I just downloaded and installed the 2.57 version and noticed that the audio compression is not any longer the standard 224 kbit/s but has changed into 192 kbit/s

Question:
1. Why was it changed and is it also safe now to use for instance 128 kbit/s for changing the avi into mpeg-1 (with the objective to make a vcd)
2. Does this mean that it is now possible to burn a vcd which has more minutes then the 80 that is now the limit ?

I'm sorry for my crappy English, but i hope you'll understand the question.
TIA for answering
Andrea

The reason is that when you first extract TMPG, the settings are actually set for just ordinary MPEG1 files not VCD files. If you load one of the VCD templates the bitrate will go back to 224 kb/s.

ASHY

Oh and sorry, to answer your other question, yes it should be ok in most DVD players to use a non standard bitrate such as 128 kb/s.

ASHY

Thanks for clarifying this for me
And also for the speed in answering my question

I am trying to convert a quicktime file (music video) into mpeg but i have a small problem. Underneath the video the lyrics run along and they are actually part of the video image not a caption etc. When I convert the file i do not want to see these lyrics. Can anyone tell me how to crop the image size so that i convert only the music video and not the lyrics?
I hope that makes sense and that someone can help me.
Thanks

Click the 'settings' button then advanced and then double click the 'clip frame' filter

Here you will find the option to resize and crop your movie.

ASHY

Thanks a million. That has solved my problem.

David

I've tried looking through the posts but couldn't find anything on this issue.

I've downloaded an *.avi file - and there is no problem in viewing it on the computer with sound. But if I try to convert it to an mpeg file using tmpgenc, it can't find the audio track, and hence the mpeg won't contain any audio.
If I use 'avi audio decompressor' to extract the audio track, it stops just short of 1 mb, takes approx 10 secs.
It seems as if it's a packed file, have any of you had the same problem ???
I would appreciate some help, thanks.
Would it help to use Virtual Dub, instead of 'aad' ?

-M

I have a similar problem. I have downloaded an avi file and am converting to mpeg for svcd. The sound only goes for the first 10 seconds and then cuts out!

Can any body help?

Boner

The audio is probably Ac3 which TMPG can't natively read. Download AVImux and extract the audio to a wav and load that as your audio source in TMPG.

ASHY

Thanks - I'll try that!
-M

Hi
I am having a bit of trouble with a SVCD.
I am trying to extract the mpg from the CD to convert to VCD in TMPgenc (to reduce no of CDs)
This is nothing I haven't done many times before but for some reason I can't extract the mpg using isobuster all I get is a file that is recognised as music in media player and TMPgenc won't recognise format.
I am using the newest version of TMPgenc and SVCD is on trial period.
I have also tried CDmage with no luck.

Any suggestion please

Thanks

Flash

The best thing to do when this happens and is a sure fire way to extract it correctly is to go to http://www.daemon-tools.com and download this small and free program called 'Daemon tools'.

This will create another drive on your PC which you can load virtually any image into and the just simply copy and paste the file or load it straight into TMPG from the drive itself as if it was a real drive.

ASHY

The best thing to do when this happens and is a sure fire way to extract it correctly is to go to http://www.daemon-tools.com and download this small and free program called 'Daemon tools'.

This will create another drive on your PC which you can load virtually any image into and then just simply copy and paste the file or load it straight into TMPG from the drive itself as if it was a real drive.

ASHY

well a quick one
using the newest verstion of temp
any way i normaly batch files to run while i am a sleep
but a couple of files which i have
it starts encoding them
then just quits no error message or anything temp just closes down for no reason
any idea
thanks

I have this same problem and have ask about it before with no replies. It seems to happen to me when I set up a batch of file using the Project Wizard. Also, it seems to occur when I am using inverse telecine to convert NTSC to NTSC film. Also when this happens TMPGENC clears the batch list and shuts down on its own. A possible clue was found when I made a batch with only one file. At the end of the run, the blue arrow that normal indicates the file has been encoded was not there. There was an error message that said "Stream Error". The file was perfectly encoded though.

I wish someone would address this because it is very frustrating to set a batch of files to run overnight only to find the first one finished and TMPGENC has shutdown without doing the rest of the batch.

MrSmith

>well a quick one
>using the newest verstion of temp
>any way i normaly batch files to run while i am a sleep
>but a couple of files which i have
>it starts encoding them
>then just quits no error message or anything temp just closes down for no reason
>any idea
>thanks
>
well i have figured it out i just set like it said in so many posts
set the direct read to under enviromental to 2 and works fine

Hello!!!

I ask myself a little question about noise reduction. What do you think of the "High quality" option in noise reduction? Is it really high quality? For the moment i don't see a real improvment except the time of encoding that is longer.
So what do you think about and are you using it?

