When i encoded any mpeg or avi videos the sound quality gets staticy. Its really getting annoying and if the problem continues there is no point in keeping the program.I dont know if i could change the settings for the audio to help. I dont know what settings to change because i usually just modify the video. Please help by telling me what sound settings work best for you and what the different sound settings mean?

There are external encoders that work with Tmpgenc that are far better than the one that comes with Tmpgenc, go on a search engine and look for either "toolame" or "SCMPX" and download one(they are freeware)then you install it in Tmpgenc by going to "options" to "enviromental settings" to "external tools" then put a check mark in the box next to the "mpeg layer 2" then click the "browse" tab and choose the ".exe" file for the audio encoder then you can encode regularly and the audio encoder will encode the audio instead of Tmpgenc.Depending on the format of the audio in your divx file and the frequency the audio can get a bit distorted on the mpeg file ,so you can use "scmpx" as a sample rate converter which you install the same way as the encoder and on the same settings page, changeing sample rates and formats can cause a change in the sound quality of of the audio and sometimes there isn"t much you can do about it inside the settings of the encoder but you can allways use a audio editing program to clean up the audio and do the conversion for you which should give you better quality, a good program for this is "Sound forge 5 or 6"

I tried what you said with SCMPX. When I set it up and went to start the encoding i got an eror message that said it couldnt be created. I followed you directions and put the scmpx.exe under layer 2. Why isnt it working? Please help!

I couldn"t tell you what is wrong, i have never heard of a problem with SCMPX, it is such a small program and has been well tested, but that isn"t the only solution that you can try, another thing that seems to work fine for me is to extract the audio to a wav file with "Virtual dub" then download "db Power amp"(it is free and a good audio encoder)and the mp2 codec(there are a few)and encode the audio to MP2 then mux it with the encoded mpeg video, it is actually faster this way cuz it seems that Tmpgenc spends about 10% of the encodeing time encodeing the audio so if you just encode the video the encodeing will be at least 10% faster, and with DB Power amp the audio encodeing for a movie will only take 10-15 minutes max, but if you are encodeing mpeg files you don"t need to encode the audio cuz it is allready in the correct format.......

Are you saying that if the video is an mpeg you can just encode the video and use the original sound? I tried doing this with tmpgenc by having different audio and video sources but after the program is done the sound just gets messed up again!

This is for ashy and minion and also the modurators of this bbs.

this is very unfair and bad that minion and ashy always have to answer everyone's questions. if someone else answers it, they get abuse from ashy and minion which is VERY unfair and unprofessional.

I wish that there was this certain person back in here that DID helped and stuck up for himself from all this abuse. he did very well and his/her advice DID work.

I am going to complain some how about ashy and minion and I would like to see them getting blocked from this bbs as it is unfair that people have to be put off by them.

Ashy and minion always think they are "classic" and "professional" and "know it all" people when they aren't. I am not saying that I know EVERYTHING - which I don't, it is unfair that they have to give abuse back to people and that they then get blocked which is rediculas.

certianly, my purchase of TMPGENC has come to a second re-think.

What are you talking about????
ASHY and Minion ARE extremely professional and have always given me (and I think to all the people here too) very useful advices and help.
So I think that no-one wants them out of the BBS but the contrary because they are an essential part of it...
Once again thank you both of you for all your help and don't take seriously stupid people like the one above me ;-)...

Sincerely,
Nicolas

Maybe you SHOULD rethink coming here, and just go to annoy people somewhere else!

ABS

Thanks Nico.
As far as this chump goes, I know exactly who it is. Even though he tries to hide himself by changing his I.P. I still know who this person is. Basically this person is mr kettle calling mr pot black.
This person was himself unprofessional, constantly gave wrong advice and abused others who challenged this advice and after a while the other regulars got fed up with his I am king attitude and got him ousted.
His conduct on this board was both childish and improper and had an attitude to match.

