I have cut a clip out of a computer-readable MPEG file, but TMPGEnc seems to only encode in those SVCD, VCD and DVD formats. How can I get it to play on a PC like a normal MPEG?

I have a ~150GB avi I am encoding for DVD which is captured from a 2-hour VHS tape. I was hoping to use the bitrate calculator in the project wizard to figure out a good bitrate to fit two such mpg-encoded avi's onto one 4.7GB DVD.

My own lame calculations get me about 2000Kb/s, which doesn't provide very good quality.

When I try and use the project wizard, I get stuck at the "Judging Field Order" process... the program is not frozen (task manager shows it still reading in bytes), but it sits there at 7% forever. My fear is that it will try and read in 150GB to figure out what I already know, that the field order is Top A field first.

So, two questions:
1) What's up with the "judging field order" routine? The avi's are captured at 640x480, YUV encoding, PCM audio. Does it need to read through the whole file to make the field order determination? If so, I wish I could that part.
2) Can anyone suggest a good average bitrate or good bitrate calculator? I want to go VBR, with mpeg audio. The beginning of the project wizard seems to indicate I can get "235 minutes" of such video onto a 4.7GB DVD, which would be ideal, but I wonder at what bitrate.
2b) Can I use a bitrate other than 384Kb/s for the audio and still use it on a DVD?
-Andrew

First of all have you never heard of compression?!
I mean 150GB?
There are codecs out there such as the HUFFYUV codec which are lossless if you are looking to maintain maximum quality.
However many lossless codecs such as MJPEG and MPEG2 can maintain very high quality with no noticible loss in image quality at a fraction of the filesize which I think is your problem in TMPG.
The file size is so large it will take quite a long time for it to scan the file.

Secondly in regard to maintaining quality, if your system is powerful enough, I would have captured to the resolution for your target output. Resizing causes a loss in image quality. You will have to resize the image twice. Once initially from the standard VHS resolution and again to the standard DVD resolution.
You likely have chosen 640x480 as this is what you have been advised by some on the net. While this resolution would be OK for downsizing later I wouldn't recommend it for upsizing. You would notice a difference in the quality if you had captured to the standard DVD resolution.

Also I don't put too much faith in TMPG's resizing abilities. Far better quality is obtained resizing with AVIsynth's bicubic resizer.

Having said all this I have 2 suggestions.
One is to install the FFDSHOW codec and enable it to decode RAW video. This codec handles uncompressed AVI far better than the native windows renderer can and uses much less CPU resources.
The second, if the problem persists, is to frameserve this file from either Virtualdub or AVIsynth to TMPG.
However if you only rerquire to find out the field order then simply extracting a small clip form the AVI using Virtualdub and then loading that into the wizard should give you the info you need.

As for a bitrate calculator there are many, but the easiest and most accurate I have used can be found here: http://www.dvdrhelp.com/calc.htm

Thanks for the information.

Of course, I've heard of compression. My reason for not capturing the video this way is two-fold: 1) I was having problems with frames being dropped when capturing real-time video (i.e. the compression time was too much for the real-time capture) 2)None of the compression codecs I tested worked well to capture, then compress using MPEG. I didn't like the idea of compressing twice.
You mention some options, I'll look into those. :)

I captured at 640x480 because I thought that was my target resolution, considering the 4:3 aspect ratio of the source. I didn't think creating the resulting mpeg-2 video at 720x480 was really resizing, but just kind of padding the sides... maybe I'm wrong on that. Unless you're suggesting I was resizing to something much smaller, such as 352x240, which I'm not. The quality at the reduced resolution was quite bad, even though it seems like it should be enough to reprsent VHS information.

I'm kind of new to this, and don't read many instructions online (just muddle through :) so I appreciate your help, I'll check into each suggestion.

The reason that 352x240 is not a high enough resolution for VHS and the quality is lower is because even though the resolution is the same as standard VHS resolution, VHS draws each frame twice because the frames are interlaced and split into two fields. First the odd scan lines are drawn then the even scan lines and thus creating 480 lines for one image.
If you encode to 352x240 you are throwing away half of the scan lines and therefore affecting the image quality.
With a resolution of 704x480 or even 352x480 you are retaining all the scan lines in the image.

As for your target resolution being 640x480. You could use this if you wanted and then add padding in the form of black borders at the sides, but who would want to watch a movie with 32 pixels of black area at each side?

DVD resolution for a 4:3 image should be 720x480 using a pixel aspect ratio of 1.25:1
The resolution you are using 640x480 is using a 1.33:1 pixel aspect ratio and a display aspect ratio of 4:3 however DVD resolutions do not use a 1.33:1 pixel aspect ratio they use a 1.25:1 pixel aspect ratio.
This means the pixels are not as wide and therefore more pixels are used to create the 4:3 image and hence create a higher quality image.

