this is my suggestion, since an encoding is a long process, it gets really irritating when the process is stopped by some factor of nature and u have to start all over again...instead, since u already have a process logging function.....
y not use that to provide a pause/resume, more importantly, provide a resume after a power failure, the log will provide details of the last frame that was processed, simply knock of the last 50 frames if need be and start encoding again from where u left off ?!?
i dont see y this is not possible !? the software would b really great if i could stop the encode today, shut down the software and resume the encode 2 days from now.
hope 2 hear from u soon.
till later
>driven

This sudgestion was made to the author many times and a long time ago and from what I gather it is pretty much impossible..The information gathered in the log file isn"t the right kind of information for the encoder to resume encodeing after a crash..you would think it wouldn"t be that hard to do but I guess it is easier said than done cuz no encoder has this feature..You can pause the encodeing but you have to keep you computer on, you just click "Stop" then it will ask you if you want to quit encodeing and you just don"t answer, then you can go run another application or you sister can go check her e-mail, or you can put you computer in hibernation mode till you want to start encodeing again then you just answer "No" and it resumes encodeing, and if it does crash on you you can use the source range to start encodeing were you left off and then use the "Merge & Cut" to join the parts together, it"s not perfect but if you do it right you can"t tell were the join is....

thanks for the prompt reply, i understand clearly what u mean, but with computers nothing is impossible, can b nearly impossible, but never out of reach.
has any one though of some means of saving the state of the thread/process to provide the pause resume function ?!?
kinda like fooling the process, i.e. the encoder, that it never stopped ?!

i'am really interested in doing this, coz i was converting an avi to svcd, the output was going to b 2.5gb large, but at 1.5gb, the process got terminated due to a power failure, now i'am really disgusted at starting the whole process all over again.
till later,
driven.

p.s.: i dont mind spending time in this over here to get a resume function working (or give up after beign satified that it really is impossible, hehe :D )

Like minion said, you dont have to start over from the start.
cut off what you already had before the powerfailure, best use the last frame before an i-frame as the last frame of that mpeg file , set the starting point for teh second part to the lenght of the bit you already encoded, encode the second part and then use the cut/merge tool.
it should work out fine if you have set the encoder to closed GOPs.
if you would devize a funtion that does resume automaticaly you wouldn't be able to stop the process at all.
which means that the job would finish no matter what.

Ok, guys, it is me again. Here is where I stand. In reading the forums of several different sites, I came across a suggestion to go into DivxPros configuration and select smooth playback. I did this without re-encoding. Just did the vcdeasy part of it. What came out is by far the best I have had yet. But there are still freezes. No where near what I had before, but they are still there. Have any of you ever tweeked you vcds in this way? If I re-encode this now that I have selected this feature, will it make a difference?

Has all this effort been for the same movie??if so it is probably just a screwed up avi file, you shouldn"t be haveing all these problems if the avi file was in perfect shape, have you tried a different movie file???The best thing you can do to get trouble free exelent quality VCD"s is to get yourself a DVD-rom for $50 and rip dvd"s, the quality is much greater than you can get by encodeing avi file downloaded off the net, and the problems are allmost non-existant......

you are probably right. I have a DVD-ROM drive. Ripping was the next thing I was going to teach myself.
Just for the sake of time, Exactly what do I need to get started. I am looking for the proven way to do this. Thanks much.

"you are probably right. I have a DVD-ROM drive. Ripping was the next thing I was going to teach myself.
Just for the sake of time, Exactly what do I need to get started. I am looking for the proven way to do this. Thanks"

For starters, go here: http://www.dvdripguides.com/dvdmenu.html

Ripping is simple, first get "SmartRipper" the default settings are the correct settings , and you rip the vob files to you hard drive, then download DVD2AVI and load the vob files into it and then make a D2V project file and the Wav audio file, then you load the "d2v file into Tmpgenc and the wav file in for the audio and encode to the format of your choice......

hello, i need help if i download ulead dvd workshop and use it to author my VCD's will it ruin the quality? i tried using the dvd plug in in the other program of ulead but it kept freezing in stuff i'd rather use something plain and simple thatll get the job done thanx

If you use Ulead dvd workshop and you don"t make totally VCD compliant vcd"s then it will re-encode them and you will loose lots of quality..When you were useing the DVD Plugin was it freezeing when you were scrolling through the file looking for chapter points???If this is true it isn"t actually freezeing it just takes a long time for the program to scan trough the file looking for I frames, it will do this if you are useing anything slower than a 1.4ghz cpu, and it will do this more with files encoded with tmpgenc, the plugin does not like Tmpgenc mpeg files, but it scans through 5 times faster with CCE encoded files. it is the only program That I know of than does chapters and menues with XVCD and XSVCD"s, but if you are makeing totaly compliant VCD"s then you can use DVD workshop with out it re-encodeing, but they both use the same Mpeg decoder so you might have the same problem with it ,and DVD Workshop only lets you do 20 chapter pionts per file, but if you just want to do Chapters then you can use VCDEasy but the Menu"s are nice to have......

what do you mean when u say totally compliant VCD's and yes that when it freezes but when i clikc alt+ctrl+dlt it says that that program isnt responding

My monitor screen freezes up quite often, and when I press "Control Alternate Delete" I often see that TMPG has frozen,,, but there are several different reasons for this... But I'm no expert... this is just based on personal observation...

