I've captured a 45 minutes clip from TV using Pinnacle PCTVPro/SBlaster Live! and VirtualDub 1.4, then I've edited the file and saved it as an AVI file.
After I've created a VCD compliant Mpeg clip with TMPGenc 258.
The video is fine, but the audio disappears after about 2 minutes of playtime.

Played with WMediaPlayer, the mpegfile has the same problem, but if I play the AVI clip with VirtualDub, the audio is fine.

In encoding TMPGEnc reports indeed a "division by 0" error in the log, however it finishes the job producing good quality Video but the above problem on the audio. Has anybody an idea on why this can happen?

Thanks

What format did you capture the Audio to???Allways Capture to WAV, and capture at 44100hz...and if you did this you can allways use something else to encode the audio to Mp2, like "Headac3e"...

thanks, the audio was captured at 44 Khz, 16 bit PCM uncompressed.
Yesterday evening I apparently sorted the problem, extracting the WAV file from VIRTUALDUB and then encoding with TMPGENC using the original video and the extracted audio track rather than the embedded track.
I could get some out-of-sync in this way, but still I do not know cause I have now run the compressor at the highest quality setup and it will take 9 hours before my old K6-2 will output the final file.
Ciao

no out-of-sync noticeable, the workaround went apparently well.

I have been reading a lot lately about Mpeg encoding and am curious to how Tmpgenc handles Motion Search precesion on the second pass.

It is clear to me the allocation of bits on the second pass becomes more accurate i.e. Bits are taken away from less complex scenes and given to more complex scenes in order to maintain a more contant quality.

But is the motion search precision also improved on the second pass?

For example say I encode a sample with 2500 CBR

Now I encode the same sample again with 300 min 2500 Average and 2500 Max, 2 pass VBR.

Will I gain anything by doing the 2 pass VBR with the average and max the same.
Will the motion search be more accurate? Is it possible I will introduce new distortions?

The Motion Search Settings are used for both passes. You can't change that.
In the First Pass, TMPGEnc looks what Bitrate is necessary for a given Q-Factor. In the second pass it changes the Q-Factor dynamicly to get the given AVG-Bitrate.
This has nothing to do with the Motion Search Precision. This thing says TMPGEnc how to look for Motion in the Video.

Yes but how does this apply to the example I gave?

There is no reason to do multi-pass VBR unless the average is much less than the max. And this in only useful on long videos with containing a lot of low motion shots lasting many seconds.

2-pass VBR on most music videos, for example, would be senseless.

Thanks for the replys, but the question I am trying to ask is whether the motion search precesion is improved on the second pass or just bitrate allocation?

Hey, i gave you the answer in my first posting.
Motion Search precission has nothing to do with the Bitrate Control Mode.
The second pass is for optimizing the Bitrate used for every GOP, nothing more and nothing left. Every Encoder is acting like this.

B_racer are you 100% sure on this.?

Absolutly, and it is logical.

If you change the Type of Motion Search after the first pass, all the statistics, the encoder has calculated did not longer match to the new methode.
Motion Search is the process for recognize Motion in the Movie. The methode discripes, how to search motion. The Ammount of found Motion is important for things like Quantisation, so you get other Quantisation-Levels if you use an other Search Level. Theoretical it is posible, to look for Motion Optimisations, but NOT in only 2passes.
Maybe a Encoder can look for Motion in the First pass, then try to verify this in a second pass. A third pass will look for the Quantisation-Levels and a fourth one will do the Encoding-Job.

B_racer maybe I was not clear in my question.

What I mean is not to change the type of motion search in the second pass, I mean is it optimised in the second pass. ie is the motion detection re calculated/re checked in the second pass.

or is only the bitrate optimised in the second pass.

Sorry to be a pain but I want to get this right.

@Hawk

Your not a pain, it's my terrible bad english that doesn't let me explain things like 2pass VBR realy clear.