I'm not saying I'm an angel on this board. I do sometimes wrongly or rightly vent my annoyance at certain newcomers for not using the search facilty and for not trying to help themselves first, but all in all I'm quite willing to help these people and anyone else.
I hope most people if not all are satisfied with my conduct and advice on this BBS and I hope the advice I give is mostly correct and helpful.

As for minion and myself answering every question on this board, well it's a simple case of the fact that the same questions pop up over and over and we know the answers instantly and what should work being that we both visit this board more or less on a daily basis.

Even though many questions are answered by the both of us, nothing is preventing anyone else from posting additional advice and which is always welcome.
I don't shun the advice of others as this poster has done in the past. As a matter of fact I respect the people who post replies because I learn from this advice too.

I don't see this BBS as a competition or a race to answer questions first unlike this particular poster who always did and is why he was ousted in the first place because bad advice is worse than no advice and there were many instances where more than one person contested the advice he was giving to newcomers as it was clearly wrong, but dismissed us all as idiots who knew nothing and wouldn't accept that he was wrong.

Basically this person has a bee in his bonnet and is upset because he is no longer king on this BBS and hates the fact that there are others who actually know more than he does.

Sad but true.

Who is this person you ask. Well.......his name WAS techno. Yes Techno I know it is you and no matter of trying to disguise your IP and changing you typing style will fool us.
I know how to track you and know how discover it is you. You will never learn. You just don't get it do you.

Still a spoilt brat who has spat his dummy out because no one wants to play with him. Shame...shame...shame.

Bye techno.

ASHY

I don"t know if Mr "Guest" has ever come to this BBS when me and Ashy haven"t been here for a day of two, but there are usually a couple Dozzen questions that have gone un-answered for the time we have been away and I never see Mr Guest"s name there answering the questions that have gone unanswered for that Time..And I feel that we are both quite profecinal in our conduct and I rarely ever get bothered by the same question over and over again(accept for repeated postings of the same question by the same person)cuz we were all newbies once.Now let me think of the some of the bad advice this poster"Mr.Guest"(aka.Techno) repeatedly gave to others, Ohh heres a good bit of bad advice this person swears on his life is true " when burning with Nero no matter how big the file is as long as it is under 80minutes in will fit on a 80min cd-r" ya right, but this person will got to his grave believeing this is true because he can not accept the fact that he can be mistaken..Oh and this story that he will give his purchase of Tmpgenc plus a re-think, well it seems that you has become quite familiar with a demo of a product that has only been released for 2 weeks, it seems to me that if you were useing Tmpgenc back then and are useing it now and have not purchased Tmpgenc Plus then you must be doing something illegal to use it for so long and not purchase it...Better luck next time Techno.....

On other boards he frequents he usually signs himself as a Certified Microsoft Technician -- Nothing changes there then!

The way of the Dodo will soon be upon him.

Its funny to see Techno mentioned here after so long...lol Yeah he is in need of some growing up. But that I am sure it is due largely to his very young age. I warned him long ago to act more professional maybe some day he will learn.

As far as Minion and Ashey go they have always been very professional with the minor exception of criticizing people for not searching the bbs for the answer first. These guys seem to be fairly opened minded and helped me along in my encoding journey. I thank them "thank you ashy & minion" :o)

The truly wise man listens twice as much as he talks, is open to all possibilities and conducts him self as a Adult/Professional.

Techno where ever you are now I wish you hope. I hope life treats you right and I hope you realize these important virtues I spoke of.

Thanks again Ashy & Minion for your help. ~NewtronX

I won't repeat a lot of what others have siad because I couldn't agree more. Both Ashy and Minion are an invaluable asset to the TMPGenc community and help others on a daily basis. I have even received personal mails about questions I have asked.

They are doing this unpaid on their own time.

Thanks Ashy and Minion.Keep up the good work.

Olli

excuse me...I don't know who or what Techno is but I ain't it. even a simple thread like this turns it into a flame war for no reason.

I am now not going to reply to anything at all and people here have certainly put me of TMPGEnc purchases.

Good bye.

Ok for everbody's information here is Techno's old IP 195.194.47.252 which he then changed to 62.30.192.1. notice the similarity to the current one, bit of a coincidence wouldn't you say. Also it's obvious who it is as he always uses the same statements such as
>I don't know who or what Techno is but I ain't it.

