Adobe Premiere clips skip/freeze when muxed by mplex.exe

[Greycat]

Hi!

I'm trying to author my first DVD (after several successful backups). I encode my source videos with TMPGEnc Plus (to m2v+wav elementary streams), then convert wave to ac3 with ffmpeggui, then mux them with mplex (-f 8 option) to use with DVDAuthor to make NTSC DVDs.

The point is, if the source videos are captures, the final MPEGs play fine anywhere (PowerDVD, Cinematograph or standalone players after burning the disc), but if the sources are clips produced by Adobe Premiere (mainly moving stills and texts with fadein/fadeout over a black blackground, 720x480, 29.97 fps), the final MPG files created by the same process described above play skipping/freezing some frames in the same players, although there are no dropped or repeated frames in the source or the final MPEG. The problem occurs mainly in fadein/fadeouts or some animations that "simulate" fades, like stills that shrink or grow to/from the background. I tried changing from CBR to VBR (average bitrates from 4000 to 8000) and noticed that the skipping/freezing just move to other frames with CBR and/or are minimized with VBR, but are never eliminated.

I then tried to mux the elementary streams (or just encode and mux direct with System[V+A] option) with TMPGEnc and the MPGs play fine anywhere but... DVDAuthor refuses them when authoring the DVD with endless warning lines "skipping sector, waiting for first VOBU" or something like that.

So, two questions:

- Any hint to use mplex and do not get skipping/freezing frames as result with those premiere clips?
- why MPGs muxed by TMPGEnc don't work with DVDAuthor? Shouldn't TMPGEnc produce DVD-compliant MPGs without those VOBU problem that DVDAuthor complaints?)

Thanx for any hints.
-- Greycat

[Greycat]

Never mind, I myself solved it. Aparently clips with black backgrounds, slow animations and/or fades requires a very correct bitrate setting (especially the minimum value) to play smoothly after muxing with mplex.exe.

High CBR bitrates produce those skipping/freezing problems (in this particular type of content); same thing for VBR with high minimum bitrate (1000 or more); and VBR with low minimum bitrate (300 or less) correct the problem. I have to play with several encoding parameters to finally spot the solution.

Why muxing with TMPGEnc does not produce skipping/freezing frames
(but the MPGs can't be used by DVDAuthor) and mplex does, I don't know.

[Greycat]

Never mind, I myself solved it. Aparently clips with black backgrounds, slow animations and/or fades requires a very particular bitrate setting (especially the minimum value) to play smoothly after muxing with mplex.exe (no problems with TMPGEnc, but as I said DVDAuthor doesn't like their MPGs).

High CBR bitrates produce those skipping/freezing problems (in this particular type of content); same thing for VBR with minimum bitrate too high (1000 or more); and VBR with minimum bitrate of 300 or less corrects the problem. I have to play with several encoding parameters to finally spot this solution.

Why muxing with TMPGEnc does not produce skipping/freezing frames
while mplex does, I don't know.

BTW, this problem has nothing to do with Adobe Premiere after all.

[gwoiler]

Why would a low minimum bitrate solve this problem? I have many hours of video of a seminar with PowerPOint and MANY times when the image is a slide, and the live motion cuts in the frame rate seems to stuter or go slow jerky motion while the audio marches on at normal speed and then after 3-4 seconds the video speeds up and all is syncronized. If a chapter point is in a still area and you go to that chapter, it is always that way. I used setting posted elsewhere in VIDEOHELP.COM and have minimum set to 2000 with average set to 4800 and max at 6000. I tried 3000 minimum and no better. So your saying I should go lower to 300? hmmm.... I have finished 20 DVD's with 40 hours of seminar this way and some are trouble!

Glenn