DVD Author Background Image Question

Hi,

I have a custom background image that I use when authoring DVDs with DVD Author -- when I play the DVD on my computer using WinDVD, my background image is displayed in full correctly, however when I play the same DVD on my standalone DVD player the very top and very bottom of the image is missing / cropped on my TV. This makes the image look stupid, although there's only a bit missing that bit is essential to the design.

My TV is a 'full screen' (not Widescreen) TV and it is PAL. When I first made the background image I used 720x480 for its size. After the first time I saw the missing top and bottom bit I realized these are the NTSC screen dimensions and so remade the image using the PAL dimensions of 720x576. This made no difference, it still looks fine on my PC using WinDVD but with the same problem on my TV.

Any ideas how to resolve this?

Thanks,

MS

Yes, RTFM!

TDA is able to show you the Safe Area. Use this function to check what's inside and what's outside the screen of the TV.

actually PAL is 768 wide not 720

you can prove this to yourself if you have a bauppauge video card and know
how to edit the registry for custom size image captures

do some at 720 and you will see them distorted
do them at 768 and they will be correct

digital TV/software is rubbish

If these people dont what 768 is all about.. use photoshop and increase canvas size by 10% the picture will now have a boarder around it and keep the image in the safe area,, easy..

ADAQ

Another
Dumd
Ass
Question

sorry to be rude this is basic knowledge for DVD/VCD

I have tried converting my avi movie which is about 1:39 minutes long
to an mpg file for a dvd
well when I did so the result was I had no sound on it....and after the end of the movie...there was 2:55 of black screen added on the end of it.

Yeah, that's a frequently asked question which has been frequently aswered

Very frequent, far more frequently than using the search function.

No offense, however...
I have the same question as everyone else.
I'm looking through a search now and all I'm turning up is a bunch of nada.
If this question's been frequently answered why does the answer not frequently turn up?

I keep creating themes with specific chapter names like "Baby Pix" and "Hora". I want these chapter names to appear every time I use that theme, but each time the chapter names are reset to "Chapter 1", "Chapter 2", etc. How can I make my own chapter names come up each time?

I keep getting an "Invalid Pointer Operation" error message before it begins to encode this particular file I have. Any ideas? Thank you!

As per subject... I have an old PC and it takes 30 hours to convert a 1-hour video, and I'd prefer to save, shutdown, reboot and continue the conversion. Can TMPGEnc do this yet? It's been a common request but never fulfilled, for some strange reason... as a coder I can't understand any technical reasons why this hasn't been done...

There is no encoder out which is able to what you want.

A coder with a very slow PC...unlikely.
Use the hibernate function of your operating system if it has it.

> A coder with a very slow PC...unlikely.

It's not my only PC, buddy. I do my coding on my pro box, which
I do not install any third-party apps (such as TMPGEnc) on. Tsk!

> Use the hibernate function of your operating system if it has it.

Interesting idea... it won't corrupt the encoding process?

>Interesting idea... it won't corrupt the encoding process?

Start the process as normal then when you decide you wish to pause the encoding process click the 'Stop' button, this will effectively pause the process. Ignore the pop up box then put your computer into hibernation. Upon restarting the PC just cancel the 'Stop' command and the encoding should continue.

Thanks Ashy, good thinking! ;)

I have been trying to use TMPGenc free edition and have installed the KLite mega codec pack to use it with.
What I find is that often the program will say cannot open or file unsupported when all the other programs I use can open it.
The second thing is that when it does open a file, there's a 'snag' every few seconds when something is panning across the screen. EG a flyby from left to right.
Does anyone know what this is and what I can do about it?

>KLite mega codec
Very bad idea.

>there's a 'snag' every few seconds
Maybe not using original frame rate or as above.

I have instructions on how to create a DVD from an AVI file but what i can't seem to do is lower the Average Video Bitrate any lower than 2000, lower the estimated file size to less than 5.6GB and can't lower the "Makes file size ?% of disk capacity any lower than 134.80%

Can anyone tell me how i can fit my movie to a 4.7GB DVD?

Thanks in advance.

I would not recommend lowering thw average bit rate that low anyway.
How long is this movie? It is either very long or you have a problem.

there seems to be a lot of idiots talking like they know all the answers on here... simply go into your advanced settings (there's a button to the right on the screen that shows those things you 'cant' change) and lower your bitrate 50 kb/sec at a time until you are just below 4.5 Gb... dont go too clode to 4.7 or you eill not have sufficient space left over for the authoring program.

