I recently treated myself to a HD camcorder. I got the camcorder a bit early so I could have a chance to play around with it and practice editing the clips, the camcorder records the clips in a .MTS format which is a High-definition MPEG Transport Stream video format, commonly called "AVCHD"; used by Sony, Panasonic, and other HD camcorders; based on the MPEG-2 transport stream and supports 720p and 1080i HD video formats.

I captured lots of fun home movie HD videos and would like to put these videos on my Zune player to watch. The problem is that the videos that I captured with HD camcorder are in .MTS format which the Zune player can not playback. I've googled a lot and found out that the Zune player could only support videos of H.264/WMV format with 1080i HD resolution, up to 14 Mbps bit rate, CBR or VBR for above supported video profiles or MPEG-4 Part 2 Simple Profile up to 4.0 Mbps bit rate.

I've tried lots of video converters to convert .MTS videos to Zune video formats but the best I can get are trial version converters that put inconvenient huge watermarks in the middle of them. A friend of mine recommend a Free Zune Video Converter to me. This one is really good for me. No watermark, and no time limitation. It just takes some clicks to convert videos to Zune video format using this free Zune video converter. I thought maybe some people got the same problems to find out a free yet easy-to-use Zune Video Converter to convert videos to Zune video format. Just let me show you to how to convert the videos to Zune video format step by step.

Step 1: Download & install Aneesoft Free Zune Video Converter
We'll be using the very nice video converter software called Aneesoft Free Zune Video Converter for converting videos to Zune video format, head over here and download the free trial version of Free Zune Video Converter. Next step is to install Free Zune Video Converter.

Step 2: Run Free Zune Video Converter and add videos
Now run Free Zune Video Converter and click the big button "Add..." to add videos from your hard disk, you may add as many videos as you want to convert to Zune video format. Only the titles you checked will be converted.

Step 3: Edit & merge videos: trim, crop, add effect, add watermark
This Free Zune Video Converter program has two versions. The free version is function-limited. If you'd like to edit and merge your videos, you need to upgrade to the pro version.

Step 4: Set the output Zune video format
Zune supports MP4(MPEG-4/H.264) & WMV video format. So we set the output format to "Zune MPEG-4 Video(*.mp4)" for Zune. You may also find other preset video setting options avaiable for you.

Step 5: Start converting videos to Zune video format for free
Now you may click the big button "Start" to begin converting videos to Zune compatible video files. An "Upgrade to Aneesoft Zune Video Converter" window will pop up. If you wouldn't like to upgrade, just click "No, thanks" to continue converting your videos to Zune video format.

Once the convert is complete, Aneesoft Free Zune Video Converter will place on your Desktop a new Zune format version of your video that will play on the Zune. Double-click the new file and play it to make sure it looks as you expect. I bet you'll be surprise at the video quality, just like me.

Just downloaded the AW4 and can't seem to find a way to import a previously written Video_ts file. I am trying to create a dvd that will play as letterbox 4:3 in standard tV and 16:9 full screen on capable mopnitors. I don't see a way to set the 16:9 switch and have made the adjustment using the Infedit program.
How do you bring a previouls created dvd file back into AW4. The Disk writing tool only gives me the option to make a disc image and the other menu tabs fail to function.

First of all: VIDEO_TS is not a disc image, it is a folder containing DVD files.
You import the VIDEO_TS folder to AW4 by selecting to import "From a DVD, ...", and then you chose "From a folder", and then you selct the VIDEO_TS folder. When that is done, you go to the Menu tab, and there you specify the aspect ratio of the menu, either 4:3 or 16:9.

I just installed TMPGEnc 4.0 on a Windows Vista 64 Home Preimum machine. It has a Q9300 quad proc, 8GB ram, 640GB HD, Nvida 9800GT video. I am initially pleased with results but was wondering how best to optimize the system for efficient encoding. I have enabled CUDA and it handles about 10 to 15% of the load on most jobs. I look at the performance monitor from the task manager shows all four cores at about 70% and disk I/O at about 5 MB/s. I was thinking I should see the cores nearly maxed at 100% and a higher level of disk I/O? What controls should I set to optimize the system?

It's possible that the decoder isn't as fast as your processor, so the processor will have no choice but to wait for the decoder to do it's thing. Hard drive disk speed can also limit the processor speed.

