THIS IS HOW TO MAKE CHAPTERS AND MENUS!!!

[treedog]

Hello Marty,

Ok I installed windvd 3.0 trial version software.

I don't have virtualdub installed so I shouldnt have to disable anything there.

Installed TMPGEnc VFAPI, shove it into the tscv folder.

Same with the VFAPIReader Codec.

I could not find anything on tools site about the 2 ligos-codecs named "TSCV MenuActivator" or anything like that.

Still getting the "no driver" error message.

>I'm running Windows ME (probally 1st problem, thinking of going XP).
>384mg of ram.
>800mg processor
>60G HD
>Editing with adobe premiere 6.0
> all my video come from my DV video camera
>I also have EZ CD creator installed which I have heard to cause alot of conflicts (worth mentioning)

I'm loving the TSCV burned several svcd bin/cue files,
I just cant get motion menues YET.

I have only been playing with vcd's and such for bout a year now. So I have boat loads to learn yet.

Man, I really appreciate all your help so far, any further insight would be great.

as already stated "You are the man"!!!!
Thanks,
JCH

[martymizah]

hey...ok gimme a day to get on this...ill try to figure it out


yeah...not really an ME fan myself...recently upgraded to XP through my school.....its VERY good...i definelty recommened it over ME anyday

im going to contact ttool about this...well see what he has to say...

oh yeah...that download stuff....is on ttools page..thats why you couldnt find it


http://www.ttool.de/indexe.htm

you can look around there

there is also another forum there, not as good as this, but decent

ill let ya know

[TTooL]

Hi,
Marty told me about his post here.
I am very busy with my TSCV forum, so there is not much time between developing and forum hosting to look in other forums

For those who have trouble with TSCV Motionmenus:

I installed a new XP Version yesterday.
After installing TSCV works, but has no CDRDAO access and the motionmenus did not work.
So:
1st I updated by ASPI-Layer with ForceASPI (or other progs). After that I could see my CD-drives in TSCV and CDRDAO worked.
2nd. I went to the VirtualDub folder and doubleclicked on the "proxyoff.reg". This is necessary to get the VFAPIReader to work.
3rd installed VFAPIReader Codec, by clicking on "vifp.inf" in the vfapi-folder.
4th installed the TMPGEnc VFAPICodec.

After that the motionmenus worked with VFAPI.

Hope that helps!

If not, there are many other solutions by TSCV Users in my forum.

cu
TTooL

[bigaad]

yo martymizah

I have a question for you.

In this program you must put in your chapters, they say you can get them with smartripper, you must put in the info file but i can't find the info file smartripper doesn't make a info file can you please help me

[martymizah]

hey, first get a new version of smartripper....

then check in your settings....under files...and make sure that you have rip info file checked


thats it

[treedog]

Marty,

Thank you brother... for getting me this far


All righty then.........

I've gotten someware now. The driver error message is gone. YEA!!!! Installed VFAPIReader Codec, by clicking on "vifp.inf" in the vfapi-folder.(TTool rules too)

new issue...... Now in my preview screen in the chapters tab, TSCV does not preview the actual movie, it previews the avi.vfpi file instead? This just started, it was reading the mpeg2 movie file at first, I burned a sample, and it's not reading the movie anymore. Makes it difficult to add chapters when i cant see the actual movie I'm adding the chapters to.

Does this make any sense?

What do you think went wrong?

Your current "problem child"

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: treedog on 2001-12-19 11:19:08 ]</font>

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: treedog on 2001-12-19 14:10:14 ]</font>

[martymizah]

well isnt your vfapi file a copy of your movie?


yes...the thing should preview the vfapi...that is the whole point

ok...here it is


the program is not capable of viewing the mpg...it was not able to do this earlier...the vfapi is just a different type of file...as you can see...it contains all video images...and no audio...it compresses the picture part of the movie to under 20mb (from potentially 600). so the whole point is for the media viewer to use this vfapi (thats why you check that box in the beginning on the first page)

the reason why we do this is because it can pull thorugh your movie MUCH MUCH quicker as well as make the menus quicker. it will be pulling the images off of the vfapi file

this doesnt mean that you should not be "reading the movie anymore. Makes it difficult to add chapters when i cant see the actual movie I'm adding the chapters to"

that file SHOULD BE your movie...just no audio.


