Video sucks after MPEG2 to DVD conversion with TMPGEnc DVD

[briandugas]

I recorded a movie off of TV using my ATI All-in-Wonder capture card. I recorded it as an MPEG2 352x480 4.0MB/s clip. The video plays fine, and looks great on my computer. I used mpeg-vcr 3.14 to cut out commercials. Video still plays fine. I used TMPGEnc DVD author to prepare the movie for DVD. The resulting movie is very choppy, and will not even play for long. Even on my computer it sucks. I did samples, trying only parts of the 1.75 hour movie. The individual parts had the same problem. Is TMPGEnc causing my problem? I've used similar methods when capturing from VHS, with no problems like this. Any suggestions appreciated. Thanks.
-Brian

[MrMungus]

How's the quality of the source video? I had a problem lately with TMPGEnc DVD Author not being able to produce a good DVD because the source tape produced an MPEG that was terrible (whereas other tapes/sources worked fine).

[SatStorm]

Interesting... I never had a problem like this ever with TMPGenc author....
Re-mux your file, it might help.

[asisoft]

Check whether the GOP length of your MPEG2 is DVD compliant. If my memory is correct, it should be 15 for NTSC and 18 for PAL (maybe the other way round). Also De-mux and re-mux the MPEG using TMPGEnc Plus may help as these actions would insert the proper GOP header sequence.

[SatStorm]

TMPGenc accept and author files with non standard GOPs. It just warns you when they found them, about combatibility problems which might occur if you procced with your standalone....

And it is 15 for PAL, 18 for NTSC

[briandugas]

The quality of the source video is fine. I recorded it off of TV. Nothing jerky, no audio problems, no video problems, no sync. problems. I'll take the suggestions of doing a de-mux and a re-mux on it, and see what that turns out. Oh, and TMPGENC DVD Author accepted the video on the first run, with no warnings. It didn't think it was out of standards I guess. I'll post back if I fix the problem. Thanks.
Brian

[briandugas]

I tried the de-mux and re-mux. No luck. I'm thinking that the Womble MPEG-VCR program messed things up somehow because my other VHS to DVD transfers of movies aren't nearly as bad. This one may be bad because I took out the commercials. Maybe frameserving is my answer, because the video plays fine on my computer.
-Brian

[FOO]

You skip MPEG-VCR and just use TDA to do the commercial cutting.
It's only GOP accurate however.

I capture MPEG2 with MMC , edit with MPEGVCR, and Author with TDA
all the time with no problems.

[briandugas]

I tried frameserving my movie with AVIsynth, and that didn't change the quality. I'm beginning to think all is lost. No mater what settings I use in TMPGEnc Plus, my results are always worse than the source. The movie I'm working with is "The Goodbye Girl" it was some TNT made for TV movie presented in widescreen. Since it is a Film source, maybe i need to reverse telecine it. Who knows. If that's what I needed to do, would the video still show up fine in it's curren't mpg2 format? Because right now the mpg2 file is crystal clear, with no hitches. Problems only come in when I prepare it for DVD.
-Brian

[FOO]

Made for TV movies are frequently mixed 24/30
They cause lots of trouble.
Open it with DVD2AVI and see what it says about percent film.

[briandugas]

I wanna say thanks for you dedication in helping me with this. I downloaded DVD2AVI like you said. Loaded it, and ran a preview, then looked at the stats, and it didn't say anything about "percent film." It did tell me it was progressive, which is wrong, because I could see the interlace effect as it previewed. And of course, it was reporting 60 fps, which I would also gather was a result of interlacing. I know it's really 60 fields per second, which translates to 29.97 fps. SO I guess I understand why the program thinks it's progressive and 60 fps at the same time. But that's all irrelivent. Let's assume that is is a mix of 24/30. Is there anything I can do? I recorded this movie to VHS at the same time my computer was recording. I may get better results by just re-recording it from the VHS. Comments?
-Brian

[secretagent]

you say you used mpeg-vcr to edit commercials. all you have to do is use this program to save your edit as a dvd compliant file.

[FOO]

That's wierd. I think your capture software is screwed.

[briandugas]

*secretagent*
My file is already DVD compliant. That wasn't the issue. This issue was the quality when viewed on TV.

*FOO*
I agree, my capture software at the time was MMC 7.1, very old version. I have an older All-in-Wonder card. I'm now using Ulead Visual Studio to do my capturing. I think that my version of MMC is capturing the wrong Field first.

For this particular problem I am having, I think I may be better off re-capturing from my VHS. Maybe the VHS version will be stored different than when I captured it live on TV.

[presto]

No mater what settings I use in TMPGEnc Plus, my results are always worse than the source.

I thought you were capturing with MMC, editing with Womble mpg-vcr, and authoring with Tmpgenc DVD Author. Where does Tmpgenc Plus come into it?

I think in your attempts to troubleshoot this your adding complications instead of simplifying things for trouble shooting.

