I have been trying to use toolame as an external encoder with TMPGEnc 2.53 in an effort to get better audio quality. Each time I get an error message saying "toolame.exe cannot be used as external encoder". Can someone please help me with this? All I want is better audio quality on my VCD's when I am converting .avi to .mpg......the audio when I use TMPGEnc sounds tinny.
Please help a newbie.
Thanx, Pistoly.

Make sure you are loading it in the "Mpeg layer 2" slot not the "Mpeg Layer 3", and if you still can"t get it to work you could try "SCMPX" it is a good audio encoder for tmpgenc and it is a sample rate converter also,you can find it on google........

Thanx Minion,
I tried SCMPX and TMPGEnc said the same thing "SCMPX.exe can not be used as external encoder". I must have some settings wrong in TMPGEnc... Aside from going into Environmental Settings and selecting Layer-2 and browsing to the SCMPX.exe file, is there other settings that you have to set?
Thanx,
Pistoly

You can just not encode the audio with Tmpgenc, Ashy says that "MpegDJ encoder" is a good mp2 audio encoder and very fast, you can use "DB Power Amp" with the MP2 codec and use that to encode the audio after extracting it to wav,there is a Toolame Mp2 codec for DB Power amp also, I do that sometimes and it works quite good, have you tried deleteing Tmpgenc and re-installing it and see if it corrects the problem??You could have gotten a buggy copy of Tmpgenc...

just downloaded ocean's eleven, and was using olli's guide to changing the framerate, (using virtual dub and avifrate), my problem is that i cannot use ful processing mode in virtual dub, meaing that i cannot use cool edit to stretch the audio, i get the error "The requested audio compression is not compatable with the input format, check the sampling rate and the channel count of the input match those of the requested format" i have never come acroos this before. so any help would be much appreciated

thanks in advance

I guess you are doing a "Pal to NTSC" or NTSC to Pal" conversion, there a couple of things you can try, you can extract the audio to Wav with Tmpgenc, that is if Tmpgenc can read the audio, you do this by loading your file into Tmpgenc then go to "file" to "output to Wav" and that might work but if Virtual Dub is giveing you a problem then Tmpgenc might give you a problem but it is worth a try...Another thing could be that the audio could be of an incompatible format like AC3 and for that you would need an "AC3 decoder", and what you should do is analize the error than Virtual Dub is giveing you, from the error it seems that you are trying to extract the audio to a compressed format which you shouldn"t be doing,you should be extracting it to Wav, but if you are trying to extract it to wav then check the sample rate of the audio in your avi file and the Chanels and make sure than you are setting up the out put file to the same sample rate and chanel format.......

I too have the "stream reading error" problem with 2.57, and the solution generally recommended is to use an older version. Where can I find a copy of Plus 2.56? I've tried a couple of Google searches unsuccessfully, and I thought it would be quickest to ask here.

Thanks in advance ... Barton

You don't necessarily need 2.56 for this. I'm sure if you tried again you could find an earlier version.

ASHY

Could somebody tell me if there is a program for changing film soundtracks from one lanuage to another.and which are the best.

If there are any programs like that they would cost more money than anyone could afford for a hobby, just think about it, a program that will read one language and then translate it to another language and then have it sound like a person and not like Steven Hawking(computer vioce) That is a Very Very tall order, and I doubt it even exists, maybe in 20 years......

If you have 2 soundtracks, you can use an authoring tool like i-author or philips svcd designer to put 2 audiotracks in a svcd and 4 subtitle tracks.
Srandard SVCD allows 2 audiotracks and 4 subtitle tracks.
It's just very complicated to make such svcd's
BTW the philips svcd designer, tools and verifier are free, you just have to register them and they only run without problems on NT4 (sp4 and above)I-Author runs on several platforms.