if thats not the case...what was that file of yours? haha id like to know

go back...open vfapi...add job...open your mpg...uncheck the audio box...and encode it....

then open that new file (movie.vfapi-avi) windows media player....it should play exactly like your mpg2 stream...possibley a little lower quality (nothing major) and NO audio


lemme know...cuz you got me confused...hahah

[MDK]

I am trying to make motion menus with TSCV v0.82 rel6. I am following the guide that martymizah created, great guide by the way, but when it comes to creating the menu itself I get nothing but the properly laid out matrix with white backgrounds where my motion clips should be. After I click "create menu" I can watch the proper clips being created and put in place on the menu creation screen, however, when TMPGenc opens it only encodes the first bitmap in the sequence and that bitmap has white thumbs where the clips should be.

In the TSCV sequence directory I get the right number of sequence bmps (400), but they all have the white thumbs.

I have installed VFAPI for TMPenc and the standalone version for getting the clips from my original MPEG. I am running WindowsXP Pro.

Any help would be greatly appreciated. I am so close and this is the last hurdle, the rest is just learning.

Thanks
MDK

[martymizah]

sounds to me like you may have an overlay problem

did you install the mpg parser and decoder?

try that, then let me know

http://www.personal.psu.edu/users/r/d/rdm186/regdrop.zip


lemme know

[MDK]

Thanks for the reply martymizah.

Sometime after I posted the message I went and downloaded TSCV 0.83 rel1. It seemed to fix the problem I listed above. However, a new problem has a risen. When I am creating the motion menu, VFApi hangs on one frame and continues to output it. My chapters from 9 up to 12 all have the same one frame copied 400 times. Going from chapter 1 to chapter 6 worked like a dream but then it all fell apart. I have read other posts about VFApi problems and tried their solutions to no avail.

Any help would be greatly appreciated
Thanks
MDK

[treedog]

Hey Marty,

Thanks again for all of your continued posts and the awsome guide. "you the man".

Basically so far for me vfapi just sucks man. I can pull my mpeg through better than the vfapi file, why this is I'm not sure. Forward the vfapi file pulls nicely, but reverse it hangs up badly. So I've just been working the slower way, with straight mpeg.

My lasted problem is using TSCV to burn my video. Several times the menus are blank during the encoding process with TMPenc, sometimes they are not, and I can see them while being encoded, like I should.

Even so using TSCV to burn my SVCD's WITH motion menus added has been a zero. Allhtough I'm using it to burn SVCD's without menu's, and thats all I wanted from the start was to burn SVCD's with freewhare, instead of just VCD's, using shitty ol` EZ CD Creator.

Thanks again for your continued help, I will continue to **** with TSCV until I am burning my own productions with the awesome motion menues.

Again mon,
Thanks.

"cuz I'm a problem child"

[gromitlad]

Props to marty for the AWESOME tutorial. Haven't tried a motion menu yet but the still menu one was just awesome. Many thanks also to maanseeak (sp?) for introducing me to daemontools. Don't know how I ever lived without it now, what a great tool!

A couple of notes about where *I* had difficulties with TSCV and how I solved them, just in case they might help someone else here:

PROBLEM: CDRWin and Daemontools having problems with cue/bin files. Fireburner working OK but resultant CD having incorrect chapters (many of the chapters would start at the same point in the movie)
SOLUTION: Found Vitualis' post about setting up entrypoints in the MPEG. Once I used his method of setting up entrypoints (tutorial here: http://www.geocities.com/medinotes/vcd/chapters.html ), suddenly the cue/bin files worked with every program, and all the chapters worked beautifully. (Thanks vitualis!)

PROBLEM: TSCV showing inaccurate length of movie (my mpeg was ~44 min, TSCV was showing 34 min), and chapter points were increasingly (first chapter stop off by a minute or so, second chapter stop off by a couple minutes, etc)
SOLUTION: the MPEG file I had downloaded from the internet was encoded as NTSC Film, 23.976 fps. My menus were recorded at 29.97 fps. Once I redid the menus at 23.976 fps and changed the appropriate setting in TSCV, all the times became accurate.

