tmpgenc guide/recommendations

[musicnyman]

hi all,

just wanted to share my experiences with all and you can definitely shoot them down if you don't think you like them, but honestly, i have great results and i figured this would be the best place for it. i have done this for months and learned a lot from this forum and the tmpgenc forum and here are my learnings and mistakes from lots and lots of encodings:

1) i use claddvdxp to "backup" the dvd. works great on win 2000 and xp.
2) then i use dvd2avi to create the frameserve file and raw audio file. look at the aspect ratio in the information in either dvd2avi or claddvdxp. it should say 4:3 or 16:9. you'll need this in tmpgenc or at least i use it.
3) then i use tmpgenc to batch encode the dvds backed up. i open the .d2v file and open the .wav file created by dvd2avi. i use 2 pass VBR, definitely worth it over CBR, no doubt. try to keep the bitrate above 2200 if possible but under 2520 for SVCDS. 3 cds is worth it for big movies, but most of the movies are 2 cds. i can definitely see the difference. i also select "high quality" motion precision search, don't really need "highest quality". haven't seen a difference between these two but "normal" is ok, not great though. definitely recommend getting toolame and ssrc for external audio plugins. the internal frequency converter and mpeg2 encoder in tmpgenc sucks major ass. ssrc converts a dvd 48khz to 44khz with great ease and great sounding output. then i use toolame to encode the mp2 file for the audio stream. all you have to do in tmpgenc is go under "enviornment settings" and point the two plugins to the .exe files for ssrc and toolame. now, i watch for 4:3 and 16:9 aspect ratios. If i see a normal 4:3 dvd, i just leave the normal template for VBR. if i see the dvd is anomorphic or 16:9, i select the source to be 16:9 NTSC and under expert settings in the wizard, tell it to video arrange it to "full screen (keep aspect ratio)". this will keep the 16:9 movies from stretching vertically on your TV or DVD player. i've ruined a lot of SVCD's this way and only over the last 2 months have i discovered it makes a big difference. the SVCD's come out great.

hope this helps anyone....figured i'd share my findings, but i'm sure a lot of people know about these little tips.

[jolo]

Excellent post by the way.

I was wondering if you enter any settings for toolame or ssrc. I use virtualdub to extract a uncomporessed wav file at 44,100, then use toolame like you do.

Sounds like you skip the virtualdub part and use ssrc to take care of that part.

Problem is that toolame stops sometimes for reasons that I don't know and toolame doesn't tell me. Do you ever have this problem ?

[musicnyman]

yeah, sometimes toolame can be a problem. i usually get problems when wav file is over 2 gigs, in those cases, i just use the SSRC converter and leave tmpgenc to the audio encoding which is fine as well.

lately, i've disabled toolame since tmpgenc does a pretty good job at enconding the audio as long as you use SSRC along with it.

there are no special settings I use for SSRC or toolame. I don't even think you can set those. TMPGENC uses the default settings as far as I know.