Hi Tkrave,

Thank you for the reply. The decoder is ffdshow for an XviD AVI file. Is there a faster one to choose. Lots of settings available on this one also but not sure what is right. The HD is a SATA 7200 RPM 750G model. No other aps are running accept Norton Internet Security Suite. It a very new system and nearly empty in terms of HD so defrag can not be a problem. TMPGnc has some settings in the preferences menu "Prefetch video" and "Prefetch audio", it seems like these should help. I have plenty of RAM to use but I am not sure what they should be set to. By default they were un-checked and set to zero. What do think?

I was doing some reading up on this, and hard drive speed may not decrease your encoding times enough to make it cost effective.
Decoders vary in how they use the processor. Check out this thread at VideoHelp.com:
http://forum.videohelp.com/topic378339.html

As for the prefetch settings, mine are set to 64 for video and 8 for audio by default so maybe you should start from there and see if it makes a difference. I've never actually used these settings myself so I'm not sure how effective they are.

I am ripping my promo music Video and converting to MP4. TMPGEnc 4.0 correctly places the keyframes @ the start of each music video on the DVD. Can TMPGEnc 4.0 use these keyframe markers to create individual files. I know you can use Split function but it limits you to only 30 splits per file. My DVDs each have over 40 videos so this limitation means it I cannot do all in one sitting.

Thanks
sla200x

I've already learned the hard way what these type of applications can or can't do when it comes to importing files from BD, which is what you were trying to do in this case (i.e. m2ts). The biggest issue is the audio that's encoded in the m2ts files. id audio is DTS or trueHD AC3 most like result would be it won't be imported correctly. Check which audio input format is supported. You will notice it is only plain AC3 with maximum of 5.1 channels, which means their BD support is very limited. Before importing those files into TNPGEnc Xpress, you will have to convert audio into the format the application can support before trying to convert it. If you baught this application to convert you BD to be played on portables than you might have waste your money.

I don't think there's a way to use the keyfames to split clips; you'll just have to use the clip split feature manually. Didn't know about the 30 split limit. I think you don't have much of a choice but to split what you can and then split the remainder after output.

I have TMPGEnc Authoring Works 4.0.7.32 and am running it on Vista x64. The company says it cannot guarantee that it will work on x64 but it's been working fine for the past six months except until today when, after I input all of my project settings and loaded a video file I got an error message that said" Could not find a usable media writer drive. You cannot use the media writer function"

The first thing I did was check in device manager to see if my two LG DVD burners are ok and they are, then I did some test burns on my other burning software and they worked fine, so it has to be in the program, however I uninstalled, then reinstalled it and I got the same thing.

Also I know it's not the media because it will not even start the transcoding phase and you don't even need a disc in at that point to see if it's working or not.

I assuming that all of a sudden it has decided it will not work with the two LG burners so it would be real easy to just go ahead and by two newer models, but that's almost a shame because the LG's have just worked flawlessly, however I really like this program so I might just go ahead and get two new ones. Also I did try updating the firmware on them but that didn't help. I'm stunped!

I just installed the Leadtek Spursengine card a few days ago. It seemed to work fine and really sped up my encoding.. but then it started "disappearing" on me, and Tmpgenc gives me an error. If I look in the device manager prior to starting my encode, all appears normal, and I see the card under the Sound/Video controllers section. Once Tmpgenc starts to want to use it, it disappears, and Tmpgenc tells me there's an error. I can restart the computer and it's there once again, but it may disappear again once I try to use it. If anyone has a thought about what to do, I would appreciate it.

Here are my system specs:
Asus P5N-E SLI Mobo
Intel Core 2 Extreme Q6800 CPU (Quad core)
4 GB RAM
Windows 7 Pro 64-Bit
SATA 2TB RAID array (striped)
Leadtek PXVC 1100 using latest drivers
TMPGenc w/latest updates

Just thought I would leave my resolution to this problem...

I uninstalled the Spursengine card in Device Manager, restarted the computer, and manually reinstalled it, and it works (at least for now).

In case anyone is interested in the performance of it, it shaves about an hour and a half to two hours off of my encoding time.

Source file: AVCHD 1920x1080, interlaced, w/stereo DD, ~20mbps VBR
Target file: MPEG-2 720x480, MP@ML, interlaced, letterboxed, 5mbps VBR

The footage really looks good considering it's only a one-pass VBR encode. I think TMPGEnc can do slightly better in terms of quality by itself, but it takes about an hour longer, so I can live with it. The difference is negligible.