Thanks,
Nico...

Hi,Nico
You only use "Noise Reduction" if your source file is Noisy and the noise reduction seems to give it a smoothed apearance, usually VHS captures and movies shot on a video cameras have quite a bit of noise in them but if you have a clean source then you won"t need the noise reduction it could even make a clean source look worse if to much noise reduction is applied....

Thanks, generally my sources are divx so to lower to noise created by divx codec I usually use noise reduction. For the moment it has given me very great SVCD...

I have downloaded the VFAPI plugin but how exactly do I use it? because even after I put the file into the same directory as TMPGEnc.exe, TMPGEnc still does not read my .d2v files... can someone please help me out, keep in mind i'm a newbie, so if answers could be detailed it would be much apreciated

[Options Menu]
This menu contains all of the set up options for TMPGEnc.

Register TMPGEnc.vfp with VFAPI
VFAPI stands for "Video File API". This is used to write plugins for TMPGEnc. The current settings need to be registered before the plugins can be used.
Make sure to "check" this menu before using the plugins.

[Environmental Settings]-[VFAPI Plugins]
General settings for VFAPI Plugins.This panel displays a list of the VFAPI plugins that have been registered with TMPGEnc. Select plugins to use from the list.

~NewtronX

Yes make sure you run the TMPGEncVFP_Install.bat file that comes with the VFAPI plugin and then tick it under options.
Next you need to copy 'DVD2AVI.VFP' from you DVD2AVI folder into your TMPG folder where the TMPG.exe is located and then restart TMPG and load your D2v file.

Also remember once the d2v file is created DO NOT move, delete or rename the file or folders or the Vobs associated with it until you finish encoding.

ASHY

Hi,
I am prettyew to this, but I noticed that thereis a template for SVCD-NTSC Film, but none for SVCD-PAL Film. I have a AV fle which is 24Fps whic I would like to put as SVCD and I don't want the choppiness thatmay be introduced if I used the SVCD-PAL Film format. Is there a SVCD-PAL Film format at all please?

Next question-I got a DivX AVI file which is 1 hour and 49 minutes long, but when I load the file into TMPG, it says that the file is 292 minutes long!! Is this a bug or something please? My version is 2.56...

Thanks very much,
Sreenath

There is no such thing as Pal Film, 24fps is a NTSC format, try this ,load in your file choose the NTSC Film template then load the "unlock.mfc" template from the "Extra" Folder(so you can change the framerate) then go to "Settings" and under "Video" change the framerate to 24fps, this should give you correct playback on your DVD player...

I doubt the file will play correctly in your DVD player at 24 fps if it is a PAL machine.
It is likely it will do it's own conversion to 25 fps which will still result in jerky playback associated with framerate conversion.

You could try it by loading the PAL template then just unlock the settings and change the frame rate to 24 fps.
If you use the NTSC template it will most likely end up playing in black and white due to the format difference.

If you want my advice do a proper conversion. It's not difficult and you will find easy step by step instructions on this BBS how to do it.

ASHY

Thats strange cuz my cheapo ntsc dvd player plays pal and ntsc movies without a problem, in the instructions is doesn"t say that it supports Pal but it doesn"t say it doesn"t either ,so I guess It depends on your dvd player...

Minion do u have a multistandard TV. If this is the case then it may be why you don't get a black and white picture.
In my experience I have seen this happen on a number of machines. I have a machine which will play PAL or NTSC, but if I choose to play an NTSC movie then I have to decide whether I want the movie to play smooth which means my player won't do any conversion and then just outputs in the NTSC format which would need a multiformat TV as I live in a PAL world or I can choose to invoke the NTSC to PAL conversion.
This gives me a colour picture, but it also changes the framerate to 25 fps and causes the dreaded jerky playback effect.

ASHY

I actually have no idea what kind of TV I have ,it is a 32 inch Samsung and thats all I know ,I inherited it from my father when he died, I don"t know if this has any relation but I have some european Video tapes that have to be played on a VCR that plays European tapes and they play fine also.I have allways been able to play Pal vcd/svcd"s on my system so i allways wondered why poeple go through the trouble of converting from pal to ntsc and visa versa, but I guess you learn something new every day..So what is the differance between 23.9fps ntsc film and 25fps Pal besides the frame rate and resolution?

NTSC also has a lower number of scan lines (525) compared to PAL (625) which is why the PAL system is considered the better system. Also I think the colour information is coded differently in an NTSC signal compared to PAL which is probably why the picture is black and white when the wrong format is played on the wrong type of recieving equipment.

With what you have said about your european VCR playing ok on your TV, then I'm pretty sure you have a multi standard TV.