PROBLEM: preview screen under the chapters tab in TSCV showing a blank grey screen (in other words, I couldn't see the movie to know where to set my chapter stops)
SOLUTION: I just hit the "preview (S)VCD" button and then immediately close the popup window. All of a sudden my movie showed up in the preview area.

I'm using TSCV 0.82 rel 6 to create the CUE/BIN files, Daemontools to preview the VCDs before burning, and CDRWin to burn the VCDs (though I'm sure Fireburner and CDRDAO would do a fine job as well).

Marty: you could make a truly awesome tutorial even better if you made a troubleshooting section that covers the problems some people have. In particular I think some reference to the chapter entrypoints issue and Vitualis' instructional page on the subject would be extremely useful to a lot of people.

Many, many thanks to the many people whose posts helped me, particularly Marty and vitualis.

I'm a total newbie to this VCD thing but I'm already making awesome VCDs with menus and chapters that play on my computer, my Pioneer DV-343 DVD player and my friend's Panasonic RV-31. This forum rocks!

[martymizah]

TREEDOG:
"Even so using TSCV to burn my SVCD's WITH motion menus added has been a zero. Allhtough I'm using it to burn SVCD's without menu's, and thats all I wanted from the start was to burn SVCD's with freewhare, instead of just VCD's, using shitty ol` EZ CD Creator."

if you are using TSCV to burn the menus, like onto the disk, using the cdrado option, then i cant help...i cannot get that to work for shit

however, i use fireburner and its great...never had a problem.


i dont understand the problem with the vfapi...what version of that program do you use? lemme know


next up...
MDK:

that was a VERY common problem with the old releases...the fact that you have that with the new one is very strange.

try just deleting all of the files from your computer....redownloading the newest version and tryin again....

if not...this is how to fix it:

download virtual dub....open it and run the aux setup.
click Install handler
then start the program
open your mpg file
go to file>>start frameserver
press ok
then when you have to save the file as: name it tscv.vdr
YOU HAVE TO PUT IN THE EXTENSION!!

ok...then open that file in vfapi wihtout closing virtualdub. (you may have to go to view all files in the open box)
select TSCV.vdr....and open it
uncheck the audio box
click ok....that will give you the movie as a vfapi-avi
(probably called TSCV.vfapi-avi)
close VFAPI

ok...then while virtualdub is still open....do what you have to do in TSCV (Using the framserved TSCV.vfapi-avi as your vfapi file)

to make sure it works...go to the media player in TSCV and just scroll through the movie...you should be able to get all the way to the end without it freezing.


****ALSO with the new version of TSCV, you dont even need the VFAPI, cuz it is capable of reading the mpg to make your menus....so if you want...you can just **** everything i just said.... and not even load a vfapi (it just generally makes the creation process quicker --but after doin all this shit, it will take longer anyway)****

so, in short...uninstall...and reinstall

if that doesnt work...then just use your mpg file (uncheck the box on the settings tab that says enable vfapi for menu creation) and dont worry about openeing any vfapi.

if your bent on using the vfapi..then do it like i listed above..

hope it helps (that was all off of the top of my head....i dont have the programs in front of me...but im sure thats all of the steps)

sorry for the long explaination. lemme know


NEXT UP.....GROMITLAD:

thanks for the post...im sure it will help everyone out

as far as a help section....as you cant tell from my webpage...i dont really have much time...its a garbage html page with just pics and words...haha

I basically want to keep everything as simple as possible...many people make everything seem so damn hard...i just try to keep it simple...and to tha point....

maybe one day....when i get time (im a full time student) ill make a help section

more or less...this thread is the help section...haha
by reading this entire thread...almost everything i CAN answer ive answered...im not an expert...just a 20yr old student with a hobby...haha


ok...lemme know guys

[MDK]

martymizah,

Thank you for your suggestions. I will give it a try tonight. I will let you know how it goes. I like the vfapi idea because I can goe tight back and take the motion menu frames from the .d2v file. I am kinda picky about quality and if I use the encoded .mpg file, by the time the motion menu is done those frames will have been encoded 3 times. I know it seems really picky, but if I can do it with vfapi and a d2v file, I will. If I can't, I can't.