Here is the process I use:

1) Capture DVD compliant video with ATI MMC

2) Edit out commercials with Womble mpg-vcr

3) Author with Tmpgenc DVD Author

In order to figure out where the problem is you should cut out step 2 and see if the resulting video is good. Obviously if it is your having a problem with Womble. We can then look at that.

On the other hand if the video still comes out bad we have eliminated Womble and can concentrate on the other two programs. Since there are really no settings to mess up in Tmpgenc DVD Author we can pretty much eliminate that. You would then want to post all of the settings you are using in ATI MMC. I wonder if you might have captured I frames only. This might play fine on your computer but depending on the speed of your computer Tmpgenc DVD Author may no be able to handle it.

[secretagent]

i know that your film was dvd compliant when it was captured but are you sure it was dvd compliant after you edited it? Womble menu has a tools that has such things as gop fixer , audio pts fixer, gop time and gop size fixer. did you run these? then save your edited file as dvd.only trying to help

[lordsmurf]

Your ATI MMC is too old. Upgrade to 7.7 or higher.

[briandugas]

I originally tried:
Capture in MMC
Edit out commercials in Womble MPEG-VCR
Burn with TMPGEnc DVD Author

That's where I ran into problems. I capture with 4P 2B frams, if I remember right. I may have that backwards. I also can't update to a higher MMC, MMC 7.2 is the highest supported version for the card. The one thing I haven't tried is to go straight from a capture into DVD Author. I'll have to try that and make sure I didn't mess things up in Womble. I followed the guides from www.lordsmurf.com for editing out commercials. So I didn't make any settings changes in Womble. I'll post back.
-Brian

[MrMungus]

It did tell me it was progressive, which is wrong, because I could see the interlace effect as it previewed.
-Brian

Ah yes, but, maybe your capture software is creating progressive files from your interlaced source. I was doing some capping with Ulead DVD MovieFactory and the resulting MPEGs looked terrible. So I checked the settings and found that Ulead captures to progressive by default.

[gll99]

Why don't you use TMPGEnc DVD Author to edit out the commercials in the chapter edit function. It's intuitive and easy to use to cut commercials and create chapters at the commercial breaks at the same time. It will save introducing potential problems caused by using an extra tool like womble mpeg-vcr to do the editing.

[presto]

gll99

It is a good idea to cut out womble for troubleshooting purposes. I also agree that cutting out commercials is easy with Tmpgenc DVD Author. However after trying womble mpg-vcr I have to say that cutting out commercials is even easier and you don't get the slight pause between cuts that you do with Tmpgenc DVD Author.

[lordsmurf]

I gave an ATI AIW 128PRO to a family member for Christmas, it runs ATI MMC 8.7

[gll99]

presto
I don't get an abnormal pause. It may be because I cut on commercial boundaries and end up with a couple of black frames on either side so it looks like a normal scene transition. If audio bleeds over and I cut it too fast I might on a rare occasion get a slight audio clip but that's only if I try to reduce the number of black frames and cut it too close because the audio hasn't completely faded out yet. I've only done a few episodes of Smallville and Enterprise so far but I'm pleased with the results. I even tried this with a tv cap wmv9 file which I converted to DVD using NEODVD without removing commercials. As a test, I then input the DVD to TMPGEnc DVD Author and edited the commercials created new chapter points and new menus and it worked really well. One advantage to this method is that NEODVD did a fantastic job of converting the video quickly and without any hassle from wmv9 to vob and the rest was also as easy and troublefree.

[presto]

I don't get an abnormal pause.

The pause is very slight and if it occurs durring a black out as you stated it is hardly noticeable but it is there. With womble there is no pause at all. At least that's my experience. Add to that the fact that womble scrolls much more smoothly as well as fast forwarding and reversing smoothly in two speeds and that's why I went ahead and bought it.

I saw Lordsmurf advising people to use womble mpg-vcr for so long and didn't see any need for it because Tmpgenc DVD Author did such a good job but when I actually tried womble for a week I was convinced.

[briandugas]

I gave an ATI AIW 128PRO to a family member for Christmas, it runs ATI MMC 8.7

I just downloaded MMC 8.7.....had to try hard to find that one. I can't install at the moment because I'm doing a capture with Ulead Visual Studio....which is working flawlessly. I would really rather to use the ATI MMC because I like the idea of scheduling. Ulead doesn't allow that, or I just haven't found it yet.

On the "commercials" subject, I rarely record shows off of TV, but from now own, I will probably just us TDA to cut my commercials and add chapter breaks at the same time. That was a good idea, whoever suggested that.

[briandugas]

My ATI All-In-Wonder 128 Pro 32MB Rage card will not install the MMC 8.7. It kills itself after the InstallShield phase. It just dies. I can get the MMC 7.6 to install, but I'm dropping a lot of frames. Any ideas why I would drop frames with the 7.6 and not with the 7.2?