About the freezing of the "Judging Field Order" process: go to "options"
-> "enviromental settings" -> "VFAPI plug in ". Then move the "directshow" to priority level 1 or 2. That should do it.

Thanks Taurus, that definitely took care of the Judging Field Order issues. I assume bumping the priority up means it will use DirectShow over some other decoder that was not working as well for large files?

and ashy, I had a question or two for you regarding some of your suggestions. Maybe I'm just showing my ignorance to all of this, but I thought the video resolution determined the aspect ratio. For example, I was capturing at 640x480 because I wanted to maintain the 4:3 ratio of the source. When I capture at, say, 352x480 and play back the captured file, it is stretched vertically. I understand what you were explaining about the interlacing and the alternating fields and wanting to capture all the interlaced data, but is there some way I need to specify to TMPGEnc that this is what I've done to the source video? Will setting the source as 4:3, Interlaced be enough?
I'll play around with it more, but if you have any remarks that might help I'd appreciate it.

Also, using MJPEG as a lossless capture format didn't seem to make an appreciable difference in file size over the YUV2. I'll see what HUFFYUV can do.

There are 2 types of aspect ratio, Pixel Aspect Ratio (PAR) and Display Aspect Ratio (DAR)
PAR defines the actual shape of the pixels while DAR is the actual shape of the image. This is why both 640x480 and 720x480 can both have a 4:3 DAR aspect ratio however they have different pixel aspect ratio's.

As for 352x480 or 'Half D1 resolution' as it is called being stretched, you could simply resize this with TMPG to 704x480 this would retain the same Display aspect ratio. Even so the MPEG2 DVD standard has support for this resolution natively as long as the output is 4:3, however many DVD players will also handle a 16:9 output with this resolution no problem.

If you wish to play a 352x480 MPEG2 file on the PC then you will need a DVD compliant software player such as WINDVD. Media player does not respect the display aspect ratio flags in the MPEG and therefore the image will be distorted.

Thanks ashy. For any one else who's trying to get the basics down, this primer at doom9 was helpful:
http://www.doom9.org/aspectratios.htm

Hello, is there any way to be able to read PNG files as a bitmap input?

Thanks.

You will need the PNG plugin available here:
http://news.povray.org/povray.binaries.utilities/15796/

So, basically, did a search on converting outputting MOVs from TMPGEnc... Nothin.

Is there a plugin to do this for TE? I want to go straight from the streams into MOV format, are there any plugins for this?

Joe

Seriously? What the heck? My post keeps REposting, its not intentional...

Joe

Don't refresh, use the 'View article' link at the bottom of the page.

What are the relative merits of encoding a widescreen video in 4:3 aspect with black bands top and bottom versus anamorphic for a DVD.

There seem to be various pros and cons and I can't decide which is the better option.

Cheers,

Bob.

If the source is 16:9 and the output is for DVD then you should always encode as 16:9.
The will give a much better quality picture as the resolution is not wasted on black bars. It will also give the user a choice of which format he prefers when viewing.

Thanks very much, that's what I'll do then. I may have to come back here to ask what settings I should use in TMPGenc if I can't work it out for myself.

Cheers,

Bob.

I may have to do this the long way round but if there's a quick way:

The video file I have is 4:3 with black bands top and bottom. What I need to do is remove the black bands and resize the 16:9 picture in the middle to 720x576.

I can do this if I crop the picture and then choose the right output format, but is there a way of getting TMPGenc to automatically produce an output video which removes the black bands and resizes the 16:9 to be an anamorphic 4:3 video?

Thanks,

Bob.

No, you have to use TMPG to crop the bars out first. You will need to set the input aspect ratio to 4:3 and the output ratio to 16:9 and obviously the output resolution will have to be the standard DVD resolution.

Ok, thanks. That's what I thought I'd have to do.

Bob.

One final question I can't find the answer to. Given that a PAL DVD is 720 x 576 pixels for a normal 4:3 aspect ratio what is the vertical height in pixels for 16:9?

Thanks,

Bob.

It depends on what you mean.
A 16:9 DVD resolution is still 720x576, but because of the 16:9 flag that is encoded with the MPEG data the image will be resized to the correct aspect ratio by the DVD palyer otherwise the image would be stretched as you could imagine.
The actual height of the image when the correct aspect ratio is applied would infact be 432 with the rest being padded with black bars by the DVD player.

Thanks, that's what I needed to know in order to produce titles and animations to go in front of a 16:9 video.

Cheers,

Bob.

