[SOLVED] TMPGEnc DVD Author doesn't like VBR??

[Taeran]

Greetings, my first post here, although I have already learned a lot from the forums.

Im converting an AVI to DVD using:

- TMPGEnc XPress 4.0 to convert AVI to M2V
- TMPGEnc DVD Author to author it
- Xvid v1.1.3 installed to decode AVI

Now, I load AVI into Xpress (AVI is already 720x480, 23.976fps, no sound). In "Format", I select "DVD standard MPEG file" (to avoid any incompatibility), and press VBR (not really needed for the test of 1 minute, but I'll need for full movie).
Xpress does it job, and I am able to play the result in Media Player Classic (although, oddly enough, the total time is much lower than it really is, but all the sample is there to see. When I use MediaInfo to analyze the M2V result, fps and total time are both ok. The higher VBR value I put in, the longer Media Player reports the video to be).

Now, I start DVD Author, and press "Add file". It tries a bit to load the M2V, then replies "Could not open the video part of the file D:\sample.m2v Only the audio part can be opened."
So, I go back to Xpress (which I didn't close), and merely change the "Rate control mode" to CBR (even leave the same calculate bitrate).
Xpress re-encodes, and... DVD Author can now open it without any problem. I open the resulting m2v on Media Player Classic, and now it also reports the correct total time.

This is so odd... What may I be doing wrong?

Thanks in advance!

[Taeran]

SOLVED!

Well, I took several hours of fiddling before posting the question, and only a few minutes after posting it, I found out by trial-and-error what the problem was. Typical.

I read in a guide here that the "Allow padding to avoid video minimum bitrate break" option could be turned off. But that was what caused my problem. As soon as I turned it ON, it all worked as intended.

I hope this helps more people.

[MOVIEGEEK]

Another solution is to use CBR audio.

[redwudz]

MP3 VBR is a PITA for most converters. It's not surprising that some programs may read the length of the file incorrectly.

But glad you solved your problem. Make sure it also works the same on a full length video.

And welcome to our forums.

[Taeran]

You might not seen on my first post, but my sample movie was already stripped of audio. All this things I did were already done with a soundless AVI.
Doing it on a full size movie now, will take some hours (will be over 2GB, AVI is a multipart opendml file, I hope that doesn't get in the way).

[redwudz]

Yes, I missed that. Your problem was with VBR video. That shouldn't cause the same sort of problems as VBR audio. But the file length will still be hard to read in the VBR format.