Hi,

wanted to transform a SCVD file (MPG2) into MPG1, but TMPGEnc shows me a "cannot open or not supported" command. Which version should I use and which CODEC? Can I get it to work properly at all ?

i've had same problem. but this is not a big problem.

open tmpenc (up version 2.5). open <file> <mpeg-tools>
you will see ||simple multiplex||. click on ||video input|| the <browse>-button.
select your source-video. might bee on the cd-drive. often in a "mpeg2"-folder.
the ||audio-input|| will be selected automatic.

select in ||output|| the destination folder and file on your harddisk.

in a final step(!) you must select the ||type|| at the pulldown-menu. select <mpeg-1-video-cd>.
click on <run> to start the transcoding. it will take some time. after all you can burn the new mpeg-1-file on a "vcd".

that's all.
most stand-alone-dvd-player will have no problem to deal with the "vcd". only a few have problems with the high bitrate. (in this way, i shown you, you cannot change the bitrate of the svcd-source-file to the vcd-destination-file. no work-around, sorry. but this way is the fastest way(!), because the vcd-destination-file is as big as the svcd-source-file an will take the same place on a cd. no cutting or afterworking!!).

haveFun!!

sehe gerade, h&auml;tte ich auch wohl in deutsch beantworten k&ouml;nnen. naja, wirst es wohl trotzdem abarbeiten k&ouml;nnen.
ach ja: manchmal treten probleme am ende einer svcd auf. die sind dann meistens so vollgestopft, dass das laufwerk macken macht. du solltest daher tunlichst darauf aufpassen, dass die quell-cd ganz sauber ist. nach der arbeit, sollte man nochmal das ende vergleichen, ob auch alles wirklich drauf ist. mir schon mal passiert, dass das happy end weg war. gibt meistens &auml;rger im freundeskreis bei einer videonacht!!!

Hi, Ihave just started this download thing and have now sucessfully downloaded all the stuff to make my first vcd -- but where and what do i dofirst???????????????????

Kym, questions like that require such a long and complex answer that the true gurus on this BBS - and I am not one of them - generally suggest that you first go to: VCDHELP.COM and read the TMPG guides that they have on that site, and then ask more specific questions.

In my experience TMPG is best suited for taking raw .AVI files (such as KaZaa downloaded movies or videos, or TV shows caught with a video capture board that is installed into your computer) and then transforming them into MPG files. You can then use the MPEG editing tools that TMPG contains to divide the 1.5 gigabyte movie file into 3 or more smaller files, that will fit on three or more VCDs. But unless you have a very special DVD player, you will not be able to simply copy the MPG files to a blank CD-R and play them. Most likely, you will need to obtain something like Nero's BURNING ROM and use this for the final "touch up" before it burns the movie to the CD-R(s).

In my experience... several months now... movie files that say that they have been encoded by MPEG 4 software (AKA DiVX) require a lot more work on our parts. Then again, this could be my ignorance talking at this point. I always seem to have to use Virtual Dub (a program that I don't understand 1/100 of, to make a wav file of the audio from the original movie file and then use this .WAV file as the audio source when I am transforming the DiVX.AVI to an .MPG format. (And even then I still have some problems with the audio matching perfectly the video... its a learning process!!!)

>But unless you have a very special DVD player, you will not be able to simply copy the MPG files to a blank CD-R and play them. Most likely, you will need to obtain something like Nero's BURNING ROM and use this for the final "touch up" before it burns the movie to the CD-R(s).

What do you mean by touch up? Surely you are not suggesting re-encoding the MPEG files with NERO. NERO is a terrible encoder and what would be the point when TMPG produces far superior files.

If you split a file with TMPG you have to ensure you choose the correct stream type before splitting to attach the required headers. I.E. 'MPEG1 Video CD' or 'MPEG2 SVCD(VBR)' depending on the file otherwise your burning program such as NERO will complain about the file and may attempt to re-encode it.

ASHY

ASHY writes:
What do you mean by touch up? Surely you are not suggesting re-encoding the MPEG files with NERO. NERO is a terrible encoder and what would be the point when TMPG produces far superior files.

Hi Ashy,
No I never re-encode with NERO... what I meant was that Nero does "something" to the TMPG made file that will allow the burned file to be played on most DVD players. I don't know the proper term for it....