OK, here we go: The second pass is for optimisation of the Bitrate for each GOP and each frame. The motion search will be done in the first pass and in the second pass, and there is no chance to change it or optimize it in the second pass. All Quantisation Levels, calculated in the First Pass, are the result of the Pictures and the Motion. Like i said before: if you change the motion search precission, you change every thing.
But, if the encoder is able to use a higher Bitrate for a GOP, he isn't forced to use a high Quantisation Level for motion compensated Macroblocks. This has a very familiar effekt compared to optimized Motion Search.

If you do 2pass with equal AVG and Max, you are doing the same like 1pass, but in the double time. You need a clear difference between AVG, Min and Max do get good results with 2pass.

A Min-Bitrate of 300 kbps will cause problems with some players. To be on the right side, never use Min lower than 1374-Audiobitrate. Some Players are having a small Buffer, an if the Bitrate is to low, thes will stuttering.
It lowers also the average Quality of your Video, if you use to low Min-Bitrates.
If you real want an AVG of 2500kbps and you don't want to left the Standard, use CBR.
But if you need an AVG of, for an Example, 2100 kbps, use Min 1850, AVG 2100, Max 2520 (with 192 kbps for Audio).

And Again: The Bitrate control mode has nothing to do with die Motion Serach accuracy.

OK, there's nothing more i can say about that (and for the German Readers: "Jetzt mag ich auch nicht mehr" ;) )

Danke B_racer

how do u demux or extract the audio from an asf file. I want a wav file that i can add to tmpegenc so that it doesn't ruin the sound when i convert my asf to vcd

Well you can try this, you can re-name the ASF to WMV, then use "DB-Power AMP" to encode the audio to a WAV file, you just need to make sure you Download the "WMA" Codec...Or you can download "Virtual Dub ASF" and use that to extract the audio.. you can get "DB Power AMP" here : http://dbpoweramp.com and you can get Virtual Dub-ASF here: http://www.apachez.net in the tools section.....

do u mean DB power amp music converter? its open dialog box doesn't have wmv as an file type nor all files

But it has WMA, that is if you downloaded the WMA codec..I know it works cuz i use it all the time...

ohhh yes the wma codec...oops. ok woohooo now it works! BUT today tmpgenc can't open my asf file! it did it the other day after i repaired it with asf tools but not today?? Even with high priority for direct show... strange. it opens other asf files. Virtual dub c won't open it either.....says it can't find wmv1 codec. i load wmv8 video codec on my system today and the asf files plays worse! (random blocks now and then)...can igo back to 7? hmmm asf files are tempramental lol ps this asf files is played in mp 6.4

Hi, I have converted a DVD to MPEG1 files. Here are the properties of my MPEG1:
Size - 352x288
bitrate - 1150000bits/sec
framerate - 25.00 frames/sec (or 29.97, an alternative I've created)

Using TMPGEnc 2.57.41 to encode to VCD, the VCD cannot be read or sometimes cannot be read nicely and the image displayed are distorted all over, cannot be view at all. My MPEG1 files are working though.

Can someone help me to solve this problem so I can have my VCDs? Thank you.

Rgds... Shoryuko

how do u burn your vcd?

If the Mpeg files play fine on your Computer then the problem is not with Tmpgenc, but Probably like Lupy said The way you are burning them, or your Player...I would like to Know how you "Created" a 25 FPS and a 29.9 FPS File from the Same DVD??

he probally used the Force Film option on DVD2AVI when frameserving for the 25 a

Forced filem doesn"t give you 25fps it gives you 23.9fps....

Does anybody know what kind of resizing filter (I mean bicubic, bilinear etc.) is TMPGenc using when resizing movies ?

Guess it's a Triangle or bilinear resize, but i'm not sure.

Hi there, i am a newbie using this software ... was converting a avi to mpeg file and when complete ..how come the size of the film (was a 702mb size film balloon to 1.02mb) can anyone help me with it and i am looking for the user manual to understand the function but can't find it .. pls help

First you need learn the following format(standard)s;

- AVI(uncompressed)
- AVI(Divx or MPEG-4)
- MPEG-1
- MPEG-2

Depending on which to which format, and setting, the size may be increased.