This is what he said the last time I sussed him out when he was using the name 'Hardcore'

The other thing that he also does is in these posts supposedly from another person is he praises himself very highly
>I wish that there was this certain person back in here that DID helped and stuck up for himself from all this abuse. he did very well and his/her advice DID work.

Almost the same thing he said last time.

Oh and Techno regarding your purchese of TMPG rethink, are you saying you don't use cracks anymore like the ones you used to distribute here?

ASHY

Who could it be this misterious guest is talking about when he says. "I wish that there was this certain person back in here that DID helped and stuck up for himself from all this abuse. he did very well and his/her advice DID work."
Why wouldnt some one just come out and say the name of the individual. Its pretty obvious this guy is talking about him self in third person and doesnt want to be named as his real name. Second who would consider this a flame war after all we have nothing but good things to say except for the supposed person this guy has no clue about... Yeah right... I may have been born at night but it wasnt last night...lol :o) ~NewtronX

P.S. Ashy you said "Techno's old IP 195.194.47.252 which he then changed to 62.30.192.1. notice the similarity to the current one" I must are the IPs given numbers by location is their away to tell the Country and state the IP is in?

Hi,
Can tmpgenc be used to encode or transform mpeg-2 program stream to transport stream ? Or there's other program to do the job. Thanks a lot.

TMPG cannot encode to transport streams. Your best bet is MPEG2VCR which will convert TMPG program streams to Transport streams or MPEGcarver.

ASHY

I was wondering how come after I get done using TMPGEnc the file I was working never changed its' name. Before it was a .mpeg, and I wanted to change it to a .vcd. But after it was finished it was just called file. Is this right? or am I doing something wrong? I also wanted to know when I burn it onto a cd, what I burn it under. We are using our friends programing, which is Easy CD Creator by Adaptec. The only options they have is Audio and Data and a Mixed. Should we try and use a different software? Because we have burned two cd's with the program, and neither one of them will play in our dvd player. We have checked to make sure that it does lay svcd and vcd's.

"Should we try and use a different software? Because we have burned two cd's with the program, and neither one of them will play in our dvd player. We have checked to make sure that it does lay svcd and vcd's."

OK, I was at this point of my VCD-making hobby about 3 months ago. At that time the only way I was able to obtain video files was to download them thru KaZaA or a similar P2P program. I quickly found out that my EZ CD Creator was NOT going to help me make Video CDs. Nero "Burning Rom" does. And you can download a free trial version of Nero from their website. (I don't have the URL handy, sorry).

I also found that if I downloaded a movie in mpeg format (.mpg)from KaZaA and then tried to burn it to CD-R using Nero I often had problems. I wasted about 50 blank CD-Rs before determining that I had the best chance of success when I downloaded a film in .avi format and then used TMPG to encode it to MPEG format. Almost every VCD made with Nero since then has played in my 6 month old Panasonic "progressive scan" DVD player (which also plays MP3s but does NOT play Super VCDs)
What else can I tell you about my 3 month old hobby... anime from Japan sometimes presents audio track problems. No VCD movie or television show is ever as clear as the original. The person who first "captures" the video and puts it online has the greatest control over the screen quality and resolution. So unless you like to view postage stamp sized films, you should always download the version that has the largest resolution.
When you convert large AVI files into MPEG using TMG you will often find a note saying that the new file size will be too big to record to a single CD-R. That is fine. Once the MPEG file is generated, TMG has a very easy to use File editor that lets you make 2 or more smaller MPEG files from the master file.

Using Nero... depending on the size of your hard drive and space available... let me suggest that you first accumulate a lot of differnt AVI files from KaZaA, music video, anime, American animation, etc, and only then download the trial version of NERO. You only get to use it for two weeks or so before you either pay for it or it goes inert. Buy a lot of CD-Rs, by buying 100 at a time the cost drops down to pennies a disc, and that way the only thing you'll ,loose if they don't work out is your time. Also sometimes NERO will want to recode something that you just spent 10 hrs encoding with TMPG... Tell NERO to stuff it and burn a non-compliant disc... this usually works.
Best of luck to you!

