tmgpenc express xdvd problem?

[manthing]

hi people,

i used avi2dvd to convert an avi to a mpeg2. no problem.

i then used tmpgenc express to convert the mpeg2 to xdvd, ie extended dvd to "push dvd quality to its limit!".

the final dvd i can play fine in windvd.

however, powerdvd doesn't seem to play the video. the audio feeds through fine.

is this just a quirk with powerdvd?

the reason i ask is that i don't have a standalone dvd player. and i'm trying to give my friend a dvd that will play on his standalone dvd player. don't want to make a coaster, right?

i suppose, worst comes to worst, i can always used the "normal" dvd template in tmpgenc express.

any help would be appreciated.

cheers.

[stackner]

well you will not really know if you are burning him a "coaster" untill you give him the disc as hid dvd player may not even play xdvd. although all my players ive had (8 in all) from a 6 year old one till a 6 month old one play all xdvd, kdvd, xvcd, kvcd, ect ect. i woul;d just burn him a disc and let him try to play it. then you will know.

[guns1inger]

Let me see if I understand your process

take an average quality avi and convert it to medium bitrate mpeg2 using avi2dvd. Feed this into tempgenc xpress to convert it to low bitrate mpeg2 authored as a DVD.

So, you start with a source that has already thrown away a substantial amount of visual information. You have then encoded it with a medium bitrate lossy encoder, probably sacrificing more quality, then encoded again at a lower bitrate to fit more onto the disk.

I don't know why it won't play in PowerDVD, but I would suggest you have wasted a lot of time up to this point.

x-anything is just another way of saying non-compliant, or pushing the boundaries of compliance. xDVD does not "push dvd quality to it's limits" any more than kDVD does. It is ismply a low bitrate optimised matrix for people who value a few pennies over visual quality.

Stick with the normal template, or better yet, use a bitrate calculator and use the correct bitrate for your runtime. Then see how you go.

[manthing]

stackner, guns1inger, appreciate your comments.

guns1inger, the reason i went this route is that the avis i have cannot be loaded into tmpgenc xpress "as is". throws an error. not sure exact error message as i'm at work right now!

so i cannot simply convert, whether to "normal" dvd template or xdxd template.

any ideas how i can identify the avi i'm trying to convert? ie a tool to show me more details of the avi. then what is the best option for me to convert to mpeg2?

again thanks in advance.

[Ennio]

Did you try to load the avi into Tsunami? I've had some avi's rehected by TMPGEnc XPress, but accepted by Tsunami.

cheers

@ guns1inger:

I am in the learning process now of converting avi into dvd. Are there really lossless encoders to convert avi to mpeg2 ?

cheers

[manthing]

Ennio, i will try this when i get a chance. thanks man.

[mats.hogberg]

mpeg2 is a non lossless codec. There's no way to encode anything to mpeg without losing something.
My fav trick when all other tricks fail is to load the AVI in VirtualDub then frameserve to TMPGEnc. On my system, VDub reads more AVIs than I can persuade TMPGEnc to open.

/Mats

[manthing]

mats.hogberg, i will give the vdub way a go tonight. just for the heck of it.

[guns1inger]

As was pointed out, mpeg2 is lossy. It is also not very resilient to multiple encodes. So encoding to mpeg2, then encoding to mpeg2 again will potentially cause greater quality loss than using either a lossless codec like huffyuv as an intermediate step, or even DV for that matter.