Information about CCE 2.64 / TMPGEnc + 2.57 for Truman...

[crjackson]

I have a 3 part question if you don't mind.

I tried transcoding a 105min VHS movie using CCE and compared same when transcoded with TMPG.

Is there a known problem with CCE that causes audio to go WAY out of sync on a perfectly synced AVI capture after about 5 min (AMD system), and then sync again later in the movie?

Video quality is great. Audio quality is great. Too bad I can't get them together no matter what I try using CCE.

Second part...

I transcoded a movie a couple of nights ago using TMPGEnc. Man does it have great looking quality. I authored using latest version of Ulead DVD Workshop and selected option not to convert compliant file (it didn't). Movie came out PERFECT.

I tried to do the same thing with another movie but here's the problem. No matter what I do, Ulead goes through the file conversion process. I must have changed a setting in TMPGEnc to cause the file not to be compliant. The only setting I can think of was when I used Joint-Stereo instead of Stereo. Would this cause the conversion to take place, or was it something else?

Third part...

I have been using the slowest motion detect setting with TMPGEnc hoping to achive the best looking videos possible. It takes about 23 hours to transcode a 105min file currently. If I change this to Normal or Fast, what effect will it have on transcode time and how does it effect playback quality?


BTW, I wish I could just get CCE to give me synced audio, it takes less than 2 hrs for the same file that takes 23 hours using TMPGEnc.

Additional Info...
System is Athlon 1.4Ghz not overclocked.
Abit KG7 system board (AMD761/VIA686 chipset)
512MB crucial PC2100 Registered DDR (Scrub/Clean setting)
120GB WD drives running on a Promise ATA100 controller

Captures done with passthrough on a Sony TVR240 Digital8 / Firewire
Captured AVI edited with Studio 7

Any information would be helpful.

Sorry I'm such a newbie at this but once I get my proceedure down, I'll stop bothering you good people.

Thanks,

Charlie Jackson

[Gargoyle]

CCE is known not to process audio very well; if you still have the CCE encoded file, you could use the "MPEG Tools" in TMPGEnc to:
1) De-Multiplex the CCE MPG (you only want the video stream)
2) load your AVI file into TMPGEnc and select "Audio only" to encode the audio into an MP2 stream
3) Multiplex the CCE video with the TMPGEnc audio - this should get you a good MPG file (audio and video in sync.)
in the future, you might try using DVD2SVCD to encode the AVI file - it extracts the audio and processes it separately, then multiplexes the audio+video streams ... I've never had a problem with sync issues using it (50+ movies)
Don't know about the problem with DVD Workshop; I use VCDEasy to burn my VCD/SVCD files - are you adding menus?

[adam]

1) CCE has bugs with audio decoding on AMD processors. Do what Gargoyle said. Basically just always unckeck audio decoding in CCE and use something else to encode your audio instead, and then multiplex in the end.

2) Its impossible to know what particular setting is causing the problem without you actually telling us what your settings are. No, joint stereo should not affect compliance at all. Load the appropriate template for whatever your making and start from there. Only modify the settings that you know won't affect compliance.

3) Each higher precision level increases encoding time but also increases quality. From slow to normal to fast there is a fairly significant quality difference and about a proportional difference in encoding time. From slow to slowest the quality improvement is minimal, yet the encoding time is much longer. You should probably just use slow, not slowest.

If you just use something else to process your audio then I think CCE will solve all your problems.

[LeeBear]

I have to agree with Gargoyle, try using DVD2SVCD, it's a great collection of programs to make encoding easier. Despite what the name says there's an AVI mode for converting downloaded movies. Give it a try.

-LeeBear

[crjackson]

Okay,

I try doing the audio separate. I just have to figure out how to do that

[crjackson]

I'm printing out these posts to refer back to. I'll have to try again tomorrow, and I'll let you know how it turned out. Since I like TMPGEnc I'll use that to process the audio stuff too, unless there's a reason to use something else better.

For the life of me, I can't understand how Cinema Craft can be worth 19,000 smackers with flaws like that. Yes it's damn fast but crap... You shouldn't have to go through all this to make it workable. I would have never expected it...

[crjackson]

Update:

I processed the video only with CCE and Multiplexed the audio using TMPGEnc. It worked to some degree. The problem is that it's MOSTLY synced now, but goes out in the last 8 minutes of the movie.