1) TMPG encounters unreadable frames in an avi file and freezes.

2) Insufficient Video memory... sometimes if I'm downloading from Kazaa and encoding at the same time, a "pop up" ad will appear. Depending on what else I'm doing the "pop up" is often enough to overload my screen memory, causing a "freeze-up"

Those are the most commom causes that happen to me.

Totally VCD Compliant is a VCD at 352 by 240 1150kbs 224kbs audio 41000hz, sequence headers aligned to vcd specs..That is totally VCD compliant..The windows task manager is overly parinoid when it comes to unresponsive programs if you just wait a couple minutes the program will start running again..But this seems to be only a problem with Tmpgenc encoded files, CCE encoded files don"t have that problem with the DVD Plugin........

I was experimenting with low bitrates with the VCD template. I noticed that if the bitrate was below 1150, then the files were always the same size. I used vitualdub to verify the bitrates of the files and they were correct. If the bitrates were higher than 1150 then the files were larger. Is this a bug, or is there some sort of padding going on that can't be disabled?

If you are useing a VCD template Tmpgenc will allways make the file VCD compliant by adding Padding, what you need to do is change the "System" setting to "Video-CD NON-Standard"......

Hi New To This But I Use To Use The TMPGENC Program To Load VOB File That I Ripped With Smartripper And Then I Would Encode It To A AVI File But I Had To Recently Reinstall My Whole System And Now It Says (Can Not Be Opened Or Is Unsupported) When I Try To Open A VOB File Help Pls Anyone I Have A DVD Program Installed Which Is PowerDVD Deluxe Edition 4.0. Am I Missing Some Plugin Or Codec Hlp Thks!!

StarLP22

You never load VOB files directly into Tmpgenc, Vob files usually have numerous audio tracks so how is Tmpgenc subposed to know thich audio track to use ,Pluss vob file usually have "Dolby Digital AC3" audio and Tmpgenc has never supported that format, so you must be remembering the procedure you went through wrong because Tmpgenc has never been able to do what you want it to do...If you want to use Tmpgenc to make an avi file out of a Vob file(there are better programs for doing this) you need to use DVD2AVI to extract the audio track that you want to a Wav file, and make a D2V project file for the video information, then you load the "D2V" file into Tmpgenc and the Wav file for the audio, then you "output to avi", a faster way is just to use DVD2AVi to make a avi video file and a Wav audio file then Mux them together...or use one of the many programs specificly designed for turning Vob files into AVI files, like "Vob To AVI" and there are many others.....

I have done this by simply renaming file as *.mpg to use TMPG. Then you can use TMPG tools to separate video and audio,

Next you can convert video format, then recombine using TMPG tools with original video.

Alternatively you can use an audio utility to convert audio, eg AC3 to MP2, before recombining with video.

The only reason you have been able to use VOB files with TMPG is because somewhere along the line you have installed an MPEG2 codec to decode the file otherwise it would NOT load.
It is a silly idea as Minion says to use VOB files directly with TMPG. One because of the many tracks involved and two because of the speed and three if you have more than one VOB file, TMPG cannot load the next file sequentially. DVD2AVI can handle VOB files much better than TMPG can and is the best and fastest way of converting VOBS to MPEG.

ASHY

Hi, When i try to convert a avi to a mpeg-1 file - i set all the settings i require and start the burn. Everything is fine up until about 22%. this means i can not encode the whole movie. It reports an error, although i do not have the error to hand as i have tried this several times and to get to 22% takes a while and i have not as yet noted down the error. So i am possibley thinking this could be an error in the actual DivX/AVI file. If so, is there anyways of checking if there is and fixing them. The movie plays fine as a AVI, in Winamp.
What could this be? (also errors occur when trying to normalize sound to)
Very greatful for any help...thx Liam

Hi everyone!

When I Merge 2 SVCD-files in Merge&Cut, the output-file gets REALLY Loud
Audio-Ticks just before the actual merge-start/point!
Why is it so? How do I merge 2 SVCD-files _without_ the darn audio-ticks?

(Using v2.57)

Thanx in advance!

Regards, Robby.

This happens when you merge 2 files that are part way through a GOP, the "Correct" Button is supposed to fix this but sometimes it doesn"t, what you can do is use the edit feature and merge them a few frames before the end of the first file and the beginning of the second file, if you use the slider it naturally stops on an I frame but if you the the frame by frame buttons then you probably wont be stopping on an I Frame, so try to use the slider to find the joining points not the frame by frame Buttons....

Exactly the reason why you should use closed GOPs and always cut before an i frame, so the first frame of the second part is an i-frame.
If you encode the parts yourself, it's also wise to uase the audio setting to make the volume fade out in 20 ms at the end and have the 2nd part fade in at the start.
Another option is demuxing the video and audio files, merge all the video files, then merge al the audio files and then mux the video file and the audio file you just produced.
That will sometimes work.

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