>there seems to be a lot of idiots talking like they know all the answers on here

Yes and from what I can gather you seem to be one of them with little idea of what you are talking about.
Are you here to pretend you know all the answers or just to annoy people.

Again you seem to have little understanding of what the problem is. The problem he has is not solved as simply as changing the bitrate to as low as it can go by altering the settings.

As he has already stated TMPG will not allow him to go below 2000 Kb/s which means he is using the project wizard to create a DVD
2000Kb/s is the lower limit for DVD compatiblity. It can be set lower, but is not advisable as the quality will be awful.

However his solution to the problem is not to lower the bitrate. There are several reasons that could contribute as to why he the file size is so large and over the capacity of 1 DVD even with the average bitrate set so low.

Usually the the most common one is a decoding problem. TMPG has a bug whereby it sometimes incorretly reads the header data in the source file and wrongly calculates the timecode and thus sometimes extends the actual time length of the source by 2 or 3 times.
This leads to TMPG wrongly calculating the bitrate and encoding a couple of hours of blank movie at the end of the real movie.

Unless the source file is something like 4 hours long then there is no reason for the average bitrate to be set any lower then 2000Kb/s and should even then certainly fit 1 DVD.

The usual solution to the problem is to increase the priority of the 'Direct show file reader' to top of the list and/or install FFDSHOW.
This should then allow TMPG to correctly read the header data and calculate the proper bitrate.

The other solution is to simple set the 'start' and 'end' points of the movie in the 'source range' function.

If you had actually any real knowledge of the way TMPG works then you wouldn't have posted such novice comments like the above.

I had the same problem and "increasing the priority of the 'Direct show file reader' to top of the list" worked. Everything seems ok now. Thanks Ashy.

Is it possible to have batch processing in TDA 1.6? i.e., i want to author a dvd, then once the first dvd is done it continues to author the second and so on. Right now, if i want to author two dvd's i have to open two instances of TDA and let them run at the same time. thanks

Batch processing would be nice.

I suggested it to the "support" along with

1)adding a CPU priorty setting.

2) Drag And Drop multiple files onto track menu would cause multiple tracks to be automatically created.

3) A setting that would use the filename (minus extension) to name the tracks.

4) A setting that would use the track name as the output folder name if there was no menu created.

Of course "Support" seemed to think that batch processing and CPU priorty "would slow things down so it would be unsafe"... They seem to
believe that everyone uses thier DVD writing module, even when you explain
that you use Nero.

"Support" is run by a bunch of know nothings...

Joe

ok, this is driving me nuts, having bought tmpgenc express it does everything i want .....except frameserve properly from either Virtualdub or Virtualdubmod.

I've asked in a few forums and so far nobody has been able to help me.
Here's whats happening.

I can load a file in Virtualdub/mod and start the frame server (yes the frameserver is installed), I can save the frame serve file as either .VDR or .AVI (dont really matter).

In Tmpgenc it will load just fine, i can edit it, cut it, play it with sound, add or remove filters..whatever..it behaves exactly as you expect it to.

However as soon as i click on that "Start output button" i get this error "File is not supported. (error code 0x80048003)"

Now obviously the frame server is working fine since tmpgenc express accepts it just fine. Funny thing is, the only plugin i need active to make tmpgenc accept this file is the AVI File Reader..i reallt thought it would involve one of the VFAPI plugins

Hopefully somebody here has solved this riddle..i'm still scratching my head

Many Thanks
Batfink

I have the same problem but I found that using Verison 2.5 resolves it.

THIS WORKS!!! I finally got it!!!

open tmpgenc 2.5 Plus, and load the "DVD (NTSC) or DVD (PAL)" settings, then save the click file, save project. Open the project you just saved in 2.5 as the source in 3.0 XPress, change the settings to your liking, then encode as you would, and it works!!!

>THIS WORKS!!! I finally got it!!!
>open tmpgenc 2.5 Plus, and load the "DVD (NTSC) or DVD (PAL)" settings, then save the click file, save project. Open the project you just saved in 2.5 as the source in 3.0 XPress, change the settings to your liking, then encode as you would, and it works!!!

I'd say "WORKS" is a pretty big stretch -- here's my experience with your work-around:

* I could only get this to "work" with TMPGEnc Plus 2.524, which has a different Project File format from earlier versions.