I checked the AVI file and found that the sync is SLIGHTLY out of sync at the same spot, so I guess that compressing to mpg exaserbated the problem.

I recaptured (via firewire) again and found the exact same result.

I recaptured again using my analog card and found the capture to be perfect.

I tried to transcode using CCE and the analog captured avi causes it to crash.

I loaded that avi in vdub, and I'm trying to resave it but the file it wants to create is 600GB. I just don't have that kind of head room.

I installed the Huffy codec to save the avi in compressed format, and it says the file will go from 20GB (original) to 60GB. I don't understand why, but I do have enough space to try it out. I'm waiting for it to finish now.

Can someone tell me what causes the digital firewire capture to go out of sync on it's own?

Also why does the 20GB file translate into a 60GB file AFTER using compression?

I'm just about to give up on the whole thing, and go back to crappy looking video with the studo 7 compressor.

[vhelp]

crjackson,

>> Also why does the 20GB file translate into a 60GB file AFTER using compression?
Simple, (assuming you are talking about a DV file) ...
DV is yet, another compression format, like huffy, VCR, and MJPEG (pic)
In short, Huffy is not as compressable as DV, hence your larger file size.
I guess you are thinking that is you re-compress, you'll get small filesize, but
it doesn't happen that way. DV is a much more compressable format than Huffy.

-vhelp

[vhelp]

crjackson,

Forgot to continue.
* As for that bad area, why don't you just take the footage around the bad
area and encode or test it out in various scenarios.

* To minimize on audio sync issues, break your encodes into segments, like
20 minutes or so.
You do NOT have to capture the whole clip in one pass. This help many
people out with audio sync issues all over. THis is the route I mostly
take. example, my VHS captures are done in 1/2 hours or less segments. I
don't run the whole capture through once. There is no law saying you have
to capture straight in one pass. Save yourself the headacke and segment
your captures - end your audio sync issue once and for all, else you'll be
playing w/ those 8 minutes for who knows how long.

* it's ben recommended that you NOT check the audio box for encoding in CCE.
and to MUX yoru video/audio at the end of the process (before burning)

-vhelp

[crjackson]

The resulting file was totally unusable. The video frames were superimposed and the audio was out of sync by at least 20 minutes. I couldn't do anything with it at all.

Trying ONE MORE TIME...

[kalus69]

I had the same problem when using CCE with an athlon processor. To resolve this i used dvdx with premiere video server plug in and checked the box save to wav. file. converted the wav. file to mp2 using wav2mp and multiplexed with tmpenc.
Try Intervideo Wincoder or Canopus Procoder as they are just as fast as CCE without any audio headaches.

[xiaNaix]

I had the same problem when using CCE with an athlon processor. To resolve this i used dvdx with premiere video server plug in and checked the box save to wav. file. converted the wav. file to mp2 using wav2mp and multiplexed with tmpenc.
Try Intervideo Wincoder or Canopus Procoder as they are just as fast as CCE without any audio headaches.

Ha! ALMOST as fast is more like it. Nothing compares to CCE when it comes to speed and quality. :P

[crjackson]

So far I'm only impressed with the speed at which CCE works. Video quality is nice too, but it does me no favors with the audio sync problem it's giving me.

I've isolated the problem I was having with Ulead wanting to recode the MPG to make it compliant after being processed in TMPGEnc. It was the Joint Stereo setting after all. The very same setting works just fine in CCE but when it's used in TMPGEnc+ it causes problems with Ulead DVD Studio's authoring process. Changing it to setreo only fixed the problem.

I'm now processing the digital version of the capture with TMPGEnc again to see if all my issues went away with this change. I think it would have all been fine the last time I used TMPGEnc with the movie but when I selected Joint-Stereo, this caused Ulead to recode the whole thing over again. The resulting video had perfect sync, but the entire move had jerky motion. This didn't exist in the original TMPGEnc MPG file, so I guess Ulead caused that.

Now that their wont be any recoding, I've got my fingers crossed for synced A/V. If all is good, then I've found my software of choice for now. If the MPG turns out to have the same sync problems in the last 8 minutes of the movie that CCE had, then I'll go with CCE due to speed, and capture problematic movies in sections.

Whew! I think I'm coming down the final stretch as to a solution for this. At least for now. I'm also looking at Vegas Video 3.0 for a test run down the road...