Without the SpursEngine, it takes about 3:45 to transcode the footage, which is a little over an hour long. With the SpursEngine, time is reduced to 1:35.

After login on the Pegasysy site only the old version 4.0.7.32 is available for download. I am the only one to have this?

That's the latest version for Authoring Works 4.

TMPGEnc 4.0 XPress is the software that was recently updated.

If cd/dvd drive is not detected in winXP (x64) and you cannot start the service "B's Recorder GOLD Library General Service" which can be found by clicking
START then RUN and typing services.msc.

Open regedit in the RUN window (proceed with caution).

Goto HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\bgsvcgen
open ImagePath key and change the path from "C:\WINDOWS\system32\bgsvcgen.exe" to "C:\WINDOWS\SysWOW64\bgsvcgen.exe"

this worked for me. Effect is immediate. After this mod i was able to start the service which allowed the writing drive to be recognized by TMPGEncAW4.

Before this step "B's Recorder GOLD Library General Service" would not start.

Keep Hope Alive!!!!!

I just purchased TE4XP_Retail_4.7.4.299_setup_en and I am unable to covert blu ray m2ts files ripped with Slysoft AnyDVDHD. Any input would be much appreacited. I have uninstalled two times deleted the reg entries and still no working.

thanks

You have to convert the dtshd audio to ac3 and also Truehd to ac3. You will have to use Eac3to,a program which is very specific and mostly command line based or something like it(a program that downconverts DTSHD and TrueHD streams. All blurays have a combination of DTSHD, TRUEHD, and LPCM. Blurays with LPCM usually have two audio tracks, one being lpcm and the other being ac3.

My suggestion is to learn Eac3to, I didn't at first, and later relized that it was hidden treasure. You can the lastest version from http://www.videohelp.com/tools/eac3to

Good Luck

I am using TMPGENC Authoring Works 4 with my new HD Camcorder. My question is this- I have put multiple clips into one track. Will the track settings override the clip settings, or vice versa? The settings I am wondering about are the video settings: progressive, frame rate, etc.
I just want to know which ones to change. I remember when I used to use TMPGEnc I would do progressive and 23.976 (Internally 29) but I only see that setting as an option in the track setting and not the clip settings.

Ultimately, it will use the track settings since those are the settings it will use to encode to DVD/BD-compliant video, but it will use the clip settings as the basis.
Think of the clip settings as what the video actually is, and think of the track settings as what it's going to be (a DVD/BD).

For example, if your clip is set at 16:9 but your track setting is set at 4:3, it will not squash the video but will instead add black bars to the top and bottom, keeping the 16:9 aspect ratio.

In general, I only change the clip settings if I know for a fact that they're wrong.

Thanks so much tkrave!

Why I can't add .avi files?

Error:

Could not open the video part of the file xxx.avi.
Only the audio part can be opened.

I try with many source and obtain the same error.

It's a codec problem. You either don't have the correct codec or you need to change a codec setting.

Use GSpot to figure out what codec the videos are using.
http://gspot.headbands.com/

Also, can you play the files in Windows Media Player?

I used g-spot. Nothing happend. It still says "Could not open the video part of the file xxx.avi.Only the audio part can be opened."

I can play the files in Windows Media Player. What will I do to add this avi file?

What codec is your video using? Is it ffdshow?
GSpot is just a tool to tell you what codec the video is using; it will not fix your problems.

If your codec is ffdshow, open the ffdshow video decoder configuration (Start menu-->All Programs-->ffdshow-->video decoder configuration). You should see a list of video formats. Under the column for "Decoder" right-click anywhere and select one or both of the options ("Set all stable formats to libavcodec" or Set all supported formats to Xvid"). Click OK to close the window and see if the file can be opened in Authoring Works.

What are the top consideration to improve the speed to encode files in general? I am using AVCHD files from a Canon Camcorder and taking them to WMVHD right now. Is it quad processor, graphics card memory and speed?

I currently have an HP Core 2 Quad Q6700 with an NVIDIA 8600 GT and 4GB of RAM. I'm not sure what all would improve my encoding speed. I did about an hour of video from AVCHD and encoded to WMVHD and it took about 7 hours. Do I need an i7 processor now, 8GB memory, faster card, etc.

If you have windows 7 64bit with those specs, you should fine. Unless you want to spend thousands of dollars for the latest gear, that would only knock a hour off a wmvhd conversion. Check this out http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16815122016&Tpk=tmpgenc