help, looking for a simple tmpgenc fix now become a major breakdown

[BlnkCruiser]

Hello everyone. first time posting hoping someone can help me. obviously, i know nothing about video encoding, but i m willin to learn.. at least get my system fix.. lol. i have been searching this site for 3 days but still couldnt find the answer. so i m posting here,hoping someone can help me.
1. i have an avi file recorded from a ditigal camera. it plays fine with window media player. i want to use tmpgenc to convert it to mpg for vcd. whenever i load the avi file, i get the "can not open or is not supported", so i went to: "Try first to change the directshow codec reader priority settings in TMPGEnc under Option->Environmental settings->VFAPI plug-in and right click on the DirectShow Multimedia File Reader and increase the priority to 2 or to the top of the plugin-list and try reopen the video." It still didnt work. i have ffdshow, divx, xvid installed already in my system, but it's still not working.
under GSPOT i ran the avi file and to the following informatin:
stream type and a/v interleave:
type: opendml avi "reclist"style imrr: n.s
i/l: not support
video:
4cc: mjpg name: motion jpeg including huffman tables
audio:
pcm audio
bitrate: 88kb/s fs: 11024hz

and under VIRTUAL DUB i get the following:
avi information:
video stream:
frame size: fps (640x 480) 30fps
lenght: 36395 frames
decompressor: internal motion jpeg decorder

can anyone help me with information as to what/where and how... so i can load the file in tmpgenc? i really want to learn to use tmpgnec. i know there are other converter software.. and i have tried them (not that good).. but i want the "know how" with tmpgenc.

now the major breakdown.. lol.. need major help with this one..
after i couldnt get tmpgenc to load the avi file, i went to ffdshow and divx and xvid, tweaking with the codec to see if tmpgenc can load the avi file..all hell break lose. lol...
not only it didnt work, but now..when i play the original avi files with window media player.. all i can hear is the audio and the picture is all pixelette.. cant see anything.. all dark and distorted.. on the left hand side of the wmp, i can see some sort of code..in green color.. such as: input fourccc:RGB32, decoder: uncompressed, frame typed: 1
i tried several other avi files that used to play fine with wmp.. the same result.. i can no longer watch it.. and the worst thing of all.. my only game in the laptop, striper poker no longer works!!! 8 hours a day sitting in the office with nothing to do without my poker is is a long long day..
i dont want to reformat my laptop.. so i m asking the experts in here for help. any help is greatly appreciated..well the help to get my strip poker back is greatly greatly appreciated..
lol..j/k
i really needed help with this one..
thanx so much in advance..

blnkcruiser

[mats.hogberg]

If VirtualDub has no problems, just frameserve the AVI from VD to TMPGEnc.

/Mats

[redwudz]

The codec you were probably looking for is a MJPEG codec. You might want to uninstall FFDShow if it's causing you problems now. Here's one MJPEG codec: LEAD MCMP/MJPEG Video Codec The audio is PCM, so you don't need a codec for that. Xvid and Divx settings are for encoding, not much for playback.

Try using VLC Media Player instead of WMP, it plays most anything with it's own codecs. WMP won't play much of anything without help. I would even use MPC instead.

What mats.hogberg said. You can frameserve the video from VirtualDub to TMPGEnc encoder: https://www.videohelp.com/virtualdubframeserve.htm I generally use VirtualDub Mod as it accepts more formats.

And welcome to our forums.

[BlnkCruiser]

mats.hogber, thnx for the quick reply. i didnt know VD can do that. i m actually doing it now while typing this up. lol... learn something new today., thnx alot.

redwudz thnx for the answer. this is a great forum.. glad i found my way here to this site. yes, i have VLC and it plays all kind of crap files you throw at it.. lol. for some stupid reason i just like to used wmp, since the icons are in wmp. i just double click it to open the video file.
redwudz, so if i want tmpgenc to be able to open this particular file , i go into ffdshow and enable this "LEAD MCMP/MJPEG " codec? i guess the whole thing got messed up when i go into ffdshow and enabled everything in there. lol....i want my virtual strip poker back.., lol..

thanx everyone for the wonderful information..

