Video Conversion Problems (Newbie)!

[indiannawaf]

I am complete newbie to video conversion stuff. First of all i want some guidance from you guyz about video conversions. I also face some problems which i will come to later on this post.

I have many avi movies in my hard drive. Some of them are with aspect ratio 16:9 (I think so because when i play it in media player it has horizontal black bars on top and bottom.)
I want to crop, resize and finally encode the video to preferably mpeg2 (svcd) with switchable subtitles( if that is possible on svcd) so that when i play it on my dvd player i get full screen output on my 21 inch TV.

Please can u guys point me as to what to use for cropping, resizing and converting? I did use TMPGEnc to do it all at once but got disastrous results with the subtitles only half visible and not fitting the screen.

Now for the problems:

Problem 1: Missing subtitles: I used this guide

https://www.videohelp.com/forum/userguides/153058.php

to embed permanent subtitles to an avi while converting to mpeg but about 50 % of the subtitles were missing in the final output mpeg video. I played the original avi in media plyer with subs using vobsub but all was in order. So why are the subs missing?

Problem 2: Large output file size:
All my avi movies are around 700 mb in size. On converting to mpeg the output file is usually around 1 gb. But i have a 690 mb movie which shows output file size as 3 gb in TMPGEnc.
All settings are similar to the previously encoded movies. Why is that?

Problem 3: TMPGEnc crashes : Whenever i load a particular avi file in TMPGEnc the program crashes with the usual windows send error report. This happens with only that particular file.

Thank You all for reading this and i hope you help me!

[redwudz]

Generally, I just use ConvertXToDVD for those type of conversions. It handles subtitles, multiple audio and does a fair job of conversion. It also does format conversion, like PAL>NTSC or the reverse.

Since you are converting to MPEG for DVD, I would use switchable subtitles, not permanent ones. But if you are using permanent subs, are you taking overscan settings into account for the encoder settings? Most TV's cut off 5% or more of the video around the edges. This can be a big problem with permanent subs, unless you set them higher.

It's not unusual for a 700MB Xvid to convert to a 1.5GB MPEG. If the running time is longer, it might come out even larger. You should be able to adjust that in the encoder settings as bitrate.

If TMPGEnc is crashing, try dropping one of those problematic videos into Gspot 2.60 and see what it says. Watch for MP3 VBR audio or sometimes AC3 audio as they both may cause problems. You can also use VirtualDub Mod and frameserve the video directly to TMPGEnc encoder and that can help with TMPGEnc problems.

[indiannawaf]

I think you misunderstood me. I want to convert to svcd and add subs. Also, i USUALLY get output size as 1.5 gb but for one movie that i have(700mb) TMPGEnc was showing output file size as 3.5 GB.

And what about the missing subs?

[indiannawaf]

Anyway thanks for your reply. I really wanted to do this. But i had expected people not to reply as this is a newbie question.

[Baldrick]

PLEASE wait a couple of days before bumping to a topic.

For tmpgenc problems see www.videohelp.com/tmpgenc#problems , if the output size is 3.5 it's probably because of mp3 vbr audio.

You can add permanent subtitles with virtualdub and frameserver to tmpgenc instead....ffdshow and tmpgenc is buggy for some.

Or use an all-in-one avi to svcd solution like avi2dvd, dvd2svcd, thefilmmachine.