TMPGEnc and DEC2000

[asprinwizard]

Hi There,

I have been using my computer to make captures from a Hauppauge DEC2000 freeview box which has a usb connection. The captures are excellent and in seem to be in DVD format. However at the moment I do not have a DVD writer so I'm compressing them to VCD using TMPGEnc.

The problem is that the TMPGEnc program does not seem to recognise the files as MPEG files. It says they are not supported, even though they seem to be compliant DVD MPEGs. I've had the same problem with the TMPGEnc DVD authoring program. Clearly something is causing it to read the file incorrectly. Any thoughts?

At the moment I having to use Flask which seems to have no problems but is much slower than TMPGEnc. I really would prefer to use TMPGEnc if possible so any help would be much appreciated.

[asprinwizard]

I have just tried to use DVDx with the files describe above. It says there is no sequence header. I would therefore imagine this is why TMPGEnc doesn't like them. I was therefore wondering how I can repair the files so they have a sequence header. What is a sequence header anyway?

If anyone has any advice it would be most appreciated.

[cooel]

TMPGEnc is very fussy about its files and will take only files it see's as "fully compliant". I have had this problem before, though not with the Hauppauge. I do not think there is a direct way round this but what I have done in the past is to take the file into TMPGEnc tools and re-mux the file, then TMPGEnc will recognise the file and allow you to make a VCD.

By the way, I was thinking about buying the DEC2000, can you tell me what bit rate you can your file is captured at the max setting ?

[jtoolman2000]

I was under the impression the TMPGenc only let you do AVI to MPG

[cooel]

TMPGEnc will take Mpeg1 or Mpeg2 as input formats as well as AVI, but will only output Mpeg 1 or Mpeg2

[FulciLives]

If you are capturing to mpeg-2 then you can try running the mpeg files through DVD2AVI which will create a D2V project file that TMPGEnc should have no trouble reading. DVD2AVI will also seperate the audio file. This is a good idea since the audio file may have a delay value OTHERTHAN 0 (as in ZERO) in which case you can "fix" it to 0 (ZERO) using BeSweet. My understanding is that you should always use an audio file with a 0 (ZERO) delay value when you are re-encoding the video to mpeg-2

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

[asprinwizard]

Thanks for the advice. It doesn't seem to like DVD2AVI. Gave the same error message when loaded into TMPGEnc. Eventually created a compliant file with the MME program. TMPEnc acccepts it and seems to encode fine, but then after a while it crashes (illegal operation). I don't know if this is a flaw with the file or with TMPGEnc. I haven't really used TMPGEnc since I re-installed the operating system. The problem is that it is not consistent. It crashed once on 67%. Then I downloaded the latest version of TMPGEnc and it crashed on 3% (the same file).

So if anyone has any clue as to what could be causing this I'd be most grateful because I'm at the end of my tether!

[FulciLives]

I think your source file is FUCKED. I mean if it IS an MPEG-2 file and you couldn't run it through DVD2AVI then something is wrong with that file OR it isn't a MPEG-2 file or it is corrupt or something.

- John "FulciLives" Coleman