oh, one last question.. since i have "ffdshow" installed and i have k-lite codec (which also contained ffdshow) .. do i have to uninstalled both or just the ffdshow.?

again..thanx a million..

blnkcruiser[/b]

[BlnkCruiser]

ok, back with the results but now couple of questions.. the original avi file is 2.10gb with 640x480. after the conversion.. the file was compress down to 201 meg. however, is it normal for vcd format or mpg to be at 352x240. for some reason i cant seem to change the ration, no matter what i chose, in the end..the result is always 352x240. is the how it is supposed to be with mpg format? anothing is.. after the conversion... GSPOT has no information on the video codec. under video it's "n.a"..
i guess i did something wrong..?? can anyone tell me what i did wrong?
thnx..

[Ai Haibara]

It sounds to me like you may be using GSpot 2.12; try the 2.52 or 2.60 betas, they'll provide more information about the AVI.

As for ffdshow, I'm not sure if K-Lite would try to install it in a different directory than ffdshow would normally install in, by itself. That might cause some conflicts, and I don't know if more than one version of ffdshow would conflict with each other (DirectShow filter conflicts, for example), or whether different (newer/older) installs of ffdshow would trump each other.

You should note that the usual opinion on this forum is that codec packs (including K-Lite) are a Very Bad Thing, however. The recommendation is just to use GSpot or a similar utility, find out which codec you need, and only install that codec.

[Nitemare]

352x240 is the VCD standard for an NTSC region. That is normal.

[redwudz]

K-lite and codec problems often go together. I would uninstall K-lite and see how FFDShow performs. If FFDShow still acts up, uninstall, then reinstall it, or replace with the latest version. If your codecs are really messed up, then you may have to remove some and start over.

VCD is one of the few fixed bitrate formats. It's always 1150Kbps bitrate and the frame size and frames per second just varies from PAL to NTSC. This makes it easy to know the size of the encoded file by the running time. For more info, see 'WHAT IS' VCD to the upper left.

I guessing there is a problem with your MJPEG codec, if you do have the right one. I suspect K-lite might be involved.
The problems may be more than one, which makes it a little harder to straighten out. I hesitate having you make a lot of changes right away. I know how that goes. Things go from bad to worse. But dump K-lite and see if that helps.

As mentioned the older Gspot doesn't detect MPEG attributes. The newer version is available in 'Tools'.

[BlnkCruiser]

yay...!!!!!!!!!!. uninstalled ffdshow and i got my video stip poker back..now 8 hours of work is more fun.. lol... and i can watch all the video with wmp again.

first of all.. i want to say thank you for all the help.. very informative.. very helpful...glad you people are here to help with newbies.

Ai Haibara, right on the nail... i used gspot 2.21.. lol.. ffdshow was installed in it's own directory and k-lite has it own directory as well.. so.. i just uninstalled the ffdshow and .. it work.. k-lite is still there.. i will uninstalled when i m more familiar with this codec stuff.. i installed it cause i have lots of files that couldnt be palyed.. so people told me to installed the k-lite pack.. didnt know it could cause conflict with other codec.
redwudz, absolutely correct.. if you dont know what you are doing., and messed with it.. things will go from bad to worse...lol..
i still cant get tmpgenc to load the avi files.. still said unsupported file., but it's ok.. i can used VD and frameserver since now i know the how to ..lol
when i m ready to format the hard drive..i will test and experiement with other codec just so i can learn something.. too lazy to format it now if i mess it up to a point where i cant reverse it.

again.. thank you all for the help.

[redwudz]

Good deal!. You have learned similarly what we have found out the hard way also. Sometimes the easy way is not the best.

Generally, you should drop a unknown video into a program like Gspot or similar and see what it needs. Using the 'shotgun' approach like K-lite and some other programs use will only cause problems. You install what you need and no more.

Frameserving is a great tool. It can direct a unconventional file into an encoder without the problems of trying to input the file directly. Well worth learning.

FFDShow doesn't often cause problems. But it does have many options. Some of those options may cause problems. The more complex a program, the more problems it can cause. I often suggest VLC because it doesn't need codecs and it avoids some codec problems for playback.

And the most important thing, of course, You got your strip poker back.