Ah I love you! It worked! I couldn't figure out how to do that for the life of me (never really tried to do anything with video/audio before!) You are a god!
Sam

Ok. Finally got the vcd in standard format. Recommended by Executioner. Picture is beautiful, audio is in sync. Player recoginizes the disk. But...It is glittchy as hell. It is not staying frozen, but it is freezing up and then playing then freezing up etc.

ntsc film 23.976
split with VirtualDub
Multiplexed audio
encoded w/TMPGENC
1150 kbits/mpeg1
352x240 pixels
audio 224kbits mpeg1 layer2
burned at 2x

I finally feel like I am on the verge of getting this thing right. Can you help??

Have you checked out the reports on your player at www.vcdhelp.com to see what media brands work best ?

Did you use the MPEG tools at all in this process?

ASHY

No I didn't do anything with MPEG tools. It on says MPEG-1 system automatic

also, I did check. I have been doing this for a while and have a decent library of converted vcds. I got away from it for a while and when I started converting again, everything was different. My dvd player has never been an issue, but then again neither was dividing, encoding and burning....before. Now I don't have a clue. Not as simple as it use to be. Ohhhh how I miss the good ole days of conversion.

Sounds like you might have the field order set incorrectly....

my field order was set in B it should be A??

Changing the field didn't help. Actually I think it got worse. I used to get in the movie further before getting the freezeups. Am open to any suggestions you might still have to offer me. I have no idea what to do or undo. My dvd player is a Sony DVP330. It is suppose to play vcd and xvcd. I am using memorex cd-rws. I get an error at the very end that says Cannot Load/unload medium. I thought that referred to the cd ejection. The AVI/AFS information says that I am looking at a 23.967 file prior to dividing. Does it change when you divide the avi in virtualdub? If not, as far as I know, everything is in place for a standard formatted vcd.

I didn't ask you if you changed anything in the MPEGtools, I asked if you used them. If you use the MPEGtools to split your movie, but leave the stream type set at 'MPEG-1 system automatic' then you will have problems when burning this MPEG to disk and will also have problems with playback such as the ones you are experiencing.
Whenever you use the MPEGtools or for than matter use any MPEG that you wish to convert to VCD then you must make sure that you choose the correct setting to attach the VCD or SVCD headers to the file prior to burning.
This would be either 'MPEG1 Video CD', 'MPEG1 Video CD (non standard)' or 'MPEG2 SVCD (VBR)' depending on the type of movie you are creating.

ASHY

Hi all,

i would like to know if it is possible to create with tmpge a SVCD with an audio track DD 5.1.
Thanks to all,
Bye

Gabry

No, Dolby Prologic yes.

ASHY

You can do MPEG 5.1 audio, but it's hardly supported anyway.

As far as I'm aware MPEG 5.1 is Ac3 or Dolby digital 5.1 which is not supported in SVCD.

ASHY

Hi all,

I am having some problems and ask you for your help there:

Situation:
I have a avi file (divx) that is around 700MB large. I want to get this to MPEG-2 to then prepare it with DVDWorkshop for DVD-R.

Now: I start the process with TMPGEnc with different settings like CQ etc. and expect a filesize of around 9GB (that is fine).

But: when I come to a point in the conversion process after 8 hours or so I get an error wnd the whole thing stops. What I recognize is that the filesize that is reeached until that point is 4096 MB. So I wonder if it has to do with the filesize and if I have to tell somebody somewhere to accept a larger size - but how?

Or: can I automaically splitt the file if it comes to a "too large" point?

If not: is there a very good tool to splitt the avi file before? (except AVIchop -> tried, but after splitting I do not hear anything anymore - maybe there is a solution for this one).

Thanks in advance

4096MB is the "Fat32" File size limit, the only way for you to get a file bigger is for you to Format you hard drive to NTSF format, and only certain Operateing systems have this capability, like Win XP and Win NT,You can use the "source range" in the "Advanced settings" to encode the movie in two parts..Your Divx file must be really really long, you should be able to fit 2-3 hours of high quality DVD on a 4.7gb DVD-R..How high do you have the bitrate set?? If you used the CQ method you can get a much smaller file size without wasteing all the bits that the CBR method does, and not loose quality...

Thanks for your support.

Well, I use Win XP Pro and, I checked again, the partion is NTFS. So, don't know what to do.