* It was necessary to Enable the TMPGEnc Project File Reader 2.524 in TMPGEnc 3.0 XPress (Preferences -> Input plug-in settings)

* The TMPGEnc Plus 2.524 Project File had to be Added in TMPGEnc 3.0 XPress as a source file, not opened as a Project File

This did indeed enable TMPGEnc 3.0 XPress to get the correct source frame rate, but other weirdness (e.g., incorrect pixel format) led to unusable video (e.g., wrong frame size) with no audio.

This may not be exactly what you want, but ... Use AVI Synth as a front end fro VirtualDub (don't know about VDubMod), all you need to do is to generate an AVS file that opens the target source file within VirtualDub (eg "return MPEG2SOURCE("video_file_spec")" ). As long as VirtualDub can openit successfully, then jump into TMPGExpress, select all files and load the AVS file. Works like a charm, saves a lot of disc space not having to create all the intermediary files.

>This may not be exactly what you want, but ... Use AVI Synth as a front end fro VirtualDub (don't know about VDubMod), all you need to do is to generate an AVS file that opens the target source file within VirtualDub (eg "return MPEG2SOURCE("video_file_spec")" ). As long as VirtualDub can openit successfully, then jump into TMPGExpress, select all files and load the AVS file. Works like a charm, saves a lot of disc space not having to create all the intermediary files.
>

AviSynth works! In other words, instead of using VirtualDub to frameserve into TMPGEnc 3.0 XPress, use AviSynth instead -- TMPGEnc 3.0 XPress won't encode from VirtualDub, but WILL encode properly when frameserved from AviSynth!

>>This may not be exactly what you want, but ... Use AVI Synth as a front end fro VirtualDub (don't know about VDubMod), all you need to do is to generate an AVS file that opens the target source file within VirtualDub (eg "return MPEG2SOURCE("video_file_spec")" ). As long as VirtualDub can openit successfully, then jump into TMPGExpress, select all files and load the AVS file. Works like a charm, saves a lot of disc space not having to create all the intermediary files.
>>
>
>AviSynth works! In other words, instead of using VirtualDub to frameserve into TMPGEnc 3.0 XPress, use AviSynth instead -- TMPGEnc 3.0 XPress won't encode from VirtualDub, but WILL encode properly when frameserved from AviSynth!

Hi
I have am using tmpgenc author v 5.15. I have converted an avi file to dvd using VSO divx2dvd.When the resulting Video_Ts folder is opened( or tried to open) in Tmpgenc Authot is shows which only can be described as a small box with a cross in it and some gobbledygook (n a square with a small s and some unknown characters). Has anyone experienced this and know what the problem might be. NOTE I have also tried to run the same program through Tmpgenc video author v6 with the same results.

I am trying to export video (tried many formats) and I let the video compile for a little bit and then stop it and watch to make sure it is the quality I want before dedicating the comp to it for a long time. When I watch these files however, I get no audio. Is the audio rendered seperately at the end and added back in or is this a problem? I would let it run, but I don't wanna take the chance that my computer will be tied up for hours and hours and then get something I can't use.

Also, I have a file that is around 2.8GB it is a very high-quality 720x480 recording (about 45 minutes long) that I want to shink to a few hundred MB to be more portable. What codec and quality settings would you recommend? I am already planning on making the dimensions smaller and slightly reducing the framerate. I have always just burned to DVD format previously so I am not very experienced in compression. Thanks!

You need to find out what the audio fomat is in the source. If it's AVI then load it into Virtualdub and check it's properties.
The audio is encoded into the output in sync with the video, so you have a decoding problem if you don't have audio.

My advice to shrink the size is to lower the bitrate and the resolution and encode to MPEG1. You can also modify the GOP structure. You can find KVCD templates at http://www.kvcd.net which allow high compression while mainting as much quality as possible.
I wouldn't touch the frame rate unless you enjoy watching jerky movies.

I have licensed video (which I legally possess) that I am attempting to convert to another format.

Is this possible? Whenever I attempt to convert it in TMPGEnc 3.0 XPress, I get an error stating that I need a license for the file (which I obviously have, since the file plays in Windows Media Player).

DRM ONLY works on Microsoft Media Player. No other Software is able to read a DRM protected file. Therefor, there's no way to convert it.