Thanks again for you help
MDK

[MDK]

martymizah,

Tried exactly what you said with the complete uninstall/reinstall of TSCV but am still having exactly the same problem. It seems to be an issue with vfapi and the time into the movie. vfapi froze on a frame again, however it was a different frame, at almost the same point, the end of the motion menu for chapter 8. The first time I tried it was with a converted d2v file, this time it was the encoded mpg that I converted.

I am going to try the virtualDub method next.

Thanks for any further info
MDK

[MDK]

Hi,

The virtualDub method, as you described it martymizah, did not work either. 120min of black frames. More than likely something I did wrong. What did work though was saving the VDub frameserver file as a *.avi and then loading that into TSCV when it asks for the VFApi file. As far as I can tell so far this works flawlessly. I took my .d2v file wrote a short Avisynth script for it and opened that in VDUB. The really good part about this method, to me anyway, is that I have access to all the filters in both AVIsynth and VDUB. To my eyes avisynth did a better job of resizing the frames than whatever method TSCV uses, not a complaint or bitch, just an observation.

Using the above method I have now completed my first SVCD disc with motion menus. Thanks for all the assistance.

Merry Christmas
MDK

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: MDK on 2001-12-24 11:16:49 ]</font>

[martymizah]

congrats on that

keep messin with tscv...its a solid program...just have to work out some kinks....

go to http://www.ttool.de for updates and newer versions with bug fixes....cuz it is constantly updated


happy holidays all

[MDK]

Thanks again. It is definately a sweet app, I can already envision the possibilities being endless. A big thanks to TTool for all the hard work, and kudos to martymizah for the excellent guide.

Happy Holidays
MDK

P.S. sorry to all for the generic Merry Christmas

[jubilex]

Is there a way to add chapter/entrypoints without re-compressing the file? There are plenty of VCDs I have that I would like to add chapters to, but I don't want to have to re-encode/re-compress the mpg, lowering the quality.

[treedog]

****ALSO with the new version of TSCV, you dont even need the VFAPI, cuz it is capable of reading the mpg to make your menus....so if you want...you can just **** everything i just said.... and not even load a vfapi (it just generally makes the creation process quicker --but after doin all this shit, it will take longer anyway)***



I am way down with that.

Marty, I will go the fireburner way as soon as I get back to my puter this week.

By the way I do have the latest version of VFApi I think it is 1.30 or something like that.

But I did discover awhile back the latest release is pulling the mpg through mich nicer than the mock .avi file.

Happy Holidays
JCH

[martymizah]

@jubilex

ok...download vcdGear from the tools section of this page....

convert the *.dat file from your VCD back to an MPG --(you DONT lose any quality)

so now you have an mpg....

to just add entrypoints do the following in TSCV:


on the settings tab:

fill in the volume ID
VCD type: for a normal vcd use 2.0
on chapter time out....previous menu item
on the right check: motion-menus in mpegav blah blah blah
and XML: Use keypad
fill in the proper info in the TV system
the rest of the setting should be good on this page

tell where you want to output the *.bin
locate your tmpgenc file and your cygwin utils (thats in the VCDimager folder in your TSCV directory)

GO TO THE MENU TAB:

click on the CD icon...click add mpg at the bottom....your mpg should pop up in the big white box

double click on the line with your mpg name...this will take you to the chapters tab

CHAPTERS TAB:
here you can manually enter your chapter times....however you want...dont worry about the settings to the right...just make sure you press enter or DO after each chatper time....this will make the times pop up in the lower righthand box.

when all chapter times are inserted, you can go back to the menu tab and direct each number on the keypad to point to a certain chapter...this is all described in full in my still menu guide...just follow the link in my signature at the bottom of this post.

after you tell the program where you want each chapter to go....just click create cue/bin

this will give you the cue/bin file for the movie in the directory that you specified on the settings tab

then you can use fireburner to burn the bin file.
(in fireburner just go to file...add cuesheet)


by following this, you will not loose any quality and have a VCD with entrypoints (chapters)


lemme know

[jubilex]

Beautiful. Thanks, Marty. I'll try that just as soon as I can get the VCD I'm trying to play to work right at all (it's a PAL VCD, and the audio keeps going out of sync on my Apex).

[treedog]

Hey Marty,

I now have motion menues on my svcd (huge breakthrough).

