The newbies guide to fitting a movie on one CD using TMPGEnc

[stecordbzgt]

I have followed to the letter the guide, but after using tmpenc, file size does not chg....trying to copy 120min to 80 min cd.....can this not be done...on estimated file size reduced to bitrate 650 and audio 128 shows 85%...just want to complete, not real worried about quality at this point....made sure mpeg 1 video cd (non-standard) selected on the system tab for steam type....what have I done wrong? PLEASE HELP

[tgpo]

nevermind.... just windows being a pain in the a$$ reformated and it's fine now

Typical

[vickann]

Yes, I did. It plays like an hour and 25 minutes of the movie but it is like the director is talking all through it. So it is a narrative instead of the movie with sound. Why do you suppose that is?

Vickie

[0 kewl]

Vickie,

Depending of your source there are 2 explanations:

1) If source was a downloaded DivX (AVI) - you've simply downloaded and converted a narrative not actual movie

2) If source was DVD *.vob files - you've converted the wrong *.vob file(s) (narrative instead of actual movie - maybe because the narrative *.vob was larger than the movie *.vob)

[vickann]

Okay, I figured it out. I just had to play the movie for a few seconds before I started the CladXP. I do have another question. Is there a way to add something that would make the cd bring up the choice of playing it in a DVD player instead of just bringing up the files when I put it in the computer. Also, when it is put in a regualar DVD player will it play the movie when you hit play? I know these are probably silly questions, but I really am a newbie at this and I have already wasted about 6 cd-r's. Thanks for your help!

[MsTyra2u]

Hi I download Avi Movies and Divx Movies I wanted to know Could These Movies be put on 1 Cd as well? I downloaded Clad DVD xp but it wouldn't work I think it's because I have ME. CladDVD2.0 works But I don't know how to use it and I need to know if there is a Guide like the one for CladDVD xp for CladDVD 2.0 explaning how to put a Divx or Avi to one CDr. Now if I haven't confused everyone by Now I'll hopefully get a reply LOL

[0 kewl]

Vickie,

VCDs only bring up those folders on PC (and some DVD players that can play Mpeg1/2 burned as data). When loaded into most DVD players, it will not bring up those folders but play your movie automatically or after pressing Play (or number 1).

MsTyra2u,

Yes, you CAN put DivX (AVI) files on 1 CD too. If you only want to watch them on your PC, keep them as DivX and burn as data CD (if file is bigger than 700-715MB, use Virtual Dub to either split it and burn onto 2 CDR/RWs or change the bitrate of your DivX to fit on 1 CD). If you want to create a VCD Mpeg1 for playback on DVD player, you need to follow this guide ONLY starting with "Open TMPGEnc. If you have version 2.5x close the wizard if it pops up. Here’s how to set up your movie to fit on one CD: First click on the load button pictured below." Ignore everything before that paragraph as it is for dealing with ripped DVDs but you are dealing with DivX (different format altogether). So the problem isn't your ME but that you don't even need CladXP.

[BurningMan]

I am having one problem with this. When I change the bit rate to fit the file onto one VCD, the movie looks elongated and stretched thin. I kept my aspect ratio 16:9 as I normally do when I burn a movie onto 2 VCDs. How can I correct this so that the images are proportional? Thanks.

[MsTyra2u]

OK the movies I download are 700mb's and Higher How do I change the birate? And can u explain to me what that is? I want to still put the movies on 1 cd

[Talus]

I have not seen anyone reply to the problem of "stretching". Films with 16:9 are still stretched when the (Full Screen - Keep aspect ratio) is selected. Other people are having this problem.

Any answers? :P

[mrj03]

How low did you set the bitrate? Usually the only times a movie wil become pixalated for me is when there is very fast motion and this also happens when I use the standard VCD template that comes with TMPGEnc. The lowest I set the bitrate to is 900. Another thing that will make a movie become very pixalated is if the res is high. I only guarantee my method to work for the res 352x240 or 352x288 not 480x480 or above that's why I don't use this when making SVCDs. Every movie I have made with lower bitrates comes out looking great.