You said that you download a mpeg file and encoded it with Tmpgenc and the resulting file was just a file with no extention is this right??If the file you downloaded is a mpeg1 file and has the proper resolution(352 by 240 for NTSC 352 by 288 for Pal)then there is usually no need to encode it with Tmpgenc cuz it is allready in mpeg format which is the format that vcd"s are in.To burn, "Nero" is fairly good you can download a demo from :http://www.nero.com/, but if you want to insert chapters then I would sugest useing "VCDEasy" it is freeware and fairly easy to use..The extention of a vcd file is "mpg" but if you are encodeing a mpeg file to a mpeg file then make sure you name the out put file different that the source file or it might get over-writen.there is lots of information and guides to makeing vcd/svcd/dvd at "http://www.vcdhelp.com/

Is it possible to have TMPGEnc shut down the computer when the job is done?

yes but you have to run it in "batch encode" mode, you do this by loading in your file do your settings then go to "file" to "save project" then save it as a project file then go to "file" to "batch encode" and load the project file into the batch encode window then click"run" then it will start encodeing and a little box will appear then says next to it "shut down when finnished encodeing" just check this box and go to bed and your file will be encoded and the computer shut down when you get up.......

Or if you don't want to run TMPG in batch mode to have the shutdown option.

Just simply set up your movie then click File>output to file>Mpeg file
You should then see the shutdown option.

ASHY

thanks a lot, fellas

Hi,

i tried the batch mode with the shutdown option out.
But tmpgenc plus only convert one file of 5 into a mpg
and then the program closed. Could you help me? to convert 5 or more
avis into mpgs with the batch mode with shutdown when the job ist done?
thx a lot

This is a reposting since my first once might not have been very clear.

I have a file which is encoded at 25 fps. The total number of frames is 151.520.

While loading that file into TMPGEnc, the "Source range" shows that that the file has 181.824 frames, which is exactly 151.520/25*30.

The loaded settings of TMPGEnc are SuperVideo (PAL).

Why is TMPGEnc not showing 151.520 frmaes in the "Source range"?
I.a.w. ... why is TMPGEnc counting 181.824 frames while the file only has 151.520 frames?

TIA

So you are trying to say the Tmpgenc is seeing your file as a ntsc 29.9fps and not Pal 25fps, and you have loaded the "Pal Template" before going to the source range??Well You don"t see this problem very often, have you tried loading the file into a differant program like "virtual dub" to see if it sees the file as a 29.9fps and if it sees it like this too then there is probably something wrong with the header in your avi file, you could try makeing a copy of it with "virtual dub" and see if it corrects the header??What i would do if all else fails is just encode it anyway and see what happens and if it don"t work then just forget about it and moove on, some files are just a bit screwed up and are hard to encode, when I used to download files off kazaa(before I got smart and got a dvd-rom) close to half of the files i downloaded wouldn"t encode properly and it just got so frustrateing that i had to give up or go on a shooting rampage..But if Virtaul dub reads the file correctly then you can frame serve from Virtual dub to tmpgenc and get the correct output file...good luck

VirtualDib confirms that it is indeed 25 fps and has 151.520 frames. The weird thing is that TMNPGEnc thinks it has for some reason 181.824 frames. The "AVI Frame Rate Changer" also says it's 25 fps.

When I save the file again using VirtualDub ("Direct stream copy" in audio and video), I get the same result. VirtualDub says it's 151.520 frames long, TMPGEnc insists on 181.824.

When encoding it with TMPGEnc and PAL settings, the movie works fine. No jerks, smooth playing.

I thought there might be a simple solution why TMPGEnc takes it as NTSC, but apparently there isn't.

Thanks.

Hi guys,

I know that this has been discussed several times before but
none of the solutions I found (here and in other places) work.

TMPGEnc is really great but I don¡­t want to buy a full version
when there¡­s still that bug w/ "unsupported" mpg-Files.