OIC

i was converting an asf file to an mpeg-2 file. everything went smoothly until it froze and stopped. message appeared was "Index of same line is out of range (240)." is there a way to fix this?

I think the header in the ASF file is corrupted, this is very common with ASF and WMV files, what might work is to download "ASF tools" and use the Repair feature to correct the problem with the ASF file...

I use hauppauge wintv to generate a mpeg2 file, now I want to put on VCD. When I use the wizard I get no errors, but there is no sound to the output file. (the video looks great) can any one tell me what I am doing wrong?
Thanks,
james

Tmpgenc does not like to encode Compressed audio formats but you don"t need to encode the audio anyway cuz it ia allready in the Correct format for VCD, so you go to the "Mpeg Tools" to "Simple De-multiplex" and load your mpeg file in and run it, it will make a "M2v" video file and a "Mpa" audio file, you encode just the video the mpeg1, then after go back to the "Mpeg tools" to "Simple Multiplex" and load the Video and audio from the Mpeg2 file, then it will join the audio and video into a Mpeg1 vcd file.....

Finally! It worked great, thanks!

I am trying to convert an .avi file to vcd format, and I keep getting an error saying "can't load P3Package.dll" can someone please help me with this?

Type "P3Package.dll" at the top of this BBS, then press "Search".

Sorry, but I don't even know how to look for this.
I am using vdub to cut both audio and video, tmpgenc to encode, vcdeasy to burn. In most cases, all goes without a hitch until I watch in my standalone dvd Sony dvd player. I have vcds that I made before with older versions of tmpgenc and vdub burning with ezcd that play great, with NO problems what so ever. The vcds that I am creating now with the newer versions and vcdeasy are giving me the flux. The first half of the movie plays great. The 2nd half is glitchy, freezes and starts again or just plain freezes. Why does this happen and is there anything I can do to make this not happen. Also, I have a version of tmpgenc 12a..will there be conflicts using the vdub 1.4 and vcdeasy with it?
Thanks again for the help

How can I convert a wide screen avi to (S)vcd and put the black borders at the top and botom of the movie

Encode it at "16:9"...or use the "Clip Frame" feature to arrange the Frame the way you want it...

I have found it out now but it takes up to 40 hours to convert it. Is there a way to speed things up?

Well getting a faster Computer is about the only way to speed things up, you can put the "Motion Search Precition " on "Very Fast but you will loose Quality..You must have a pretty Slow CPU if it takes 40 hours, even My old 800mhz only took about 10 hours to do a 2 hour movie on High Quality...

If make sure your input source ratio is set at 16:9 and the output ratio is set at 4:3 then the borders will be added automatically to create the 4:3 display.
As for your PC taking 40 hours, you either have an old dinosaur of a PC or your settings are wrong. I used to have a P3 500 which would take about 10-12 hours to encode a movie. I now have a P4 1.7 O/C at 1.9 and it takes about 2-3 hours for TMPG to encode a movie.

ASHY

The program told after 30 miniutes of proccessing but the real time was 10 hours.
Thamks all for your help

I am having problems with the "unknown or unsupported" error message when trying to convert wmv (asf) to mpeg. I have two identical machines, one at work and the other at home. Only difference is the one at work has windows media player 9 installed. I can not get this to work... I have uninstalled it and reinstalled codecs all day. Any ideas or is this a bug?

Thanks

You Might need to Use "ASF Tools" to Correct the Any Errors in the WMV file...
Pluss WMV file aren"t Fully Supported in Tmpgenc, It usually works if the file is in Perfect Condition but WMV file are Notorius for Being Full of errors...You might need to raise the direct show filter...

FIXED - installed directx 8.1 and everything works fine. Thanks for the effort though. This is great software