Ashy wrote
If you split a file with TMPG you have to ensure you choose the correct stream type before splitting to attach the required headers. I.E. 'MPEG1 Video CD' or 'MPEG2 SVCD(VBR)' depending on the file otherwise your burning program such as NERO will complain about the file and may attempt to re-encode

Paul asks
I have to be honest with you, I am not following what you said here ...
I AM having problems with the audio components of movies that I divide up to fit onto VCDs.I have done the Virtual Dub thing to extract the.wav audio from the AVI file, and then I make the MPG using the 2 different source files, the original avi for the video and then the .wav for the audio source. Then I get the new MPG and edit it into smaller files to fit onto the VCD.
Ashy...what I'm getting from you is that the job is still not over. That I am not doing something correctly after I have the MPG file but before I make the edited files. Can you please tell me specifically what step I need to do?

As I said when you split an MPEG using the MPEG tools you have choose the correct stream type as said above. If you simply leave the stream type as 'MPEG1 system(automatic)' then you will end up with a plain old MPEG file without the VCD headers required by your burning program which should complain about it.
If you continue to burn and ignore these warnings then you may find your file will not play correctly causing symptoms such as audio de-sync, no audio and playback artifacts.

If your MPEG is in sync before you burn and you have followed the steps above then you are either creating out of standard MPEG files which your DVD player cannot handle or your burning program is not compatible with your player.

Earlier versions of NERO are known to cause audio sync problems with certain players. If this is the case try a new version or a different program altogether such as VCDeasy or one known to correct this problem is 'Instant cd-dvd'

ASHY

I'm new to digital video and am trying to get up on the learning curve. I purchased the Dazzle DVD Creation Station 200 for the purpose of converting analog Hi8mm video to DVD. I was under the impression from the Dazzle literature that the encoding to MPEG2 was done via an encoding chip in the device itself. Yet it seems that the captured video requires first "rendering" in Movie Star, then "assembly" in DVD Complete; two of the software suites included. The capture appears to work fine, playing cleanly in Windows XP Media Player, but becomes blocky and heavily pixelated upon "rendereing". Dazzle support isn't worth mentioning. I checked VCDhelp.com and several people suggest the use of TMPGEnc to encode the captured video, then either using DVD Complete or Nero 5.5 to burn the DVD. My questions are: 1)If the analog video is truely converted to MPEG2 by the encoding chip, what encoding, rendering, producing is then required? 2)When the DVD CS200 captures the video it creates several files, one of which is an .mpg extention. Should this file include the video and audio? I have successfuly used TMPGEnc to encode/render the .mpg file, but when I select system video+audio, TMPGEnc won't/can't access the same .mpg file for the audio. 3) Can you suggest a good resource for the novice regarding the process of creating DVD's from video?

Thanks and apologies for the lack of brevity,
Fred

From my experience these so called "Tolal Video Solution" cause more problems than Solutions, if while captureing you have the option to render to "AVI" instead of Mpeg then do it cuz the Dazzle mpeg encodeing is less than desireabled, that is why the picture becomes blocky after rendering, and encodeing the rendered mpeg to mpeg will not increase the quality..if you can render to avi format then encode with Tmpgenc then author with "Dazzale DVD Complete" then you should retain most of the quality of the captured movie, as long the the "DVD Complete" does not re-encode the file for you....You can probably find a guide that can be usefull at "vcdhelp.com".......

Currently using v2.57. No real problems to date. Only thing I noticed is that I cannot save my custom SVCD profile. I have created other profiles with no problems saving. IE CVD Anyone out have same issue?

I haven"t had a problem with than but you can allways make templates with other versions and use them in this version......

Sorry to but in here, but Minion, you mentioned templates. Do you know what the difference is between a TPR and a MCF? When I save my own settings,it's always a TPR file, The TMPGEnc templates are all MCF. How do I make a MCF template with grayed out settings, and only leave those that I want open to adjust?

A "TPR" file is not a Template ,it is a "Project file" that is used in "Batch encodeing" or to frameserve with Vfapi, to save a template you first have to load the "unlock.mfc" template from the "Extra Folder" this will unlock the settings so you can change them , and when you want to save a template you click the "save" tab in the bottom right corner next to the "Load" tab...

Thanks Minion again. :) I also figured out what was wrong with adding chapters. I don't have the details yet, but I was able to solve the problem, and I'll be posting a "I fixed it" thread shortly. Basiclly it was the bitrate not VCDEasy.

