TMPGEnc Authoring Works - bitrate too high

[ecc]

Despite my misgivings in another thread when this program was announced, I'm trying it out.

When I hit start output it says that the bitrate is too high. It says that the total bitrate is 10504 kb/s but should be lower than 9848 kb/s. That is not the case. I encoded the MPG with 2 pass encoding in CCE with a max bitrate of 9079 (to include a 448 5.1 and 256 2.0 track) and an average bitrate of 4573 (so that the output was no that much larger than the input mpg). 10504 would be the bitrate if the max bitrate had been set to 9800 but I know I set it at 9079 in CCE.

I would hate to move this over to another authoring program as I created the chapters in Authoring Works and I don't see any way of exporting the chapter list other than typing in each value into a text file and I've already created some nifty still menus (with motion chapter screens) using my background images and their templates.

The only time I used TMPGEnc DVD Author 3 some time ago was when I was fixing some 6-8 hour EP mode DVD-RW recordings of news broadcasts for a project and I recall getting a similar error message but I pressed on because most of the people using them would be playing them back on software players.

Is TMPGEnc misreading the input or is it going to give me a DVD that is not compliant?

[schematic2]

Is it possible the total bitrate includes the audio? I found the highest kbs its happy with is 8000 for video. Can't see any reason for more....

[johns0]

Just choose ignore the warning and author,the bitrate it reads is not the average but the highest.

[ecc]

Now it stops saying that there is not enough space on the disc. The total size of the DVD would be under 4 GB and there is 12 GB free on the disc that all of the files are on.

EDIT: I think I solved the problem. I found the preferences menu and changed the drive for the temp folder and it seems to be working (I've got to clean some stuff off of my main hard drive).

[TimA-C]

Unless I set the max bitrate in CCE well below 8000, I get this too. You can either reset the reported bitrate in the file's header using something like DVD Patcher or just ignore the error message in TMPGenc. Either way, I've never had any compatability problems with my disks.

[Nelson37]

You are confusing Requested, Specified bitrate with actual bitrate achieved. While these will usually be close, under and over-shoots will definitely occur, also the accuracy is nowhere near the one-digit level you seem to be expecting.

I would strongly recommend leaving more room for fudge factor. Playback on standalone players will definitely be negatively affected by bitrate "spikes" which exceed specifications. Some encoders are more susceptible to this than others, checking the actual bitrate with an examination tool will provide some eye-opening information.

[ecc]

It worked fine. Although the progress bar indicates that the menu rendering is 50% of the process, the time remaining soon drops off when it comes to the actual multiplexing of the title. Rendering of the menus themselves is slow but quality is nice.

The only annoyance is that the program re-encoded the menu music I added (a one minute clip of music - 6 channels encoded at 448 kbps was re-encoded to 2 channel 256 kbps). Does the program not do 5.1 menus? Would it have re-encoded it if I had done a 2 channel AC3? The file browser accepts AC3 but it also accepts various other audio formats so I guess it expects to encode the audio while rendering the menu.

[gyoshi]

The only annoyance is that the program re-encoded the menu music I added (a one minute clip of music - 6 channels encoded at 448 kbps was re-encoded to 2 channel 256 kbps). Does the program not do 5.1 menus? Would it have re-encoded it if I had done a 2 channel AC3? The file browser accepts AC3 but it also accepts various other audio formats so I guess it expects to encode the audio while rendering the menu.

By default, the BGM for menus is encoded as 2ch, but you can change the settings in the DVD Global Menu Settings-->Output tab.

[ecc]

Cool. The re-encoding probably added considerably to the rendering time of the menus.

[ecc]

As far as speeding up the menu rendering goes, if the thumbnails are the only things in motion, would unchecking "enable animation of" the background picture and "other picture" have any effect? Same goes for "motion menu only" if you are not using menu audio?