I am completely new to this whole encoding and VCD, etc. thing, so Ijust simply need help and guidinace on how to get started. I have a .avi film already on my computer but I want to make it into a VCD. I have already tried doing it by using the Project Wizard, but once it has finished encoding the film there is no sound. Why? Also where do I go from here to create a VCD?

Thanks.

I have converted many movies (AVI to MPG) with TMPGEnc. And even though the final MPEG movie can be watched, the quality is not good. The final movie goes in slow motion (sometimes), or it stops and then continues.

The (source) AVI movie plays great. I have a 2.5 GHz processor with a lot of memory so I don't think I have the wrong hardware.

I never had any problems when I used the free version of the software running on a 600 MHz PC.

Any ideas what may be happening.

Thanks in advance.

>And even though the final MPEG movie can be watched, the quality is not good. The final movie goes in slow motion (sometimes), or it stops and then continues.

Does this happen on the PC or DVD player?

ASHY

I play the AVI on the PC and looks great. Then I play the converted MPEG movie on my DVD player since I don't have the software to play DVDs on my PC.

Extra info: The same process that I am doing now with my new PC (2.5 GHz) is what I used to do with my 600 MHz. Never had a problem with the MPEG movies I created with my 600 MHz PC.

your going to have to tell us more of what you did.


Did you use 2pass? did you set the motion search to high ? did you use "motion esitmate search" ? because that one suck and jerks for me.


Best thing to do if you converting a whole movie would be to use 2 cd's use xsvcd make sure you use 2pass use slowest motion search. it will take along time but its the best looking.

I play the AVI on the PC and looks great. Then I play the converted MPEG movie on my DVD player since I don't have the software to play DVDs on my PC.

Extra info: The same process that I am doing now with my new PC (2.5 GHz) is what I used to do with my 600 MHz. Never had a problem with the MPEG movies I created with my 600 MHz PC.

The Effect of the Video Slowing down and Stopping sounds like you are experienceing Bitrate spikes, what happens is the Bitrate suddenly jumps really high for a second and the DVD Player can not spin the Disk fast enough to read the Increased data rate so you get an effect of the Video slowing down and the audio staying the same then the Video Catches up to the Audio and it will Play good For a While, and sometimes the Audio will Cut out..If this is the effect you are getting then it is because of Bitrate Spikes, As for Playing Mpeg2 files on your Computer all you have to do is Download a Free Codec and you can watch them with Media Player, Media Player isn"t good for watching Mpeg files But it is better than Nothing, You can either download the Ligos Mpeg2 decoder(Should Work) or the Elecard Mpeg2 decoder but it will display a Little logo on the screen while watching Mpeg2 files, and you can probably find PowerDVD for free if you got creative and Looked for it...

What sort of MPEG is this? If it's MPEG1 then it will play with Media player.
If it's MPEG2 then just download one of the many PC DVD players out there. There are even free ones so you have no excuse not to have one.
Download and install this codec which will allow you to play MPEG2 and DVD files on your PC with Media player. http://www.dataflow.it/Download/freedvd.zip

Without knowing if this problem exists on the PC also we can't really help you.

ASHY

Thanks Ashy, and thanks Minion. What describes Minion is what is happening to me. I followed Ashy instructions. I installed a DVD player software package in my PC. I played the final movie (DVD quality) created with TMPGEnc and it plays fine. I saved it to a CD and play it in my Apex DVD player and boom! It happens again...

I also tried bbMPEG (another MPEG-2 encoder) and even though the final image quality is not the same (as the one produced with TMPGEnc), I don't have the problems I am describing... This is what drives me nuts.

Any ideas?

Thanks, Marcelo.

You need to give us some info about the MPEG you are creating. What format is it, MPEG1 or MPEG2? Have you split it? Which encoding method did you use and what bitrates did you use. What frame size is it? What model of player do you have and what burning software are you using?

ASHY

You need to give us some info about the MPEG you are creating. What format is it, MPEG1 or MPEG2? Have you split it? Which encoding method did you use and what bitrates did you use. What frame size is it? What model of player do you have and what burning software are you using and importantly what speed did you burn this MPEG at?

ASHY

Hello Ashy, and thanks again. Here is more info.

* I have a digital camcoder (Canon). I use Windows XP and Movie Maker to digitize my home videos
* Once the movie is done (with Movie Maker) I create an AVI file
* I use TMPGEnc to convert the AVI to MPEG-2 (720x480)
* The only thing I change within TMPGEnc are the "Full screen (keep aspect ratio), and the "Highest quality (very slow)" pass thingy.
* Once it's done, I burn the MPEG file to a CD using the native CD burning features of Windows XP (Roxio software) and I play it on my Apex DVD player

The only thing that I am not sure is the speed I burned the CD at. At know it is set to maximum speed.