I'm haveing problems. I am no longer able to convert avi to mpeg with tmpgenc. I'm not sure what happened. I had an older version of tmpgenc and i upgraded to 2.57 and then it stopped working with avi's and i went back to the older version and it's not working with them now either. can anyone help?

Have you tried to extract the audio out of the AVI file? You can use a utility called VirtualDub to do this if TMPGEnc has a problem with the audio.

If you told us what was happening then we might be able to help you but saying that it don"t work doesn"t give us much information to go on...You wouldn"t possibly be getting a "Can not open or unsupported" error when trying to load in your avi file???If that is your problem you will find the answer on this BBS repeatedly......

Hi

I had a few days before the similar situation - I tried to get a divx converted to a VCD (or mpg). And I had another error msg.

What I did was the following: I downloaded the SW so called VIRTUALDUB from doom9.org and just started it. I opened the divx-avi file, set within the video and also the audio menu the settings to >direct stream copy< and then just saved the project as AVI file again.

I started TMPGEnc as usual, opened now my new AVI-file and ran through the same process - and this time without any error. It just did it like I expected it from the beginning.

Just go and try it and let me know.

Have fun:-)
Kai

I am trying to convert an AVI file to MPG-1 (VCD) but lowering the bit rate to 950kbps from 1150kbps so I can squeze the whole movie onto one CD. I know I'm going outside the VCD spec and will have an XVCD. My problem is even though I lower the rate, I still end up with an 850 meg file. I even lowered the rate right down to 100kbps and the output was poor quality, but the file size was still going to be big (estimation by looking at file size and frames completed/total). What am I missing to make the final mpgs smaller. Currently I am using CQ at 50% and this looks like it's also going to be an 850M file.

Brian

You only need to reduce it by 50 megs. I would try and cut some of the movie out. I did the same with the movie Jimmy Neutron. I wanted the entire movie on one CD. I was able to by cutting out the credits at the very end. In fact, it was still 815 megs, but I over-burned it using VCDEasy with no problem.

Did you use the VCD tamplete and then unlocked it and changed the bitrate? If so then even if you use 100K/s it will pad the stream to make it 1150K/s... You need to use the VCD-Nonstandart Tamplete...

You need to change the "system" setting to "Video-CD Non-standard" or Tmpgenc will add padding to it to keep it vcd compliant ,and if you need to only loose 50 mb you only need to drop the bitrate about 75kbs, but if you are makeing a non-standard VCD then you might as well use the "CQ" setting in the "Rate Controll Mode" this way you can actually raise the bitrate and get a smaller files size with Better quality......

Thanks for the help. The MPG is being created as I type and is looking smaller.

I have been making DV AVI files with Ulead Media Studio and later use TMPGEnc to convert them to MPG with no problems. Now I am trying Premiere 6.0 and the captured DV AVI works ok with TMPGEnc but not the ones that I make after editing.
Is this because Premiere makes type 1 DV AVI and if so how can I make type 2 with Premiere?

I don"t think that Tmpgenc supports Type 1 DV,I use "Premier 6.5" and I can use any codec that i have installed on my system to render files with it so it should be the same for you, if you have the "Microsoft DV codec" then that works with Tmpgenc or you can use a compressed format like Divx5, I know on my system I must have 50 different codecs that i can use to render with in Premier, will only use certain ones to capture to but after it has been captured and you have edited it you should be able to use any codec you like, you can even frame serve from Premier to Tmpgenc but it takes a long time, or you can use any number of Mpeg encoder plugins with premier, I have a whole bunch of Mpeg plugins like "Ligos" CCE" Panasonic" "Canopus Procoder" and the new Premier Mpeg encoder than comes with Premier 6.5........

I encoded a divx file to mpeg-1. Changed the bitrate to 1650. Got ready to burn it and was informed that it was not the format needed to burn. (using ezcd plat.). Minion says increase the bitrate, change to cq, quality bet 80-90, with bitrate max 5000 and min 1500.
Do I have to change anything else to get the quality that everyone is talking about. Minion also said to burn even if I get an error??? Just getting tired of doing this encoding wrong. Looking for all the info that I can get.
thanks

The standard for mpeg1 VCD is:
NTSC/NTSC Film
Video:
1150 kbit/sec MPEG-1
352 x 240 pixels
29,97 frames/second
23,976 frames/second NTSC Film
Audio:
224 kbit/sec MPEG-1 Layer2
Extra:
Menus and chapters
Still pictures in 704x480,352x240

Notice the bitrate? It has to be constant (CBR) at 1150 if you want a "standard" VCD; otherwise, it's a XVCD that your encoding.

