Did TMPGEnc fail me?

[TheDarkside]

I'm trying to follow a guide on how to prepare an AVI video clip for burning onto a DVD, and it said to use TMPGEnc to take the AVI video and decoe it into a wav files and m2v file. So I follow all the steps and see that it should produce about 4 and a half gigs of output and let it go. Hours later I return it finishes successfully but when I look at the files it left I find a 1.2 gig wav files and a 172 meg m2v file ?? Wheres the big video file i was expecting? I try playing the M2v file and it is all black, empty. Did TMPGenc fail to do its job?

AVIcodec reported the source video as follows:

File : 783 MB (783 MB), duration: 1:43:15, type: AVI, 1 audio stream(s), quality: 52 %
Video : 689 MB, 933 Kbps, 29.970 fps, 480*320 (4:3), divx = OpenDivx v4, Supported
Audio : 94 MB, 128 Kbps, 44100 Hz, 2 channels, 0x55 = MPEG Layer-3, Supported


The only thing that didnt go as expected while following the tutorial was getting the audio bitrate down to 384. For some reason it was stuck at 1100 something and the drop down for it was greyed out. I couldnt change that setting, so the audio file might be taking more than it should. But regardless that shouldn't have anything to do with the video being non existant at the end?

I was following this guide: http://www.afterdawn.com/guides/archive/convert_avi_to_dvd_page_4.cfm

What can I do now? im lost

[Baldrick]

I would use convertxtodvd or the old free divxtodvd for downloaded divx to dvd converting. It converts directly to a dvd so if you want more advanced menus you can use tmpgenc dvd author and add the converted video_ts.

[KBeee]

TMPGEnc tends to have problems with MP3 audio.
Use VirtualDubMOD to demux the audio steam, then BeSweet to change the MP3 from 44.1 to 48k AC3 at whatever bitrate you want (256kb/s seems to be the sweetspot).
I'm guessing you want a D1 DVD, so you could also use VirtualDubMOD to resize the avi to 720 X 480 (use VDMOD's Lanczos to resize), and frameserve to TMPGEnc.
Then just use TMPGEnc to re-encode the video only to MPEG2, to give you a *.m2v file (for your 1h 44m file 5500kb/s should be ok), and use the *.m2v and *.ac3 files to author your DVD.
You can probably get slightly better results from AVISynth, and other programs, but the way I described above is usually pretty good.
Or buy a player that can play avi's....