I do a lot of work w/ my PC and therefore I often have to
install/uninstall some software (not only video). Sometimes
I even have to recover my system using Ghost. Sometimes
after that TMPGEnc works great, sometimes not!

Whenever something has changed the next time I try to use
TMPGEnc it tells me that the file "cannot open or unsupported"
blablabla - I even opened the same files several times before using
the same version of TMPGEnc, they¡­re not broken (i also tried some
I¡­ve burnt on CD-R).

So maybe someone could tell me what¡­s all about that stupid
error message?

ThX in advance

Tom

If you are trying to load Mpeg files in and you are useing the "2.57 version" then you need either the "Ligos mpeg decoder" or the "cyberlink mpeg decoder" installed on your system, and if you do them it installed you just might need to de-mux the file and load in the video and audio seperately but if you are encodeing mpeg files then you don"t need to encode the audio because the audio is allready mp2 so you just encode the video then mux the audio from the old mpeg and the video from the new mpeg together after encodeing..but if for some reasom you still can"t get it to encode the mpeg file then this allways works you de-mux the mpeg file then load the "m2v" video file into "DVD2AVI" and make a project file then load the project file into Tmpgenc then encode just the d2v file then mux the new mpeg video and the old audio together...Another thing is that if you are useing the demo of tmpgenc then after the 30 days is up you can"t download the new demo and expect it to work cuz it won"t unless you do a clean install of your OS , so you either have to buy it or do something a bit illegal, and the pluss version"s don"t seem to have as many bugs in it as the demo"s seem to but then again most poeple just use the demo"s.

Minion, thanks,

I used the demo 2.56 up to now, i¡­m within the 30 days trial time
and still I¡­m not able to open MPEGS no matter if they¡­re MPEG1 or MPEG2,
funny, isn¡­t it?

For those who aren¡­t familiar w/ Norton Ghost: this software takes
an Image of your system HDD. So there¡­s no problem w/ my installation.
As I said already, sometimes I can get TMPGEnc to work after writing
that image back, sometimes I won¡­t.

I read alot of stuff on other boards and I¡­m sure that many others have
this problem, too.

I¡­d like to register and buy the full version but as long as I
have to waste so many hours of time hounting after this prob
I¡­m not gonna buy it.

Thanks

Tom

Minion, thanks,

I used the demo 2.56 up to now, i¡­m within the 30 days trial time
and still I¡­m not able to open MPEGS no matter if they¡­re MPEG1 or MPEG2,
funny, isn¡­t it?

For those who aren¡­t familiar w/ Norton Ghost: this software takes
an Image of your system HDD. So there¡­s no problem w/ my installation.
As I said already, sometimes I can get TMPGEnc to work after writing
that image back, sometimes I won¡­t.

I read alot of stuff on other boards and I¡­m sure that many others have
this problem, too.

I¡­d like to register and buy the full version but as long as I
have to waste so many hours of time hounting after this prob
I¡­m not gonna buy it.

Thanks

Tom

If you are haveing problems loading Mpeg files into Tmpgenc with the 2.56 version then try the 2.57 because it uses the mpeg decoders that come with your software dvd/mpeg players, there are a whole whack of mpeg decoders supported, like "Cyberlink Power dvd","Ligos mpeg decoder","Microsoft mpeg1" and the old "mpeg2 vfp plugin" which I think was the only one officially supported in earlier versions,(without this codec or stinkys mpeg2 codec you can"t load mpeg2 files in any of the old versions so I hope you have it)..

I am very interested in purchasing the full version of your software but, while encoding an AVI to MPEG 2 I get this error: "Write Error occurred at Address (Address varies) of module tmpge.exe with (Address varies)". Again I would like to get this resolved because I would like to continue to use the software. Thanks in advance.

