Video is all ****-eyed and no sound.

[Justinn]

I'll start from square one, just incase I did something wrong before hand.

I downloaded a movie in .ogm format. I then used Graphedit and the online tutorial from this site to convert it into an .avi. I tested it in Windows Media Player to see if the video and sound were sync, and they were, so I'm guessing it worked right this time (I used Graphedit before on an .ogm file, and it worked in my DVD player).

So then I used GoldWave to extract the audio from the .avi video to a .wav file (like usual).

Then, I used TMPGEnc Plus 2.5 to finally convert the .avi to an SVCD. Loaded the movie file and wav file, used all the defaults since it worked in the past, and started converting.

I left it run over night and when morning came, I tested it in Windows Media Player and the video had no sound, and it froze after one minute of playing time. I put it in Boilsoft's MPEG Splitter and noticed the video wasn't centered, it was all ****-eyed.

Is there something I'm supposed to do here to fix the video and sound? I've made numerous VCD/SVCD's with TMPGEnc before and never had this problem. Also, I tried a differnt movie, and it was going to take over 230 hours! I know for a fact that that's not right. Please, someone help me out here, heh.

[teegee420]

Not sure I can help but I'll give it a go. I'll address the audio and video issues seperately.

Audio- Try playing the wav and confirm that it has sound. I'm sure it does, but it wouldn't hurt to check. Once you confirm this, take your created mpeg and try playing it with a DVD player like WinDVD, Power DVD or whatever software player you use. Does it have sound? Any number of filter conflicts may be causing Windows Media Player to not recognize mpeg audio but a DVD player will pick it up(if it's there) because it uses its own codecs.

Video- #1, I have no idea what "****-eyed" means(as amusing as it sounds LOL), #2, what resolution is the original movie? That will give me an idea of what aspect ratio it is. It's probably a forgone conclusion that you'll have to re-encode the video and selecting a video arrange method of "Full Screen(keep aspect ratio)" in TMPGEnc may sofve the centering problem. You can find this option in Settings>Advanced.

Lastly, I'm not going to address the movie with the 230 hour encode time just yet. That sounds like a whole 'nother can of worms that I think is unrelated to your main problem.

[Justinn]

Yeah I tested the wav file and it has sound.

As for the movie, I didn't burn it and tested it in my DVD player because honestly, I just thought it wouldn't work.
I'll try and convert it again tonight (and it better not do that 230 hour thing again) and see if it does the same.

What I mean by '****-eyed' is that the actual video itself is not on the screen. Half is there, and half isn't, and it's on an angle, too. It's hard to explain. It's almost like downloading one of those bootleg movies with the person with the video camera is sitting on the far right, and is missing some of the screen, heh.

Here's the information of the actual video before it's being converted (the avi file);

Width: 576
Height: 432
Bitrate: 284 kbps

And I think it's converting it to 480x480 mpeg2 which I've done before and it worked fine.
So I'll try the re-encoding with the Full Screen option in TMPEnc. Thanks for the help.

[teegee420]

Thanks for the clarification on "****-eyedness". One more piece of advice since you mentioned in better detail the video problem. Install FFDSHOW, which is an mpeg-4 decoder that will hopefull allow TMPGEnc to read the video correctly. I suggest this because OGM files almost always contain xvid encoded video and it's well known that TMPGEnc sometimes has problems with xvid. It seems to like the FFDSHOW decoder better.

In addition, you don't need to change the video arrange method afterall because your movie is 4:3 aspect ratio. The method I suggested is used for letterboxing non 4:3 sources. Oh, and I didn't mean for you to put it on your DVD player, but to use a DVD SOFTWARE player like WinDVD, Power DVD, Sonic Cineplayer etc. Hopefully one of those will at least be able to decode the sound in your mpeg that you made.

[Justinn]

Oh, alright I installed that FFDSHOW and hopefuly it'll fix my problem.
Now, as for those DVD players for PC's, I can just install them, right? Like I don't need an actual DVD-ROM in my PC? Asking because I don't.

[teegee420]

Yes, you don't need a DVD drive in order to use one of the players I mentioned. However, there's not much point in installing something you have no use for other than checking playback of your mpeg-2 files. It's up to you, I only suggested the idea for troubleshooting purposes. Popping your finished SVCD into your set-top DVD player will serve the same purpose.

[Justinn]

Ok so I tried again and it does the same thing. I have to go to work right now, but I'll try those programs later on tonight.
You also said something about the aspect ratio? I used the defualt, which was 1:1, and you mentioned using 4:3. Should I try using that? Also, there are a lot of 4:3 ratios (NTSC and stuff).

[teegee420]

You tried what again? Leave the aspect ratio 1:1.

[Justinn]

Sorry what I meant to say is I tried converting it to an SVCD again last night. I downloaded an installed WinDVD and played the mpeg in there. It seemed to look and sound fine in there so I'm guessing it'll work fine in my DVD player.
I tried that other movie, the one I said that was going to take over 230 hours to convert and when I got home, it was doing the same thing. I forgot to take a screenshot but you'll have to take my word for it. It's only done it to this movie, so I'll try something else.
Thanks again.