilobytes/s

A 1x drive can actually transfer 1.5 Mb/s(megabits) or 1500 kilobits/s of audio or VCD data.

1x Mpeg data transfer rate is 172 kilobytes/s.

As you can see from the calculation above 1x is enough for VCD.
If it was KILOBITS the trasfer rate was refering to it would take a 8x drive to just to play a standard VCD!

170 Kilobytes/sec x 8 = 1360 kilobits/s
1360 Kilobits/s / 172 Kilobits/s = 8



Also DVD players which are capable of playing SVCD only need a 2x drive therefore Craig you are correct, it would only take an 8 x for a bitrate of 9.8Mb/s

9.8Mb/s / 1.5Mb/s = 6.53Mb/s

Here are some sources to verify:
http://cdmediaworld.com/hardware/cdrom/cd_techinfo.shtml
http://cdmediaworld.com/hardware/cdrom/cd_techinfo.shtml
http://66.102.11.104/search?q=cache:BK-ZXCoVFmEJ:www.eetasia.com/ARTICLES/1999APR/1999APR08_MSD_TAC1.PDF+2+x+drive+for+svcd&hl=en&ie=UTF-8

i settled on a 6000kbps bitrate plus 224 for the audio. so far it plays very well on two computers with different cdrom drives, but both cdrom drives are over 24x speed. it's hard to find an 8x cdrom drive to test it with! i'll have to check the local museums. one of the test computers was 'only' 866mhz, so it looks like 6000kpbs is a safe bitrate for what i would consider an average computer.

thanks for the help folks

Download Nero Drivespeed and set your drive to 8x.
http://www.cdspeed2000.com/go.php3?link=nerodrivespeed.html

I have used the TMPGEnc 2.521.58 to convert file .avi to file .mpg is ok with good sound. But when I use the Nero program to write these files as VCD disk, the program ask me must convert the .mpg files to the VCD file (.DAT files) and it waste a big time to convert these .mpg files as VCD disk. the quality of files is low too. Who can help me how to fix this problem ?

First of all you need to make sure you encoded to MPEG.
If you did then I guess you must have split the MPEG using the Merge&Cut tool. If this is the case then you probably chose the wrong stream setting.
Make sure the stream setting is 'MPEG1 Video CD'

You can repair your existing MPEG by running it through the simple multiplexer using the mentioned setting.

We are trying to cut and merge several short captured (DV) video sequences to SVCD.
We're encoding them to MPEG2 first and when merging the files to one large output file, a small number of frames at the end of each sequence gets lost. Is this a bug or does this depend on the GOP structure of the files? How can this be avoided? (I even tried just running a single sequence straight through cut/merge and still the end ist lost.)

Additionally, when cutting MPEG2 files: I understand that TMPGENC can only cut at GOP borders, but it may be highly desirable to have some kind of indication while chosing the cut point.

Best regards
Nils Petersen

....
Additionally, when cutting MPEG2 files: I understand that TMPGENC can only cut at GOP borders, but it may be highly desirable to have some kind of indication while chosing the cut point.
....

I totally agree, and have sent this request many times to the developers.

What I have been doing is capturing at a 8mbs constants bit rate, then make a first pass with TMPGEnc, with the settings to produce a super high quality file contining only IFrames (this pass it is pretty darn fast). Then I use TMPGEnc's DVDAuthor to slice, dice, and merge clips together (it has a real nice merge and cut), and take the resulting DVD files, and run them though DVD2AVI and feed them back to TMEGEnc for the final render. Doing it in this manner allows me to slice and dice to a single frame.

Sure wish TMEGEnc would improve the cutting tools. It is possible to do, but would require code to turn those P and B frames to an IFrame.

Joe

That is Correct Tmpgenc can only Cut on I frames so if your Cut is not on an I frame it will moove to the closest One...The only real way to overcome this is to use a High Quality Frame Accurate Mpeg editor Like "Mpeg2VCR" which works great for Mpeg editing....Cheers

Thanks for info, folks - I'll try the solutions suggested.

The cutting within GOP structures (or at least an indication of the GOP borders) would be a very desirable wish list item for the future.

However the bug in Cut&Merge (yes, that's definitely a bug) currently restrains me from buying. Is it possible to reevaluate a future version on the same machine? Otherwise that might be it for TMPGENC, as our evaluation time limit will not survive the weekend...

CU
Nils

It isn"t a Bug in the "Merge & Cut" that is stopping you from editing in Gop"s, This is the way it is supposed to be as Most Mpeg editors work this way and Only the Most High end Mpeg editors are Frame accurate and thay are very Expensive as I only know of 2 Frame accurate Mpeg2 editors and One of them costs about $1500 US...For the Price Tmpgenc is the Best Encoder you will get and you will not Find an encoder that comes with a frame accurate Mpeg editor as Mpeg editors are more expensive than Mpeg encoders, and you will be hard pressed to find a better mpeg Encoder than Tmpgenc in the Price range....Cheers

Cutting within GOP-Structures isn't possible without reencoding some Frames. Only expensive Programs are able to do that - with a loss in Quality at the Cutting-Points.

If you want to try an other Cutting-Tool, try the German Program MPEG2Schnitt.

http://www.mdienert.de/mpeg2schnitt/

@Minion
Running a sequence through Merge&Cut _without_ any cutting and losing the last couple of frames is most definitely a bug, sorry...

@B-Racer
Thanks for the suggestion, I'll check that one out.