Are you saying that if you took a movie and made 1 in VCD @ 352x288 and the other SVCD @ 480x480 that the VCD would either look AS GOOD or BETTER??

[skidog]

aint that the truth TGPO.... about every 3 or 4 months

[skidog]

ok i did everything in the guide INCLUDING setting to mpeg 1 (non-standard) and the file size doesn't want to change. i did half the movie (85 mins) set the bitrate to 950, and the audio to 128 the estimated file size is 670mb or so.... but the file ended up being 851mb, no matter what i do to the bitrates the file size always comes out as 851mb's for half of my movie (85 mins)

HELP!!!!!!!!

Derek.

[Duck Dork]

I folowed the steps to the tee. First few times I had Clad DVDxp run DVD@AVI automatically. It was very fast and had very good results. The only problem is, the volume was very low.

I read a few posts here and ran DVD2AVI myself with a few special settings and works better. Just a little more time consuming.

Thanks for the great lesson.

DK

[dr92060]

Help Help Help!!! The guide is great, and everything worked perfectly but when I do a final burn to cdr, and attempt to play in stand alone GE player,or the dvd in pc. I get no disk, or no media installed. When I look at the disk it shows the files being there. The dvd just dont seem to pick it up. I am brand new at this, so any help would be appreciated. Thanks in advance. DR.

[dr92060]

OK, so disregard my last question, I have found the problem. Evidently this GE player wil not play the following type of disks. laserdisk, CD-I,CD-ROM, CD-R, CD-RW, or DVD-ROM, and is also limited in other broadcast standards, i.e. PAL, and SECAM. WOW talk about limitations. I guess I should have spent alittle more coin when purchasing a stand alone player, lesson to me I guess. The bright side is the guide worked terrific and my hats off to you NEWGEN, great work. And hey I can always watch my backups on the PC, not quite what I had in mind, but oh well. If anyone has a solution other then the obvious(buy a new player) I'm all ears....Well not all of me, but you know what i mean. And to anyone else looking at players, GE is very, very, very Limited, at least this one is GE1106P. Good luck to all, and hey, have a great holiday!!! DR.

[BlueKing]

This must be really weird. I tried to use TMPG 2.59 to encode some DivX AVI file. I first got the problem of not being able to make a film on a single CD. After reading through the forum and set the video stream to mpeg1 VCD non-standard, I still got the same result. No matter what bit rate I set, I always get a bigger file. This is what displayed in TMPG's status bar for my output.

MPEG-1 352x240 29.97fps MVBR 900kbps, Layer-2 44100Hz 224kbps

I also tried CBR, same result.

MPEG-1 352x240 29.97fps CBR 900kbps, Layer-2 44100Hz 224kbps

The movie is around 92 mins and according to TMPG. I could use 946 kbs. 8.52 MB/min.

When I lowered the bit rate to 800, I got the same size of the file for the first percent (around 9MB, which is too big for a 80 mins CD-R).

Are there anything else I think to consider? I believe I followed everything said in the guide plus setting the System tab for the video stream to non-standard mpeg1 VCD.

Thanks for any help.

[pmaizitis]

Follow-up to dcumba:
I just caught your posting and had the same problem and went through all kinds of experimentation even going as far as clipping the frame in TMPG to stretch it with some success to get widescreen. Here's how I succeeded in getting the proper aspect for widescreen under the MPEG settings:
1. In TMPG the video screen stays at 4:3.
2. In the next or advanced screen source aspect ratio is set at 16:9 display and the video arrange method is set at Full Screen (keep source aspect ratio 2).

More lessons learned ... don't use Windows Media player to judge if your clips have the correct aspect ratio ... use a DVD player ... I use WINDVD. I messed up quite a few videos because Media Player did not give me the correct aspect.

I also use DVD2SVCD and use the 16:9 formatted to 4:3 with borders with great success. The 4:3 and 16:9 settings require you to set your 4:3 TV component to 16:9 and you then get both black and grey horizontal bars.

