TMPGenc encodes ok, but unwatchable on standalone dvd player

[CaptainChaos]

Hi ....

I am making a vcd compilation of news clips from around the world, encode them using TMPGenc, and 90% of them are "perfect", but there are a few that will not play at all (picture just made up of blocks - not just pixellated - almost like a scrambled picture) .... the offending clips are all either 23.976 fps or 30 fps, and do not come up as NTSC or PAL in TMPGenc, but as 1:1 VGA. I dont know whether to change the GOP Structure to anything (ie. 142 or 152).

What do I need to do to get them to play?

They all play perfectly (pre encoding & after encoding) on my pc.

Any advice very welcome!

[jimmalenko]

The frame rates of the clips you mention are NTSC spec. It almost sounds as if your standalone player can't handle NTSC. I gather the frame rates of the clips that works is 25fps ?

[CaptainChaos]

No ... some of the clips that work are NTSC, some are PAL, but when I've tried to make an NTSC vcd, the "bad" ones are really "scrambled", and if I try to make a PAL vcd, its exactly the same. The good ones remain ok, but the problem clips still end up scrambled.

There must be something that I'm doing wrong, but I still need to try to work out what!

[cd090580]

Did you try with a cdrw ???

If yes maybe the disc is damaged or the player has some problems reading cdrw's.

[CaptainChaos]

So far I have tried 3 cd-r's on 2 different dvd players and its the same on both players (one a cheap "will play anything" one, the other a reasonably good player).

Not tried cd-rw's yet.

[andkiich]

It could be that some of the discs you are using are defective. Did you try re-burning some of the faulty videos onto another disc?

[cd090580]

What authoring software did you use ???? Maybe a bug in yours. For VCD/SVCD burn at max 4x to improve the compatibilite to the max.

[thecoalman]

Unless your using a ntsc/pal dvd player you need to format them to whatever your player uses. The scambled picture sounds exactly how my preview would look if I try to view a NTSC bradcast with pal.

What you need to do is convert each clip before authoring, simply dropping it into a disc authoring app and selecting a predefined template for NTSC or PAl isn't going to do it. Look under the How To section there's tutorials there on how to do this. I think that if you examine the attributes of the clips that work you'll find they are the ones that are compatible with your DVD player.

[CaptainChaos]

Hi again ....

I've used 2 different sorts of cd-r, both came out the same. I used TMPGenc to "encode" the video clips so I could drop them into Nero to burn them (on 4x). Nero always comes up with a warning about audio/video on other vcd's I have made, and I just "ignore & continue". Maybe I will let Nero re-encode the already encoded (bad) clips .... do you think that will help? I have heard that Nero is pretty useless at doing this, but to be honest, I'm not too bothered if it loses some quality, as long as it is there!

[alfus73]

hi.
i have the same problem.

[CaptainChaos]

Ok!!!

I have sorted out what the problem was ......... & if anyone else has had the same - its really easy to sort out

When you use TMPGenc, you open up the file you want to convert. It will tell you across the bottom TMPGenc what fps, resolution etc etc it is.

If you go to the "Video" tab, make sure it is 29.97 fps for NTSC, or 25 fps for PAL. Also make sure that the "resolution" (for NTSC) is 352 x 240, and for PAL it is 352 x 288. The GOP structure for NTSC should be 152, for PAL it should be 142. In the Audio bit, it should be 44100.

Ive left a couple of other ones out, but doing this & a couple of other "trial & error tweaks" sorted ALL the video clips so theyre all brilliant now.

Thanks for all your advice though everyone lol