TMPGEnc creates garbage frame when cutting vcd's?

[Piper]

My usual approach when creating VCD's are to capture the entire amount of footage I'll be using, then encode it with TMPGEnc using a VCD template. Once that's done, I break up the file as needed using TMPGEnc's own tools - Cut & Merge.

What I'm finding is, when I play it back on my PC, the first frame always has garbage in it in the form of large green blocks. This hinders Nero when trying to make thumbnails in a VCD menu. I've tried re-cutting the mpg file again by shaving off the first frame, but the result is the same.

Perhaps it's my own usage of TMPGEnc that's causing this, or perhaps there's a workaround, but for now I'd like to simply resolve this issue.

I'm using WindowsXP with an Athlon 1400 and TMPGEnc v2.02 (Tried using 2.50 but results are the same).

Thanks.

[vhelp]

piper,

why don't you just use the batch
mode?
Or is it one of those version of
tmpg w/ the batch bug?

-vhelp

[Piper]

I suppose I could, if my source avi was already split. I could use VirtualDub to edit out the parts I want to encode, which would be more accurate, but that also introduces a whole lot of disk thrashing working on a 20Gb avi than a 1.5Gb mpeg.

[vhelp]

piper,

I'm not sure what your problem is
with the 20g avi file(s) appended.
But, you don't have to cut your
avi file(s). Just insert your avi
file(s) append into VD, and frame
serve it to tmpg. You can leave
the commercials in VD.

Now, in tmpg, you go to advanced
and [x]Source and from there, set
your begin and end (cutting comm.
out) and then save as a project
file, then do the same for each
segments you want to make. When
you're ready, just start up the
batch, and you have as many seg
mented mpeg files as you need.

Its a complete waist of time to
do all the cutting in VD if your
aim is to have multi segmented
mpeg files to burn to CD, as I do
this all the time. I don't like
to make huge 700mb mpeg files. I
am NOT gonna sit there and fast
forward to a scene like this, when
I could just have short 10min.
clips to skip to instead. A lot
quicker. Besides, all those huge
700mb files only lead to audio
synch issues which I see here all
the time.

-vhelp

[Piper]

You're right, I have been using the wrong approach when encoding. I hadn't thought of creating multiple batch encodes specifying source range in TMPGEnc. I'm not sure why, I do this all the time in Vdub.

For clarification, I'm not using segmented 20Gb avi's. I have one large 20Gb file which I frameserve to TMPGEnc with avisynth. I was simply cutting up the large mpeg file generated by TMPGEnc after the fact rather than, as you suggest, creating multiple batches off the source.

Thanks for your help.