NOW here's more lessons learned:
I used plugins SCMPX.EXE (external audio encoder) and ssrc.exe (sampling frequency convertor) per TMPG to improve audio quality significantly. I stay at the defaults for VCD and SVCD of 224 bitrate and 44.1 Khz. Here's the problem: while VCDs play fine on my Malata DVD standalone, the SVCDs audio does not play on the Malata! When I use DVD2SVCD which uses BBsweet for encoding the audio it plays fine. Any suggestions?

[BlueKing]

Ok, I tried to follow the guide again and just could not get the encoded file size down to fit a CD. I am very sure that I set the video stream to VCD non-standard. I am using the lastest TMPG 2.59. The encoded file size doesn't change when I change the bit rate, just as if I had used the standard VCD for video stream. Can someone help?

Thanks.

[dcumba]

It's been a long time since I logged in...but I just had a few words that I wanted to share with everyone...and for those that may be skeptical on the whole 1 Disc VCD thing...

I first learned of all this back in July/August - I had never created a VCD on my own - just burned copies of VCDs that my friends have owned (2 or 3 discs per movie)...so when I first read about it - I was very excited to try it out...

It took me about a week to learn the process through the Manual that newgen provided for everyone - but even though I learned how to do it, it took a while to really learn the Program and tweak it just right...keeping the aspect ratio and getting better sound, etc.

Since then, I have done over 130 movies...and they all have come out FANTASTIC!!

I have shared these movies that I have done over with friends and family and I have not received any complaints on the quality of the video - at first people used to complain about low volume but then I learned how to increase the volume and people are now very impressed - sounds nice in Surround Sound...

and also, I have done movies that are upto 2 hrs 40 mins and they have come out beautiful...I tried to go upto 3 hrs but it was just too much (Lord of the Rings) The Battle scene at the beginning looked awful but the rest of it looked great...

So for all of you out there that are just learning...keep at it - the results are well woth it!! Here are just a few tips on a couple of things - and this is all based on personal preference:

- If you would like to keep a movie in it's original form, instead of the 4:3 and 16:9, I have used the 2.11:1 for all of the DVDs that I have ripped and here is the trick - you want to select "Full Screen - Keep Aspect Ratio"; this will prevent the image from being stretched and keeping it in it's original format.

- The Volume - if you go to the Audio Tab under Settings - you can control the volume...defaut is 100 - but if you change it, you must click on the check box above the Volume increment, if not your setting will not be saved and it will go back to 100.

- the guide states that the suggested Audio Bitrate is 224...I was using that for a while and then I tried to lower it to 128...and I did not notice any difference except in the size which is exactly what I wanted to do - now I do all of them at 128...with the video at 800...and like I said - they have all come out looking great!

I hope these tips help - and as I stated earlier, these tips are all based on personal preference - but keep messing with it and tweak it to your own preference - and in the end it will all be well worth it...

and as a side note: Thank you Newgen for providing us the info to get us all started and to all that have given their input in this forum!!

dcumba

[BlueKing]

I was so frustrated about it and went to read the release notes of TMPG. They made some changes to the wizards in 2.59. For some reason, newgen's guide doesn't work any more for 2.59. I reinstalled 2.58 and it works like a champ!

Be aware when you upgrade.

[skidog]

YESSSSSSSSSSSSS!!!!!!! that worked!!!
thank you so much blue king, i was also going nuts and it worked for me to going from 2.59 to 2.58 did the trick, the file size is finaly changing like it should!!!!!!

Derek

[pmaizitis]

Phewwwww! Thank God I read the last two threads first ... I have 2.58 ... had I upgraded to 2.59 ... nightmares! I can't figure out why programmers don't use the adage ... if it ain't broke, don't fix it. This would be good info to pass onto the developers ... I will write to them.

Still curious why some movies are more suseptible to blockiness/pixelation than others even in SVCD. We Were Soldiers was pixelated (CBR and CQ) in action scenes in both SVCD and VCD while Bad Company and Ice Age (CBR) were perfect in both SVCD (looked almost like the DVD!) and VCD ... no noticible pixelation. Does anyone have any suggestions on this?