Still one small problem:

Pulling the mpeg through wether I'm pulling the VFAPI avi. file or the mpg file is extremely SSSLLLLOOOOOOOOOOOWW!!!!!
I'm using the latest release of VFAPI but I see no differeance in using it with the Ver.83 re1. Althouhg I have no problem pulling the files in TMPGEnc's preview??

Hope the holidays are going well.

JCH

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: treedog on 2001-12-30 09:02:29 ]</font>

[martymizah]

when you encode your vfapi file, you uncheck the audio box right?

the whole point of the vfapi file is just to have a small version of the mpg...so that programs can pull through it easier. if you do not uncheck the audio, the file will be large, and slow to use.

my vfapi's are never really larger than 20 mb.

lemme know

[treedog]

Oh yea it's checked.

I understand the whole point of the mock avi. file (i didnt at first). I just cant get it to pull through very well, makes creating the menue points a bitch, (time consuming). I will continue to **** with it.



****ALSO with the new version of TSCV, you dont even need the VFAPI, cuz it is capable of reading the mpg to make your menus....so if you want...you can just **** everything i just said.... and not even load a vfapi (it just generally makes the creation process quicker --but after doin all this shit, it will take longer anyway)***

Whats this all about?? I have notice that the mpeg pulls through better than my vfapi file?

Any clue?

Thanks for all the great help!!

[treedog]

OK the latest problem:

I have burned several svcd's with motion menues thanks to this guide and alot of help from you Marty.

I have not been happy with the quality of my svcd so I change some settings in TMPGEnc (Super Video-CD NTSC (MPEG-2 480x480 29.97fps VBR 2520kbps, Layer-2 44100Hz 224kbps). The quality is great but the encoding from avi. takes along time, but well worth it.

OK the problem is this:
VCDxbuild is not creating a bin/cue that fireburner can properly burn. Actually a couple of time it did not even produce a bin file only the cue? My production is 28 minutes long ( about 550 mg) before I create a bin/cue, but after VCDxbuild is done it has added a mpeg1 that is 61 minutes long.I get this message that is in my VCDxbuild log;

"autopadding requires to insert additional 76067256 zero bytes into MPEG stream (due to 275606 unaligned packets of 275607 total)
this VCD type should not contain MPEG1 streams"


What the hell does this mean?


Now I know I have created everything properly prior to hitting create bin/cue because all menues work flawlessly in my tscv preview. This is starting to piss me off, cuz now I'm just making coasters.

Like I said the menues fuction perfectly in TSCV's preview before i create bin/cue.

Shit and everything was working so well too.

Happy Holidays All.

Out.

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: treedog on 2001-12-31 18:17:59 ]</font>

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: treedog on 2001-12-31 20:48:05 ]</font>

[martymizah]

well...on the settings tab....do you have tscv checked for scvd? or vcd 2.0.

also...after the menu is encoded....and it goes to tmpgenc....does it come out to be an m1v or mpv...somethin like that?

thats what happens to me, then i go back in and re-encode it as an mpg so i can use it for my menu....

if this is what your doing, that could be the problem....

you have to re-encode your menu as an mpg2 since you have an svcd, becuause if you dont, youll have an mpg2 stream (movie) and an mpg1 stream (menus) which cant be burned and played on the same disc

this may seem obvious, but thats all i can think of, hopefully this is your problem, you may wanna check on the encoding part of the forum too


sorry about that one

[treedog]

Yea I checked all of those things.

What blows me away is that I start with a file that is about 28 min. long, everything looks and works great in tscv's preview, it plays for 28 minutes, then after I burn it I now have something that autopadding added that is 61 min. long and is a mpeg1?

What I'm looking into now is a text editor, so I can make sure that the cue file is corectly configured. If you would know where and what text edidor is recommended I would appreciate it.

Thanks again,

JCH

[martymizah]

you can actually just use notepad to edit your cue file


you just have to see that in your cue file, the path to the bin is correct

i read somewhere what all that autopadding shit was, but i cant find it, i know its in the authoring forum somewhere....ill check and get back to you


late

[KidRyanCoRn]

Hey man. Thanks for the help with this. I have a quick question and it has to do with the sound test. Could I just use a song in .wav format as the sound that plays in the background of my menus?