WMV to MPEG2 Problems...

[lucas]

Hi all...

Well first off I'll say hi, as this is my first post. I've been using the site for a while for it's numerous resources and guides. A brilliant amount of information you have on offer. Many thanks for that.

So onto my problem...

I've been trying to convert a WMV to MPEG2 to be authored to DVD, and as the title would suggest I've been having some problems. The WMV has a framerate of 23.976fps, and a resolution of 1280x720.

I'm trying to convert it to 25fps, 720x576.

I've created a few AVS scripts and each of them runs into the same problem - the newly encoded mpeg2 always seem to pause on a scene change, holding the image of the new frame before moving on.

The latest AVS I used looks like this:

DirectShowSource("F:\Video\movie.wmv",convertfps=t rue,fps=23.976)
ConvertToYUY2()
LanczosResize(720,576)
AssumeFPS(25,true)

I have tried using the 'seek=false' and 'seekzero=true' commands and the results were still the same. I've also tried without the 'AssumeFPS' line and replacing the 23.976 with 25.. all still the same.

I've tried this with both CCE and TMPGEnc Plus - both have the same problem, and in the same places.

The strange thing is that if I bring the WMV directly into TMPGEnc, and encode to mpeg2, it works fine.. BUT.. although the final mpeg2 reports as being 25fps, the file length (HH:MM:SS) is still exactly the same as the original WMV.

I'm kinda stumped as to what I'm not doing in my AVS file that TMPGEnc is doing automatically with the wmv on it's own... and also of course I'm fairly curious as to why the video's length is still the same even though the framerate has changed. It's almost as if TMPGEnc is running it's own kind of Pulldown, which I haven't set prior to encoding.

Any help would be much appreciated.

Thanks in advance.

[jimmalenko]

I'd suggest that TMPGEnc is creating the necessary frames automatically, as opposed to making the file 4% shorter in running time by only using the frames that exist in the source (which sounds like what you expected it would do).

I'm not skilled in the area of PAL/NTSC conversions and vice-versa so I can't help you much more than that, but there are a lot of guides and forum threads regarding this issue and I'm hoping that one of them may contain the answers to your questions ........ and I'm bumping your post

[lucas]

Hehe, many thanks for the bump, and yeah you're right - it does definitely sound as if TMPGEnc is creating the extra frames, as opposed to just speeding up the framerate.

I wonder what's happening regarding the pausing issue when using the AVS script.

Cheers again..

[TBoneit]

I can not figure out why you would expect TMPGEnc to shorten the video run time, that would be just wrong IMHO. I would be very upset with any encoder that changed the runtime of a video clip.

To me TMPGEnc is doing the right thing.

OTOH if you just want things sped up from 23.97 film rate to PAL 25FPS then don't forget to manipulate the audio to shorten it's run time.

Cheers

P.S. If the TMPGEnc output looks good I'd go with it. Unless of course you've got a lot of these wmv's. I use TMPGEnc 3 Xpress to go both ways simply because I don't have the time to fiddle around and using the "If it ain't broke don't fix it" mindset it is working so I don't fix it.

[lucas]

TBoneit, I'm not particularly bothered about the runtime being shorter or the same. My main query was that from setting the WMV up in an avs script, it produced an mpeg2 that paused before moving on whenever there was a scene change.

Preferably I'd like to encode it with CCE (for obvious reasons), and for that I need to set up a script file first.

Going back to the runtime again though, like I said I'm not overly fussed about that and it's not a case of I really want it to be shorter but in a certain respect I'm used to PAL movies being shorter than the same NTSC movie, as you obviously know with dvd's - being that it's generally sped up to 25fps for a PAL release.

[TBoneit]

True but then you have to make sure the audio is the proper length. I know that speeding up from 24 to 25 fps isn't a huge speedup but as someone with a minor hearing problem... Any speedup impacts that, as it is I have to hit the 7 second jump back more than once per movie or show to repeat certain dialogue. Sometimes more than once and speeding the sound track up can increase that problem for me. My TV watching is all from a DVR/PVR for that reason and my Sony Changer and the Pioneer DVD Recorder both have that feature when playing DVDs. I'm sorry that I apporached your speedup from my perspective as that most lkikely wan't a good way to do it.

Cheers