Encore DVD 1.0 not DiVx friendly?

[blurredvision]

I have begun to use Encore DVD for my beginnings in the DVD authoring world, and so far I like it. The interface is a bit clunky, but I suspect this will be highly tuned in the upcoming 2.0 version.

However, I have run into a problem just a couple of days ago. I recently have begun making a wedding video for mom, who was just married last weekend. I decided to encode the different vids (rehearsal, wedding, reception, etc.) using DiVx 5.1.1, as I found it was of great quality and small file size. However, when I successfully created all menus and timelines, the transcoding process failed repeatedly. "Abnormal error has occurred" it would tell me.

At first I figured it was a problem with my install, but then remembered I was working with DiVx now, not my default Cinepak Radius codec. After a little testing, the DiVx encoded movies are giving me problems with Encore. It will not allow me to transcode them at all! I recently tried using TMPGEnc for a workaround, but have had problems with it too.

Anyhow, is this a known Encore set-back? Or is this an isolated problem that can be fixed?

TIA

[Baldrick]

Many all in one authoring, encoding tools have problem with divx,xvid sources. Especially divx with mp3 vbr or ac3 audio.

If you are making dvd do not convert to divx.

[blurredvision]

Many all in one authoring, encoding tools have problem with divx,xvid sources. Especially divx with mp3 vbr or ac3 audio.

If you are making dvd do not convert to divx.

Which codec do you recommend that will give me comparable quality to DiVx?

[BJ_M]

wedding video for mom

well what is the source ? DV ? if so -- leave it at dv for editing ..

whats the point to compress to divx and then to mpeg2 -- makes no sense at all ..

[guns1inger]

While all this is sage advice, it doesn't really solve your problem. I assume that the Divx versions are the only ones you now have of your source material. I have found that mostly, tmpgenc (and others) have issues dealing with the audio. I would load the file into virtualdub, set it to full processing mode (under the audio menu ?), then save the audio out as an uncompressed wave file. Then load the video into tmpgenc, and load the wave file for the audio track. Tmpgenc should now be able to process the source. The other thing this will do is reduce (to almost zero) the chance of suffering from sync problems.

P.S. When you load it into virtualdub, you may get an error message saying you have an incorrect vbr header (or similar). Just click OK and keep going. All will be well in the end.

[BJ_M]

While all this is sage advice, it doesn't really solve your problem. I assume that the Divx versions are the only ones you now have of your source material. I have found that mostly, tmpgenc (and others) have issues dealing with the audio. I would load the file into virtualdub, set it to full processing mode (under the audio menu ?), then save the audio out as an uncompressed wave file. Then load the video into tmpgenc, and load the wave file for the audio track. Tmpgenc should now be able to process the source. The other thing this will do is reduce (to almost zero) the chance of suffering from sync problems.

P.S. When you load it into virtualdub, you may get an error message saying you have an incorrect vbr header (or similar). Just click OK and keep going. All will be well in the end.

that would be great advice for converting a downloaded divx or xvid file - but he said he is making a wedding video -- which ussually you don't film in xvid with a vbr mp3 audio and just render it it raw to mpeg2 ...

[guns1inger]

I prefaced my response with the assumption that the Divx versions were the only versions of the source he had available. I agree totally that if the DV masters are available, they should be used.