If Nero says that the mpeg is not in the format for VCD then it is probably because there isn"t a VCD Header on the file, you probably had the "System" setting set to "Mpeg1" not "Video-cd non-standard" to correct this run the file through the "Merge & cut" with the "Video-CD NON-Standard" setting in the dropdown menu, then choose the output directory and remember to change the name of the file so you don"t overwrite it, then click"run" then it will produce a Mpeg1 file with a VCD header on it, Nero should not give you an error if the bitrate is higher than the standard vcd bitrate.. But the Executioner is right that a Standard VCD has CBR and is 1150kbs, but i haven"t heard of any DVD Player that will not play a VCD with a Higher bitrate ..The standard VCD has Pretty Bad Quality and the only good way to Increase the quality is to raise the bitrate......

Ohh ,,I just read that you are useing "EZ-cd Creator" that program is not a good program for doing VCD"s, it will allways give you errors even if the file is just a little bit out of specs, I got the same program with my CD Burner and had problems with it from the start, go download "VCDEasy" it is a freeware program that does not rely on the header of the file for compliance, it actually re-writes the header and corrects any problems with the Mpeg before burning ,and it supports Chapters...so if I were you I would get rid of the program or not use it for VCD"s......

Will I have to uninstall EZCD or can I have both without conflict?

There is nothing wrong with Easy CD Creator if your using the latest version 5.x with Nero. I have both installed, including directcd with no problems. Like Minion said, don't use Easy CD for burning or authorizing. Your better off with Nero or VCDEasy.

It is in virtualdub that I get the message. How do I go about making it work there?

I have written down article no.s for future reference as not to bother anyone too much. Now I need to know how to access them since I am referred to article such and such.

You mean you want to find an article by which number it is???If you looked at every article they are numbered sequentially so if you know how to count you should be able to find it but if you don"t know how to count then You need a lot more help then I can give.....

ha ha. No Min. I wrote down articles that related to issues that I was having. I am trying to access them without going through every page. there are over 100 ya know.

I was just kidding with you.......You basicly have to go through each page till you find the one you want to read..

Kidding accepted. :-) Bummer on the the search. Thanks for the info. Having a hard time adjusting to the changes in the encoding/burning process. I use to be able to do this in my sleep!! Wouldn't happen to have a copy of Tmpgenc 12.a in your pocket would cha?

No but you can find a copy easy enough, I would tell you were but the moderators would just pull the post before you had a chance to read it ..I guess they do like it when poeple use the beta versions cuz they don"t make any money off you then.....

Can anyone tell me how to predict/control the size of the MPG when I convert from an AVI? I want to be able to fit a movie onto 1 CD. How do I make sure I keep the output file under 700 meg?

If you are useing the CBR encodeing method you can use a "Bitrate Calculator" to figure out what bitrate to use to keep the file under a certain size..But you can fit a LOT more on a CD_R than 700MB, on a 80min 700mb CD-R you can usually get about 795mb-802mb on CD-R..But if you are useing the much better encodeing method CQ(Constant Quality)then it is a lot of guess work and trial & error..but if you use the CQ method you can fit more on a CD-R with Better quality and use a Higher bitrate......

when i try to convert .ogm.avi files into mpeg i keep having "an error occured when ACM was initialized" can somebody help me plz ?

The ACM is the "Audio Compression Manager" so you probably have an incompatible audio format in your avi file, try extracting the audio from your avi file to a wav file with "Virtual Dub" then use that as the audio source..Tmpgenc does not like to encode compressed audio formats and sometimes causes errors if you try to encode a format that it doesn"t like....

I am creating a PAL compilation VCD using TMGGEnc to encode the .Avi to .Mpg and nero to burn.

The problem: I have various files of similar length (Around 25 mins / 180MB) I can not understand why they take vastly different amount of space on the VCD.

An example of this is file 1 takes 25mins of a VCD where file 2 take a whole CD! The file specs look the same to me

File Properties from Windows XP

File 1 - Audio

Duration:00:24:09
Bit Rate: 128kbs
Audio Format: Mpeg 3

File 1 - Video

Frame Rate: 23 frames/sec
Date Rate:125kbs
Video Sample Rate:24bit
Video Compression: Divx Codec

File 2 - Audio

Duration: 00:24:09
Bit Rate: 127kbs
Audio Format: Mpeg 3

File 2 - Video

Frame Rate: 23 frames / sec
Date Rate: 122kbs
Video Sample Rate: 24 bit
Video Compression: Divx Codec

(Using AVI Info the files specs look identical too!)