Should I be changing the speed?

Thanks again, Marcelo.

First of all NEVER burn MPEGs at high speed. You will most likely have problems. Use a low speed. Around 4x is best, but experiment with higher if you want and check the results.

Second, don't bother with 'Highest quality' you will not see any visible improvement over 'High quality' apart from the dramatic increase in encoding time.

Next, use a proper burning program such as NERO for burning your MPEGs. Windows and for that matter any Roxio product is just crap for MPEGs.

You didn't tell me what bitrates you were using, you said something about a pass thingy so I suspect you are using 2 pass. Again most people who have used it agree that Constant Quality(CQ) is the best encoding method.

My conclusion from this is that I guess your problem is related to your max bitrate which you have set to high and your player cannot handle and your burn speed. Also your disks may not be compatible with your player.

NOT all media is the same, they vary widely. Some cheap media are good some are utter crap. The best and most compatible I have found are disks manufactured under the RITEK name such as Datasafe or Whitelabel brand, but these are sometimes also manufactured by Prodisk which I have found are utter crap in every machine I have tried them in.

ASHY

Hello Ashy, and thank you again for your response. Here is the information I didn't provide last time:

* CBR Linear PCM Audio (I don't know what these options are)
* 8000 kbps bitrate
* 9 bits DC component precision

I don't know what "constant quality" is, or where to set it.

I will take into consideration all of the other things you mentioned (4x speed to burn CDs, CD quality, Nero, etc.)

Thank you, Marcelo.

Are you telling me you are encoding an MPEG with 8000kb/s bitrate and then burning it to CD!?

There is absolutely no way this will play in your DVD player or any other player on this planet correctly.

8000kb/s is far too high for a DVD player to handle when burn to CD and if this is the case is most definitely the cause of you problem.

DVD players are limited to the bitrate they can handle from Cdr's because of the speed it has to spin the disk. Most if not all DVD players CANNOT spin the disk fast enough to read the bits of data from the disk which causes jerky playback.

DVD disks are different because the disk does not need to spin as fast because DVD's pack more bits of data into a smaller space whereas CDrs space the bits of data out a lot more.

Your PC is able to play this disk because PC DVD drives are built to spin at higher speeds.

ASHY

Thanks Ashy. A lot of what I did is based on my lack of knowledge. I am going to try what you have told me and I am hoping I will be able to have it done right.

Thanks, Marcelo.

PS: I will keep you posted.

Hello Ashy. During the last few days I have been creating several MPEG movies following the things you told me in your last message. Here are a few things I saw:

1) When I open the same AVI file, and I try to create a SVCD, the CBR is set to 1600 (by default) and the result file plays fine (PC and DVD player)

2) When I open the same AVI file, and I try to create a DVD, the CBR is set to 8000 (by default) and the result file plays fine on the PC, but not on the DVD player (this is my problem), even if I slow down the burning speed to 4x. Now, if I manually change the bitrate, the final MPEG plays only the audio. I can't see any images.

I just don't know what else to try.

I cant open it using TMPEGEnc(error msg : not supported)
& VirtualDub also explains something like that.

I know Microsoft tryin to block this out, so that there wont be able to be decoded. But... Is there any way for encoding this type of file now? Coz I wanna encode it to MPG & then make it as VCD. Thank's.

Install FFDSHOW

ASHY

Currently the IVTC in tmpgenc decard 3 out of 5 frames, then just duplicates the frame to get 23.97fps. If I am not wrong, the telecined frames have the frame structure of 11 , 22 , 23 , 34 , 44; where the third frame in the original 24fps source is splitted in the 23/34 interlaced frames. If we just decard it the video will getting jerky. Is there anyway to weave the two interlaced frames back together and get back the 3rd frame???

Any comment will be helpful :-)

I don't think you really know how IVTC works. You can only IVTC an 29.97 fps MPEG2 source which has already had telecine applied. If it is a purely interlaced 29.97 fps source then using IVTC will cause jerky playback as seems to be in your case.
How are you verifying this source is telecined?

As for discarding 3 out of 5 frames, this is not the case either. To return a telecined 29.97 fps source back to a progresseive 23.976 fps source 1 frame in 5 is removed or rather 2 repeated fields in every 5 frames.

>where the third frame in the original 24fps source is splitted in the 23/34 interlaced frames.
I have absolutely no idea what you mean by this, but in any case it is not correct.

IVTC works by locking on to the 3:2 field pattern and discarding all other fields. Once the the repeated fields are removed the remaining frames are progressive. No duplication at all takes place in IVTC.

The best way to perform IVTC is to use the ForcedFilm option in DVD2AVI. If DVD2AVI reports the movie as being more than 95% FILM then ForcedFILM can be used otherwise you should just leave the movie as interlaced or de-interlace it at a sacrifice of quality.