I don"t know who you are talking to but no one from Pegasus(the makers of Tmpgenc) ever comes here, this place is for poeple to post there problems with Tmpgenc the other regular citizens like me and others try to help out...As to your problem, it seems that a few poeple from time to time get this error and the only thing that most of these poeple have in common is that they are downloading files off the net and encodeing them to Mpeg, if that is the case for you then it is probably your avi file that is corrupted(a corrupted file will still play fine in media player)but what has worked for a couple of poeple is to re-download Tmpgenc then try it...but other than that i don"t know what advice to offer..Good luck..

I'm having the same write error occur too. Sometimes it comes 100 minutes into a 120 minute AVI file, other times it comes 30 minutes into the AVI. It is pretty unpredictable, and needless to say, it is extremely frustrating. The AVI is a legit type-2 file which was captured on my computer, not downloaded. In CQ mode, it was able to transcode the complete AVI the first time around. I wanted to up the quality after inspecting the output M2V. The second and third time it bombed out. This is a pretty big problem. Does anyone really have a clue as to what could be causing it? Could it be a combination of the motherboard, processor, or memory being used? Could it be a bad hard disk?

Thanks for any advice.
Vince

Hi There,
We ussually generate frames with fields from 3D programs and compositing programs. These images do have frames either odd or even.

But when generating DVD MPEG 2 and writing to DVD-R we allways have problems with the fields.

What is the correct field setup for DVD - PAL
we generatie 720x576, we encode in the highest possible frame-rate. Normally the animations are only 3 to 5 minutes.

We used Perception PVR hard-disk recorders to go to Betacam with even fields.

We switched to DV and used odd fields.

Please help.

Thanks,

Omar

If you use the "Wizerd" in Tmpgenc it will analize the file and adjust the field order accordingly......

Hello everyone.

This has probably been asked many times before, and i am sorry about this
but i would like suggestions on how to extract the sound from a divx file and convert it to mp3 ^^;;;

I love the ending theme of a series and i want it in mp3 (can't find it on the net ^^;)

Any suggestion appreciated, thanks in advance.

You can do this with "virtual dub" you can find the program on any search engine.

By the way, I tried your suggestion about my "metallic" sound I had from my divx files. It didn't make things much better. The problem is that the sound file are 8 bits. Do you know a program that could make the sound better when converting to 16 bits???

Thanks again,
Nico...

Is the audio 8 but mono or 8 bit sterio, there are programs that will make it a 16 bit audio and clean up the audio but they aren"t freeware, a good one is "Sonic Foundry Sound Forge" it will let you do pretty much anything with audio with that program but it takes quite a while cuz it is very thurough, you can download the demo of the latest Sound Forge 6 at there web site, it is probably www.sonicfoundry.com but it is I think about $600 to buy it but it does video stuff also and encodeing .....

Hello All:

I'm very new to encoding and I'm a little confused by everything, I've managed to make a couple VCDs that seem to work fine but I keep having problems with others.

Currently installed on my system: VCDEasy latest version, BBMPEGs latest version, TMPGEnc v. 2.57, and WinDVD

1st Q: I have downloaded various .avi files using kazaa. Only a couple of these files look as good as .mpg1 files, and none of them are longer than 45 mins. When I try to convert to mpg, there is no change in quality, despite the fact that the size of the .mpg file is much bigger (about the size of most VCD files I have also downloaded using kazaa). Now for this one particular file I've been trying to fiddle with the FPS is 29.96 and I understand I have to do something to the bitrate but I am unsure what exactly I have to do (if I raise it, how much should I raise it? How much is too much?). I have looked on www.vcdhelp.com but can't seem to find info on my specific problem. The audio and video play fine, just not at the mpeg1 quality. ANy help please, perhaps an "official" tutorial?

2nd Q: I downloaded a .qt format file and I want to put it on a vcd but TMPGEnc won't recognize it and the latest version of discreet's Cleaner would only convert the first 15 seconds. Is there a way to make this work with TMPGEnc or do I need to look for the file in a different format?

3rd Q: I've been trying to make SVCDs too but it seems like the file sizes are too big, even for 80 min CDs. How can I tweak them to make them fit or do I need more software and hardware?

