Problems while converting DivX/AVI to MPEG

[helluvaguy]

Hi Folks,

First of all I would like to thank you for your work on this site. I was very glad when I found it but so far all the knowledge couldn't quite help me.
I'm trying now for some time to convert AVI files to MPG files to make some VCD or SVCD. I followed several of your 'foolproof' tutorials, but encountered also several problems. I hadn't had the time to sift through the complete site to understand the "finesse" of authoring VCDs to the fullest.

I hope some poeple are kind enough to let me participate with their wisdom on this subject, so I'm telling you with a specific example what I am trying to do, and what keeps me from doing it.

I have the following programs to my disposal (and the specs of my PC)

-Win XP
-AMD Athlon XP 1600+
-512 MB RAM
-40GB + 60GB HDD EIDE 7200rpm (less than 1/3 of space occupied)

-TMPGEnc v. 2.53.35.130
-VirtualDUb v. 1.4.9
-VFAPI Reader Codec v.1.04BETA
-CCE SP //SSG v. 2.62.01.01
-DiVX 5.0 Bundle is installed

I'm trying to convert "I am Sam" (2 CDs) found on eDonkey. Due to the "File Information" of VirtualDub the file of CD1 has the following specs:

VIDEOSTREAM
-Frame size, fps -- 576x304, 29,970 fps
-# of frames (time) -- 119548 (1:06:28)
-Decompressor -- DivX 5.0 Codec
-Number of key frames -- 1223
-Min/avg/max/total key frame size -- 1424/7770/26289 (9281K)
-Min/avg/max/total delta frame size -- 0/5477/49097 (632985K)

AUDIOSTREAM
Sampling rate -- 48000Hz
Channels -- 2 (Stereo)
Sample prexision -- 0-bit
Compression -- Frauenhofer IIS MPEG Layer-3-Codec
Preload skew -- 768 samples (0.02s)
# of frames -- 166206
Min/avg/max/total frame size -- 381/384/768 (62328K)

As with the tutorial found here (http://www.vcdhelp.com/divxtovcd.htm) I extracted the WAV using VirtualDub, which wasn't able to show the video but played the sound. (Watching the AVI files with Mediaplayer and The Playa was no problem). While loading the file into VirtualDub the following message appeared, which I don't understand:

VBR audio stream detected
---------------------------
VirtualDub has detected an improper VBR audio encoding in the source AVI file and will rewrite the audio header with standard CBR values during processing for better compatibility. This may introduce up to 24 ms of skew from the video stream. If this is unacceptable, decompress the *entire* audio stream to an uncompressed WAV file and recompress with a constant bitrate encoder. (bitrate: 128.0 ± 0.3 kbps)

I then put the Video and audiofiles into TMPGEnc to convert it, but I get no Video, neither in the preview, nor int the conversion itself.

Could someone please tell me what I am doing wrong, or where I'm missing out on something?
Do I need any other codec then the DivX 5.0?
Any help would be more then welcome.

helluvaguy

[bebad]

i have also recently started doing this (converting divx movies to mpeg) since i have had a computer worthy of the task.

The best program that i found for this was simply tmpeg enc. just run through the wizard and let it do the rest. The only problem that you may come across is when your divx movie has compressed audio - for this the simplest program that i have found is called 'decompress' it comes in the same zip file as the program avi2vcd.
This will uncompress the audio so then you simply run through the wizard again in tmpeg enc although choose your uncompressed audio!

Oh yea one thing that i found was that it is best to convert to the same aspect ratio as the divx movie or other wise it can look a little distorted.

Hope this helps!!!!