ASHY

>where the third frame in the original 24fps source is splitted in the 23/34 interlaced frames

I have been studying your post and think I realise what you mean.
You cannot just delete the third frame. This frame contains part of the original frame. To remove the frame correctly the 1st repeated field(2)in the 3rd frame and the 2nd repeated field(4) from the 4th frame would have to be removed to follow the 2:3 pattern and return the progressive frames.

If you do delete the whole of the 3rd frame you WILL have jerky playback because you are deleting part of the original frame and the repeated frame. This would equate to 3 original frames lost per second and 3 repeated frames being left in.

ASHY

please help me if you can......is there any way to remove the 4 lines of text that show at the beginning and at the ending up of those music videos?.....usually this text is the song title, artist, album name, record company......

i have a pop dvd that i want to rip but i dont want to have those title appear when i copy the dvd......

thx 4 help
cary

If these really are DVD subtitles then they shouldn't be visible after you have ripped the DVD.
DVD subs are selectable. You probably have subs enabled on your DVD player. If these subs are not selectable subs then there will be no way to remove them without losing some of the image.

Just rip the music DVD first and then check it.

ASHY

i am converting a file to mpeg. the file is 1hr 10min long but it is going past the 1hr 10min source position. how is this happening and why? the video is stopped in last spot(end of 1st part of a 2 part movie) and i know it reached the end.

Sometimes with Files Tmpgenc will encode the last frame of the file long past the end of the Movie, so if you know it is past the end of the Movie then stop it and Watch it and if there is just a Bunch of black at the end then use the "Mpeg Tools" Merge & Cut" to cut off the Extra, If there is a Different Problem with the File post it we will try to help...

My wife used a friend's computer to make a home video on CD. The final video came out in 720x576 24fps MPG-2 file. I want to take that file and convert it to SVCD to play in a DVD player. I downloaded TMPGEnc and selected SVCD Film, then opened the .mpg file as my source. I get a message "unable to open source file." What might be causing this error? I know that VirtualDub doesn't support MPG-2, so how can I convert this file for SVCD?

On that same note, can I use VCDEasy to burn the file as an SVCD without actually converting the MPG? Will most DVD players still play it since it's an MPG2 file like DVD?

You may not need to convert it at all. Most DVD players will accept a 720x576 MPEG2 file, but this is a PAL resolution and your frame rate is NTSC Film.

Try this.
Just demultiplex this MPEG using TMPG then load the resulting M2v file into a program called PULLDOWN.EXE and it's GUI from here: http://guiguy.wminds.com/downloads/pulldownbatchfe/down.html and run it. This will convert the frame rate to 29.97 fps.
When done re-multiplex the audio and video back together using the SVCD stream setting in TMPG then just burn the MPEG as a SVCD with NERO.

ASHY

Hi there,

I get a write error at address 004028A9 of module
TMPGEnc.exe with 009114D0. When converting D2V file.

I've seen a LOT of this problem on the BBS but
you cannot contact anyone of Pegasys and they
are obviously not going to help us out, are they?
Well shame on them. Their program is malfunctioning!
They should take more pride on the program..

So this is your opportunity to help a Whole lot
of people with this. These are not Bad Framed Files,
Not lack of Diskspace, etc... Solve the problem!

If it was a Bug in the Program EVERYONE would have the Problem all of the Time, And you are Right ,Write errors do Pop up sometimes But you are only the Second person I have heard of rescently that has had this Problem with D2V files , it is More common with Divx/XviD AVI files..And there is More than One program at work here,In your Case the Problem could very well be due to DVD2AVI,Try loading the "D2V" file into the "Vfapi Converter" and see it it successfully Makes a Dummy AVI file, then try to encode that in Tmpgenc and see if it still pops up an error..You can allways try Frameserveing the VOB file to Tmpgenc with Virtual-Dub-Mpeg2-AC3, this is a Little Known version that will accept Raw VOB files and the AC3 audio and Frameserve it, you can e-mail me and I"ll send you it as I don"t know were to download it..But I would still say that the Writers do care about Tmpgenc and how it works cuz if they didn"t they wouldn"t release a New version every month or so to fix any problems that have croped up in the Last version, very Few Programs can say they release a New version every month....

i took vob files then used dvd2avi and after tmpgenc is done the audio and video dont match up with each other on the finished mpeg 2 file is there a setting for this or have i done something wrong? any help would be appreciated.....thx

I don"t know if this is the Problem but sometimes DVD2AVI can have Problems decodeing the audio to WAV, so instead of decodeing to wav set the audio to "Demux" then you will have an AC3 audio file, now use something like "Headac3he" to decode the AC3 directly to "Mp2 audio" and encode the Video normally in Tmpgenc then after open up tmpgenc"s Mpeg tools" and go to "Simple Multiplex" and Load the Video file in and The Mp2 audio file and Mux them together, then you should have a Perfectly Synced Movie.."Headac3he" is a Very High Quality Audio encoder But it is Quite slow, so it could take half an hour to Encode the AC3 to MP2 audio but the Quality will be really good...