Thanks to anyone who answers for their time and attention, I look forward to using TMPGEnc a lot more in the future,

Rod

I guess you are really new to this,and I don"t really know were to start.ok,when you encode a avi file to mpeg the mpeg will never look better than the avi file you encoded, so don"t expect the encoder to make your mpeg file look better than the avi file.In general you would have to put a full movie on 2 cd-r"s in mpeg1/vcd format and 2-3 cd-r"s in svcd format and your mpeg file will allmost allways be bigger than the avi file unless the avi is un-compressed.Never Fiddle with the frame rate this will usually ruin your mpeg file, you have to encode to the frame rate of the avi file so if your avi has a frame rate of 25fps then you use the "Pal vcd" template, if your avi is 23.9fps then you use the "NTSC Film vcd" template and if your avi file is 29.9fps then you use the "NTSC vcd" template, and if your avi has a frame rate other than these you will have to find the template the most closely matches the avi frame rate but you will get choppy playback with these files..To raise the quality of the mpeg1 file you need to raise the bitrate but doing this will make your mpeg file larger but if you raise the bitrate to say 1650kbs then you will get about 60minutes on a 80min cd-r, if you wan"t to encode QT files you will need a Quick Time Plugin you can probably get it in the tools section of VCDHelp.com and most consepts of encodeing are explained on the web site also.There is so much information to learn before you get a full grasp of encodeing that it would take a month to explain it all so read all you can at vcdhelp .com and another good site is www.doom9.com (I think that is it)...Good Luck

Thanks for the help minion! I know there is a lot to learn and thank you for clearing some issues up and getting me on the right road. Take care.

"The audio and video play fine, just not at the mpeg1 quality"

From one "newbie" to another: perhaps your expectations are too high? In my experience, when I make a VCD from an MPEG file of a TV show, the VCD is always a bit inferior to a standard VHS copy made from the same TV show. (Let's say "SMALLVILLE" for example. The VCD will be more blurred than the VHS tape. In fact, for the most part, VCDs never seem as clear as the original avi file played on the computert. Because of this I have spent much of my "video hobby time" with anime and American animation, such as PIXAR productions. Cartoons make fine VCDs, but unless there are tricks I haven't learned yet (and there are, I'm sure) it seems impossible to take a film with 352x240 resolution NTSC and make a VCD that will look like a tv broadcast when shown on your livingroom tv.
Hey guys - if I'm incorrect on any points let me know too!!!

You can if the source is good and you crank up the bitrate realy high like to at least 2000kbs or higher......

You guys have always given me good advice. I intend to buy a Video Capture card tthis week. I am using a Pentium 3 running at 933mgz. Windows ME. I went to VCD Help and read the reviews there, also NY Times in Tech section 2 weeks ago had some info. Given that Circuit City has priced them at $150. apiece, is one notedly superior or easier to use than the other? Ati All in Wonder Radeon 7500 vs Win Tv Personal Video Recorder (PVC)

Being able to record a TV show AND work on other computer projects at the same time is not an issue.

The All In Wonder Radeon 7500 would probably give you the best quality but where I live they are 3 times the price as the Win TV PVC, What i would do is to buy one of them and if you don"t like it then return it and try the other one but I think the Radeon will probably be the best....

http://www.canopus.com/US/products/MVR1000/pm_mvr1000.asp

That board in the link above is quite expensive and there are software encoders that can encode at twice real time with as good or better quality but then again they cost more than twice what that board costs but software is easier to aquire than hardware.

FFast, thank you for that link. I looked at the canopus website and I liked what I saw, but it's really way out of my price range at the moment.

I use almost exclusively the 352x480 Plus template, and indeed, I get 90+ minutes for every CD. So I use it because I can get every movie that's around 2 hours in 2 CD's. Has not failed once!. The new Skvcd is worth a try too. I have used CVD and SVCD's, but now I'm trying out the Skvcd template. It looks just as good as a SVCD, but you can fit over an hour on each CD. They put a new sample yesterday on the download page where the templates are.

--Jim

I forgot to put the link where the samples are.
It's http://www.kvcd.net/dvd-models.html

--Jim