ASHY

I'm using TMPGEnc and the Quicktime add-in to convert a quicktime file to MPEG.

The problem is that whilst the video conversion is perfect, there is no audio! The Quicktime file works fine (just slow on my PC coz it's not very fast).

I've seen reccomendations elsewhere about extracting the audio track in Quicktime Pro... I tried that but it says the file doesn't allow me to save (it's the 'The Lord of the Rings: The Two Tower' trailer).

I'm pulling my hair out here - the only way I can watch this trailer in decent quality is if I convert it to MPEG and paly it through my DVD decoder card.

Are there any utilities that would allow me to extract the audio track? Or am I doing something wrong in TMPGEnc??

I had the same problem with a quicktime file I was trying to burn to DVD. I ended up using my soundcard's recorder program (set to record "what you hear.")to record the audio to wav while the video was playing. I then used that as the audio source during encoding. I really despise quicktime now and will avoid the format at all costs in the future. I hope this helps.

Problem is, the sound is very jumpy in QT, so probably wouldn't provide a good recording. :(

Mark, Is there any other way? becasue I have a regular sound card, SB live, and well, it isn't that good on the recording, so help.

I've cracked it!!

There's a utility (command based) called mov2avi, and a GUI front end for it called mov2aviGUI. This has an option to extract the soundtrack as a .WAV file.

Just make sure you have the Quicktime Authoring component installed though.

I have a video program which can output to MPEG2 format (Program is MGI Videowave 4). I am trying to burn to a disc at the higher resolution MPEG2 allows (720 x 480) for a clearer picture, but TMPG Enc, v. 2.57 reads the follwoing error when I try to load the file, "cannot open, or unsupported". Not sure what the issue is since the resolution does not seem out of place, and the MPEG1 files I get from my program work just fine (just a bad resolution). Has anyone else seen this problem? I would be willing to buy the program if I can burn these discs, but not if I can't get it to work.

If you are loading in mpeg1 files and you are getting the "can not open or unsupported" error you should try raising the priority of the "Microsoft mpeg1 file reader" in the Vfapi plugins(in version 2.57) you do this by going to "options" to "enviromental settings" to "vfapi plugins" and raise the "microsoft mpeg1" plugin to "1" or"2" this should get the file loaded, and if it doesn"t then de-multiplex the mpeg1 file and load in just the video and encode it then multiplex the mpeg2 video and the audio from the mpeg1 together cuz re-encodeing the audio will decrease the audio quality plus the audio is allready in the proper format for mpeg.But there are a couple of points I would like to make, If you are planning to burn a mpeg2 file at 720 by 480 to cd-r to play on your dvd player then it most likely wont play but a resolution of 704 by 480 will probably play(if it supports svcd), and another thing if your mpeg1 file is say "352 by 240" and you want to raise the resolution to 720(or 704) by 480, it will not Increase the quality it will actually decrease the quality, because of the simple fact that you are trying to spread a 352 by 240 resolution over 4 times the area, which means you will loose 75% of the detail.Look at it this way, in a 352 by 240 immage there are "84,480" pixels and in a 720 by 480 immage there are "345,600" pixels, so if you spread "84,480" pixels over a "345,600" pixel area then the encoder has to guess how to fill in "261,120" pixels.Or some encoders seem to just make the pixels look 4 times as big which is basicly the same thing.I have tried this quite a few times cuz my capture device (Win TV USB) will only capture at 320 by 240 and the movies look good when displayed in a small window but when I try to make them full screen or encode them to a higher resolution they look terrorable, but give it a shot and make your own decition cuz you are the only person that can determin what looks good to you...good luck mate..

Why does TMPGEnc make creates no key frames, so that I can't fast-forward my
video Cd's?

TMPG does create key frames, these are called I frames and are the beginning of every GOP. Make sure you add a sequence header before every GOP if you are having problems and if that doesn't help try different burning software. Which software are you using?

ASHY

U: "can't fast-forward my video Cd's?"

R: Its possible you have not created a true VCD but actualy a MPG video.
There are Home DVD Players out their that will play straight MPG files but this lacks fast forward and pause capabilites.(ie. Mintek 2110)

For A true VCD the Disk Must be structured and formated to VCD Structure.
I recomend using Easy VCD http://www.vcdeasy.org/ after you creat (MPG1 for VCD or MPG2 for SVCD using TMPGenc)

How to:
http://www.vcdhelp.com/vcdeasyhowto.htm

Tmpg Enc misreads the time information of a Divx (.avi) movie when I convert it to Mpeg-1 (VCD) format. My movie is only around 24 minutes long but Tmpg Enc says that it is 72 minutes long. I also get a repeating error message when I try to encode the movie. The box reads "Error" and then "-537403781 86032". What does this mean?