[skidog]

yo, pmaizitis
i'm kind of new to this, but have you tried, vbr? since it scans the movie first and determines what areas need more bites then others i have found it to be a bit smaller and a bit better quality, but it takes twice as long to process a file.
Another thing is on the mpeg settings, under the video tab down at the bottom, there's a field, "motion search percision" i always set this to "highest quality (very slow)" because like it says, the qulality does improve dramaticly IMO, but again its going to add another hour or so to your proccessing time. I think it's worth it cause i encode all my movies while i sleep, and since i sleep for 10 hours why not use the whole 10 to encode and get a great quality vcd...

hope this helps,
Derek

[pmaizitis]

Hi Skidog:
I have tried the VBR (2 pass) on other movies and had strange results. Also, the addition of the very slow mode made one 90 minute movie take over 15 hours to encode, so I quit early in the game and went back to CBR. I also tried some short clips at VBR/high quality and did not see an improvement. I will have to try the highest quality setting for motion detect in the future.
Thanks for the tip!!!

[vickann]

Hi, guys, me again! I got a couple of movies made, then went and bought a stand alone DVD player that claimed to cd-r's and cd-rw's. Guess what? When I put in my discs I get an error message and they will not play. I am really perplexed, if they say it will read them, why doesn't it?

[pmaizitis]

Hi Vickie:
I have been shopping a new DVD player myself and have been strictly going by those that show "VCD and Super VCD" right on the unit and the box in addition to DVD capability. Not sure on the CDR designation but appears to be misleading.
Have a good one!

[vitualis]

@ the last two posters:

Try to keep to the topic of the thread (or start a new thread for your question). To answer your questions, however, make sure that you've actually made a standard VCD or a standard SVCD. Also, make sure that your disc actually works by testing it out on the PC with a software DVD player.

If you are sure that your discs are good and it appears to be a CD-R/W compatibility issue despite your player being rated to read CD-R/W media, then IMHO, it is time to get a refund and shop for a better player.

For those interested in getting a player where the ability to play back homemade S/VCDs is important, the player MUST officially support VCD, SVCD and CD-R and CD-RW discs.

Although it is more so with older DVD players, many supported VCD and SVCD per se (i.e., supported in the firmware) but the drive mechanism wasn't designed to read CD-R and CD-RW discs. This is fine if you have a lot of commercial VCDs but it can be very frustrating if you want to burn your own discs.

You can assume that any player that doesn't explicitly state CD-R/W compatibility that the drive was not designed to read such media and as such, will not do so reliably.

Regards.

[thestarrcompany]

Hi,

I did everything exactly like you described (only not the VBR part), including the stream type set to MPEG-1 Video CD (non standard).

Disk size to 100% which resulted in a bitrate of ca. 500.

Still the filesize isn't any smaller.

I ripped with smartripper, audio with dvd2avi.

I don't know what i'm doing wrong.

PS even when i load the mpg in for example Virtual dub, the file info says it's 500 kbits but the size is the same as an 1150 kbit one !

please help


Joey

[pmaizitis]

More information from TMPGEnc on length issues for version 2.59:

"Subj: Re: Feedback on Length and Audio
Date: 12/4/2002 5:59:35 AM Eastern Standard Time
From: kenzi@pegasys-inc.com
To: Maizitis@aol.com
Sent from the Internet (Details)

Dear Customer,

----------------------- Original Message -----------------------
On Mon, 2 Dec 2002 09:42:12 EST
Maizitis@aol.com wrote:

>Hi Kenji:
>Thanks much for your excellent past support. I have some feedback for you.

Thank you for the report!!
>
>1. From the VCDHelp.com forum an issue was raised that TMPGEnc version 2.59
>no longer supports an accurate "movie to one VCD" non-standard CD format.
>Members were complaining that they had to re-install 2.58 to retain
>capability for "movie on one VCD".
sorry.
This problem is a simple bug.
Fix is done by the next version.
...
Best Regards,

=================================================
Kenji Kawamura
TMPGEnc Plus Support Section
http://www.pegasys-inc.com/"