The Bitrate is set to a max 3000.The CQ Quality is set to 65% is it too high?

And just now I try the source range - I selcted just up to 50000 frames and started and - funny - I get an error saying 47983088 47983088 - I did not search the board, but maybe you know it and have a word or two for me, pls.

Thanks

Still not working.

Now I have splitt the file using source range option. After done the first part I just tried to play it - video is ok, but no audio, even if the file consists it.

What now?

maybe you can export your audio as a separate file.
so you will have 3 files - video part1 video part 2 and audio [all]

try that.

Finally , I have done it :-)

Just to thank all you helped me with this. I did the following:

I took my DivX Avi file and opened it with VirtualDub - this sw recognized a wrong header or something.

With Virtual Dub I just saved the avi file as new avi file with the settings for Video -> direct stream copy and for Audio -> direct stream copy. Then I saved it.

After I opened with TMPGEnc and tried just the beginning of a stream ... well, now I have audio, too. Great!

And, I also had another problem in the beginning, that the filesize may only be 4 GB - I now recognized that before the estimated time was around 18-19 hours. And now, after all this work, it is just only 6-7 hours estimation. With this fact I guess and believe that I can now run it in one file through. I am right now testing it.

Have fun :-)

Is it at all possible that one can burn a VCD to play on a player that doesnt support it. Bear with me, maybe its just the drugs talking, but seriously, the players alwys look for a vob file right? what if you removed the ac-3 audio, took out the subtitles, other languages etc, and just took the plain stereo and video .vob files, palced them in the correct architecture for a cd, but made sure the image was no larger than 700MB. Couldn't one acheive VCD playing for a non-supportive player?? granted it would still be substandard, but still......... a solution for those of use who bought cheap players and neglected to look for vcd compatibility. The only requirement is that the thing must be able to play cd-rs. Now will those who are more advanced in this topic please proceed to rip apart and urinate on my theory...

Nope you are out of luck, Vcd is in Mpeg1 format so a VCD compatible DVD player has a special chip in is which allows it to read mpeg1 format, pluss the bitrate of a VCD is probably to low for the dvd player to read properly with out the chip..DVD player that play VCD/SVCD are totally cheap, some of the cheapest DVD players are the most compatible players..The one I have was $99 canadian and it plays everything that i throw at it and there are cheaper ones......

when I convert to mpeg2 / DVD the picture is very grainy and streaky. not very good quality.

Whats up with this?

Sounds like you are seeing "Interlace lines", try useing the deinterlace filter....

Hi i want to change a movie wich is .avi to vcd format i can play oit in my computer , but when i try to encode it tells me that the format is unsupported what can i do ??

You need to raise the "Direct Show File Reader"...Go to "options" to "enviromental settings" to "vfapi plugins" and raise the "direct show" to "2"...

hey,

i also have the same problem. i recently upgraded my OS from '98 to XP pro. when i had '98, i downloaded a lot of files from kazaa .avi form and converted those files to .mpg so i can burn them .vcd. didn't have any problems with the process at all. now that i'm using XP and download .avi files from kazaa, TMPGEnc says it can't open or it's unsupported. this just happens with the video, i can load the audio from the .avi file just fine.

i also tried to change the direct show in the Vfapi plugins to "2", but the error still comes up. is there anything else i should do?

I had converted a avi file to mpeg file and then cut into a VCD using a PAnasonic CD - R/RW. There was noise disturbance when i was viewing the VCD. How can i reduce it.

Thanks.

- What is the quality of your source avi like ? noisy ?
- What bitrate are you using ?

I have a downloaded version of TMPG which is a 30 day version. I was given to believe that its a free software. Is there a free copy available.
Can you recommend me free encoding softwares which can convert avi to mpg

Cheers ! !

Tmpgenc is free for doing VCD"s it is just the mpeg 2 function that runs out in 30 days, there are free mpeg encoders but they are really slow like 3 times as slow as tmpgenc so it might take a week to encode a movie and the quality isn"t nearly as good as tmpgenc.....