If nero is used to perform the encoding both files take around 25mins on a CD.

I cannot use Nero to do the encoding as I need to reduce the video size slightly (as the videos are subtitles and if encoded at full screen part of the subttles are lost) Nero's scaling method "Scale and Fit" Produces a very poor quality VCD


Any Ideas?

Super Play

If you are useing the same bitrate and the files are the same resolution and frame rate and you are useing the CBR encodeing method and you have the "system" setting both on the same setting then they should be pretty close to the same size.. but if a 25 minute avi takes up a whole CD-R then you must have the bitrate set at about 4500KBS which is allmost high enough to make a DVD...another thing I noticed is that you are encodeing NTSC files to PAL format, this will cause Jumpy playback on your DVD Player and could cause the audio to periodicly go out of Sync with the video...And it might be possible that your audio could cut out cuz you are encodeing a compressed format to a Compressed format cuz Tmpgenc sometimes has problems encodeing compressed formats to mp2......

I have cheked the bit rates and they appear to be identical. The settings in TMPGenc also look identical for both (Thanks for the tip regardig Jumpy playback) I have multiple files with the same issue.

I am Using TMPGenc Plus 2.56.39.143

File info from GSpot.

File 1:

Original .AVI

Size: 177 MB (181,976 KB 186,343,424 bytes)
Codec: DivX 3 Low-Motion
Aspect: 640 x 480 (1.333:1)
Frames/Sec: 23.976 FPS
Duration: 00h 24m 10s
Avg Bitrate: 894 kb/s

TMPGENG Info

Video-CD NTSC (MPEG-1 352x240 29.97fps CBR 1150kbps, Layer-2 44100Hz 224kbps)

Movie info: 352x240 29.97fps / 44100 Hz Stereo/ 24min 11 sec
Average Video Bitrate: 1150
Audio Birate: 224
Estimated File Size: 241.74MB


*******************************************************************************

File 2:

Original .Avi

Size: 172 MB (176,948 KB 181,194,752 bytes)
Codec: DivX 3 Low-Motion
Aspect: 640 x 480 (1.333 : 1)
Frames/Sec: 23.976 FPS
Duration: 00h 24m 10s
AVG Bitratre: 863 kb/s

TMPGENG info

Video-CD NTSC (MPEG-1 352x240 29.97fps CBR 1150kbps, Layer-2 44100Hz 224kbps)

Movie info: 352x240 29.97fps / 44100 Hz Stereo / 24min 11 sec
Average Video Bitrate: 1150
Audio Birate: 224
Estimated File Size: 725.26


Any More ideas?

I wouldn't rely on TMPG to estimate the output size correctly as it's very often wrong.

No matter what the bitrate or the resolution of the source file as long as the two files are of same length and you are encoding using the CBR method with identical bitrates then the two files should be exactly the same length. There is no way that the last file is going to be that large. It is either an error or you have a dodgy copy of TMPG.
A standard VCD using CBR means 1min is equal to 10mb and that is constant for standard VCD so a 24min AVI should be 240mb in size.

ASHY

Hey SuperPlay, your avi files are being encoded to the wrong frame rate, you need to use the "NTSC Film" Template not the "NTSC".....

After the note from Ashy regarding file size I encoded the file. TMPGenc did get the output size incorrect. the encodign was around 10mb/min

However the Encoding is taking around 10 times that of the other files I have and there is no audio on the finished product.

I am looking into this.

Thanks go to Minion (Top Tips) & ASHY (File Sizes)

Resolved!!!

It looks like that TMPGenc could not handle the audio that was embeded in the .avi

I used avitowav (Link below) to extract the audio, then encoded using TMPGenc pointing to the extracted audio for audio source.

www.geocities.com/agrgic.geo/avi2wav.htm

Super Play

Resolved!!!

It looks like that TMPGenc could not handle the audio that was embeded in the .avi

I used avitowav (Link below) to extract the audio, then encoded using TMPGenc pointing to the extracted audio for audio source.

www.geocities.com/agrgic.geo/avi2wav.htm

Super Play