I've been using Tmpgenc for quite a while now. I've encoded many files with it successfully. Recently, I'm encountering "illegal operation" error when encoding. I've read some queries saying that Windows Media Player 9 has something to do with it. I've been using WMP9 even before i used TMPGEnc, so I'm wondering if it is really the problem. I've tried reinstalling my Win98 but still i get this error. I tried the new TMPGEnc 2.510, but still same error.
Can you please help me? Thanks!

ok.. i have a 2CD DVD rip of Empire Of The Sun.. In case it is needed, here are the codecs that it is using:

Video Codec: DivX 3 Low-Motion (Using DivX MPEG-4 DVD Video Decompressor)

Audio Codec: 0x0055(MP3) ID'd as MPEG-1 Layer 3 (Using MPEG Layer-3 Decoder-->Morgan Stream Switcher)

Framerate: 23.976 FPS

CD1 - 711 MB
CD2 - 712 MB

Ok heres what happened when i try to convert CD1 to VCD.

Ok i just used the vcd NTSC Templater that comes with tMPGenc.
I switch the aspect ratio to "4:3 525 line (NTSC)"
I don't enable any filters. Then it says:
Movie Info: 352x24029.97 fps / 44100 Hz Stereo / 214 min 57 Sec
Video Resolution: 352x240
Average Video Bitrate: 1150
Audio Bitrate: 224
Estimated File Size: 2150.02 MB

I don't understand why this happened... i never had any problem converting any other files. I Have also tried to convert just the video file by itseld.. It still goes up to 1800 MB so i know it's not a video problem.
I know this was lengthy but i wanted to be as detailed as i could. If anyone had this problem before and knows how to fix it please help!!

BTW i just wanted to point out that this movie is 2 hours and 20 minutes long...

The file size TMPG is giving you is absolutely bang on for VCD according to the length of the movie TMPG has detected.

Standard VCD bitrate encodes at 10mb/min. Your movie is according to TMPG is 215 mins long that would give a file size of 2150mb which is exactly what TMPG has estimated.

The file size of the original has absolutely nothing at all to do with the output size whatsoever. It is the length which affects the output.

Are you sure the movie is only 2hr 20 mins? If so this is the problem. Try using the source range to select the start and end points of your movie.

If that doesn't help just ignore what TMPG is telling and encode the movie anyway, it should only be 1400mb if the movie is 2hr 20min long.
You could try running the AVI through virtualdub using the direct stream copy option to try and correct the timecode or just frameserve it from Virtualdub.

ASHY

yes im sure the movie is 2 hours 20 min long... 1 hour for each divx file.. well ill try wut u said and just try converting it anyway..

Same problem happend with me. Downloaded 2 DivX movies of 700 MB each and they result in a 4.4 GB Mpeg file. When I started cutting the Mpeg file the last changing image was exactly at the time the movie is supposed to end (142 minutes) and the rest is a static of the last frame. So I first cut off the static and then cut the rest in two for the 2 SVCD's or leave it for a DVD.
My problem is that I seem to be unable to get sound with the movie after creating a DVD-PAL project. 1 solved, 1 to go.

Robert

Hi can any tell me how to convert dvd file (the vob file) to other format.
I have read the furom that they can't convert because of the subtitle or multiple audio, and video that why it can't convert.
I know that I can use dvd2avi to create a good file.
but that take to long to format.
I remember there is the old version of the TMPGenc that can convert dvd to other format.
What when wrong, my TMPGenc can't convert from dvd to other format anymore.
I still remember that I did convert a whole punch of DVd file to the SVCD file.
This is crazy.
Don't know how to solved this problem.
Please don't reply if you can't solved this problem.


Please don't um um um um
Thank you

>I have read the furom that they can't convert because of the subtitle or multiple audio, and video that why it can't convert.

What do you mean? You mean you can't use TMPG to encode directly from VOBS.

> know that I can use dvd2avi to create a good file.
but that take to long to format.

It only takes a few minutes to create a d2v project file and a wav file with DVD2AVI then just load both into TMPG and encode as normal, so what's the problem?

This is how most people do it without a problem, so obviously somewhere you are not doing it right.

Go here for instructions how to do it properly:
http://www.dvdrhelp.com/sefy/?id=ClassicalGuide.html#DVD2AVI

ASHY

You Probably made a AVI file with DVD2AVI and that is why it took you so long, Instead of going to "File" to "Save AVI" you go to "File" to "Save Project" and save a D2V project File and load that into Tmpgenc...