And finally, many thanks indeed for your advice. I ran two encodes overnight on a 16:9 file with black bands top and bottom. The encode was to change the 8MB/S bitrate to 3.5MB/S so the whole video would fit on a DVD.

Version 1 was a straight forward encode, version 2 cropped the picture to 16:9 to remove the black bands and then resized to anamorphic 4:3. I then burned a test DVD with clips from each version.

I was amazed at how very much better the quality was of the anamorphic version. I suppose it should have been obvious because having the black bands in the MPEG and VOB meant that nearly half the space was taken up with black bands as opposed to picture information.

I just wanted to pass this on to anyone else doing something similar: If your picture is 16:9 for DVD it's definitely worth artificically making it anamorphic.

What a pity you can't do this for VCDs.

Cheers,

Bob.

So, basically, did a search on converting outputting MOVs from TMPGEnc... Nothin.

Is there a plugin to do this for TE? I want to go straight from the streams into MOV format, are there any plugins for this?

Joe

Why don't you just get the 3IVX codec?
http://www.3ivx.com/

Because then I have to install it on my 80 workstations here at work, so the artists can render it all out, and then I would have to post it on our FTP so our clients can install it.

So that would be somewhere near 100 people installing it. And I would likely have to get on the phone with most of the clients to help them install it.

Ie, its not going to happen. Hence, I need a way to get MOVs out of TMPGEnc, or I have to find another program to do it.

Joe

You seem to have misunderstood the point. You should check things out before making assumptions like that.
You don't need to install the 3IVX codec on every machine. The 3IVX codec can encode to the Quicktime format which will be compatible with existing Quicktime 6 codecs and players which I assume you already have installed on your machines.
Here is a clip from the 3IVX website:

>MPEG-4 Video encoded with the 3ivx QuickTime codec is playable by the Apple MPEG-4 Decoder built into and shipped with every copy of QuickTime 6.

So, basically, did a search on converting outputting MOVs from TMPGEnc... Nothin.

Is there a plugin to do this for TE? I want to go straight from the streams into MOV format, are there any plugins for this?

Joe

How do you keep the video size the same as the original? Not how large the file size is, but the actual video size.

Thanks.

Just unlock the settings. Click the 'Load' button then double click the unlock.mcf in the extra folder located in the template folder.

hi.
very weird, I'm using TMPGenc 2.521 to encode.
if I encode a vcd its all fine, but if I encode it in svcd it chops about half a second off the end, i'm using the exact same source range of the original avi.. any suggestions?

Before, it used to burn really well in TDA. But I started to install several authoring/burning trial programs recently because TDA could not match my needs for subtitles. But I found it didn't work well so I removed the programs. But now, after authoring in TDA, the DVD Writing Tool does not recognize my DVD drive. I usually insert a DVD+RW into the disc before clicking the "Open DVD Writing Tool" button. But it still won't recognize it after a considerable amount of time. The drop-down menu for the drive list is empty. When I try to click "Burn" or "Erase", it says "Drive is not ready."

Please help! I can burn fine in Nero. Other programs that uses the same drive works well as well. What's the problem?

There is a conflict problem between DVD writers.
It is a common problem. Uninstall TDA once, and re-install it.
After that you should be able to use TDA's DVD writer.
It seems that in most cases, it is not posiible to use several DVD writers
in parallel.

Thanks. Do you know if TDA requires a serial code for installation? My uncle bought it and installed it for me so I do not know any serial codes.

Hey all. I am wondering, what can one do to remove the "tinny" sound that you get after encoding a video? I have tried using an external MP2 encoder (SCMPX) and in fact get the exact same result. I haven't been able to find any of the other supported encoders (and believe me, I've looked) and even if I try a manual re-sampling with SCMPX, I still get the "tinny" sound in the final product. My source video definitely doesn't already have this effect present. Does anyone know what I am missing here? I get the feeling it's something simple that I just don't see. :) Thanks!

Forgive me, but I just found what I was doing wrong. All sorted. :)

Hi,

I've just downloaded the tmpgenc free version and encoded my first movie. I have two problems;

1. The sound is not there. I'm encoding a divx film to vcd/pal format. The encoding goes well, i.e. the mpeg file is generated but there's no sound during playback on my computer. What am I doing wrong? I try to set the audio source to the same file (the divx original file) as the video source but the tmpgenc does not accept it.

2. I burn it as a pure data file to an 80 min CD-R disc but my DVD player (region free) which can handle VCD movies does not accept it. Annoying.

Any advice, anyone?

Regards,

Fredrik

1. You need to extract the audio using virtual dub and use that .wav file for the audio in TMPGEnc.

2. You have to choose vcd in your burning software.