encoding with TMPGenc--- video only or video & audio ?

[doogietim]

I am new to this process but learning quickly. I have captured old vhs to my hard drive via digital pass-through. I am using TMPGenc to convert to mpeg, then Ulead movie Factory to burn to dvd. Sometimes it works well, other times TMPGenc freezes due to a read error. One article on this forum suggested to convert "video" only with TMPGenc. Then use another software program to convert the audio. My questions are these.

Is this the best way to convert a video file to mpeg?
If I convert in two seperate files video only, and audio only, what program can I use to convert the audio and what am I converting to?

Thanks
TM

[bugster]

If you use tmpGenc to convert video and audio together, into one mpg fiile, then the audio in that file will be mp2 audio (Mpeg-1 Layer 2 audio format). This format is what is used on VCD, SVCD and is valid also for DVD. However, on DVD, not all players sold in the US support it. Its support on European players is mandatory.

If you use Tmpgenc to convert video only, there are many ways of converting the audio, and several formats to choose from for DVD.

DVD requires the audio stream to be in either PCM (uncompressed wav), Ac3 (dolby digital, anything from 1 to 6 channels is accepable) or, in europe at least, mp2 (stereo). NOTE, all these formats have one thing in common for DVD, the sample rate must be 48Khz.

If your source audio is PCM, then you can just use this. The problem here is that it is uncompressed, so takes up lots of space on the disk, hence leaving less room for video. To convert to mp2, you can use Tmpgenc, toolame, BeSweet or others.

To convert to Ac3, you can use BeSweet.

There are guides on using most of these tools in the user guides section of the site.

[Vejita-sama]

Another aside, many DVD authoring apps will only accept (or greatly prefer) elementary streams instead of multiplex MPG files.

Some people also feel that the audio encoder bundled with TMPGenc isn't 'all that good' and prefer to use tooLame or BeSweet.

The other reason you'll find a lot of guides/posts recommending encoding from seperate sources is because they are encoding from d/loaded divx files which have audio (mp3, ac3, etc) that TMPGenc can not open and/or encode from correctly.

[doogietim]

Thanks for the reply. The main problem I am having is encoding complete segments. As above, I am playing a vhs tape through a sony digital camcorder then via firewire to my hard drive. File size approx 37 GB. I only attempt to encode 30 min sections. Sometimes it goes just fine but most of the time I get a freeze about half way through. The message from TMPGenc is a read error. Then I just start a new encoding segment just beyond the error area. The completed segments are just fine, no issues. they also burn to dvd nicely. The problem is the constant issues with the read errors of TMPGenc.

How do I stop the "read errors"?

TM

[TheGr8Steve]

You didn't list your computer stats in your Bio. Possibly, you don't realize that an extremely high percentage of computers cannot deal with segments that are bigger than 19 minutes and 53 seconds (4 gig limit). Your software may be able to import it, seemingly as one giant piece, but most programs automatically segment the video into 19 min 53 sec pieces.
As I said, you didn't fill out your computer Bio, so I don't know. Also, since I don't know how big your hard drive is, if you don't have enough space left on your hard drive, most video programs will try to render and 2 and 1/2 hours later will suddenly stop because you've run out of hard drive space. I am too lazy, at this point to separate the video and audio with the crummy projects I'm working on, just to learn how to use everything, so I let TMPGEnc do both the sound and video. I've had errors occur, but I usually don't find out until after I burn a disc. Then I just re-render the segment that's bad and it usually works. Most articles I've read say you should process the sound separately and I will do that down the road when everything I'm learning seeps into my memory.

[doogietim]

my specs

windows xp
2.0 ghtz athlon xp
asus motherboard
512 ram
80 gb hard drive



thanks

TM