No Video on 2-Pass Xvid Encodes With V-Dub-MPEG

[Zeek]

Hey Now.

I was hoping someone might be able to shed some light on the whole Xvid mess I have going over here. I am trying to do a simple encode using VirtualDub-MPEG and am, for some reason, having trouble with the 2-Pass option.

When using 2-pass, the program at first appears to be starting normally but it then becomes quickly obvious from both the expected file size and Video bitrate that something's not quite right. I'm aware that V-Dub does not have an "automatic"/built-in 2-pass feature and that, for 2-pass encodes, it's necessary to run each of the passes manually and separately. So, for that reason, I've let it go a couple of times just to see what it does. Result is a file, consistently the same size, that appears to contain only the audio but no video. The file is not playable in Winamp, Win Media player or most other stuff I've tried - and it is recognized by G-Spot as an avi with the correct audio bitrate and both audio+video codecs shown. The video bitrate, however, is not at all correct and varies from 1-4 KBits/sec in the couple of times I've tried it. Also, there is no text file produced (that I can tell, anyway) which, from what I understand, should be the case after the first pass when doing Xvid encodes with V-Dub. Apparently the text file contains encoding instructions that will let V-Dub vary the bitrate most efficiently, right? Well, it ain't there folks.

Oddly enough, when trying all of this with just the single-pass option, everybody's happy (except me) and all is well. Quality of that file is certainly not unacceptable (it is Xvid, after all) but I'm just a 2-Pass kind of guy, I guess. At least that's what she said. bwaahaahaa.

At any rate, has anyone else run into this problem? I can deal with single-pass if I have to, but I definitely would prefer a solution that'll let me use 2 and bump up the quality a little bit. If anyone can throw some light on this, please do so!

Thanks..

Zeek

[jimmalenko]

Maybe this will help:
http://www.doom9.org/index.html?/xvid-vdub-final.htm

[junkmalle]

First pass: Go to Video -> Compression, select Xvid codec (which you presumably have), and press the Configure button. Set Encoding type to "Twopass, 1st pass". Encode your video.

Second pass: Go back to the Xvid configuration, set Encoding Type to "Twopass, 2nd pass". Set the desired file size. Encode your video. When this pass is done you will have video.

If you don't need a very specific file size you can save a lot of time using Single Pass with Target Quantizer instead of Target Bitrate. This will give you the quality you want in a single pass. But you can't precisely control the file size.

[Zeek]

Oops...forgot to thank you guys.

In the Xvid configuration menu, there is a small button that says "more". You need to play with that to set the location of the stats file and that was my problem...duh.

Thank you both for your posts and help.