I am a babe in the woods......please help!

[mtsmith]

First please excuse if the question is basic....I am just starting.

I downloaded a movie that was an AVI / DivX. The movie and the nfo stated that it was 717 meg. I was under the assumption that I first needed to encode this with a program (TMPGen) prior to burning. So I started TMPGen and followed the directions on the site. The thing ran for 20 hours and produced a mpg file that was 3.7 gig. I knew that wasn't right.

Then I got to reading the help in Nero and noticed that it said it would encode avi's on the fly. I took a chance and burned a sample of the movie (the poster thankfully included a 5 minute sample) using Nero and the VCD setup. It burned and played on my DVD. The only thing wrong was that the aspect wasn't right.

So here are my questions:

Do I need to encode this downloaded movie with TMPGen?

Any hints on why it ended up being 3.7 gig with no sound?

If I can simply do this with Nero how can I change the aspect?

I don't expect answers .... just a nudge in the right direction.

Thanks for help you can give me,

Mike

[rayjr13]

dude I'm pissed cause ur not a girl! well...dammit...u know what I mean.

Anyway... a divx is a compression I have no idea of the ratio but depending on the ratio if TMPG reencoded it to sumthin with a smaller compression than it's possible for it to be really huge but since that is really big I'm think maybe that it just got decoded. anyway I can't think cause u tricked me...butu have to be more specific with ur problem what was wrong with the aspect ratio, what ratio was it, what player, what auth/burn software? no audio could be because it was set to encode video only...there's too many reasons u have to be more specific about what u did. What template did u use, Tmpg version, all that crap...

[mtsmith]

Your right on two accounts........I am not a girl and I didn't give you enough information.

Ok...here we go:

First let's talk about the TMPGenc creating a large file issue. I used Beta 12i. I used template VideoCD(NTSCFilm) and all of the setting listed at http://www.vcdhelp.com/tmpgenc.htm. The conversion from AVI to mpg took about twenty something hours and produced a file that was about 3.7 gig. The file did not have any sound. What method do you use to convert an AVI DivX movie so that you can burn to play on Stand alone DVD?

Now the other issue. With Nero 5.5 you can simply drag an AVI file over into Nero and it does the encoding for you. Seems to work great for me. The only problem is the aspect appears to be off. Everyone appears to be about two feet taller. The pictures fits the screen fully. It seems that it should be letterbox but has been sqooshed to fit to 4:3.

If you can give me some suggestions I can point you to an actual babe in the woods .

Mike

[Aoshi]

Let me just say that you are obviously a newbie so i'll try to put this in easy terms.
If you're making a VCD, you have to encode the divx video to VCD formatted MPEG. You can use TMPG for this, but you have to load the VCD Templete and do some of your own option settings (like quality, filters, etc..). If you downloaded a divx movie and expected it to play on your dvd player, you're soooo mistaken. You seemed to have been under the impression that you needed to convert the video file because of the file size but you actually needed to convert it since it wouldn't play on your DVD player as a divx file anyways. You probably have to split your file since a standard VCD disc contains only 74 min of video while a normal movie holds over 90 min of video. You can encode the whole video, then split it, or encode half & half of the video (my choice) using the "Select Range" filter (or whatever it's called).
As far as the aspect ratio goes, if it was a divx video you should set the source video aspect ratio as 1:1 VGA if your file is a divx file, and choose "Full Screen (keep aspect ratio)" for the video arrange method. If this doesn't work than I got no idea what you're doing wrong...

[rayjr13]

what he said
man I'm glad u wrote that cause I didn't feel like typin all that

btw I'll pass on the chic in the woods...only dumb broads get lost in the woods...I just thougt it was gonna be a girl into video encoding and such, could be the dreamgirl of a bunch of usernames here¡
_________________
r@yjr13 ¦-<

!Now selling audioly and visually challenged coasters, frisbees, and vanity mirrors¡

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: rayjr13 on 2001-08-01 10:59:54 ]</font>

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: rayjr13 on 2001-08-01 11:00:33 ]</font>

[Vejita-sama]

First, a standard VCD is 1min=10MB. So look at the length of your movie and do the math. 3.7GB = 370min movie (is that right?).

A 74min CDR will hold 74min of MPEG1 data, ie. 740MB. An 80min CDR will hold 80min of MPEG1 data or 800MB. Subtract 2-5MB for the TOC and misc crap thou.

If you movie is longer than 74/80min you have two choices. You can lower the quaility/bitrate to fit it on one disc or spilt the movie onto 2 (or more) discs.

If you're making a standard VCD just remember 1min=10MB and spilt as necessary. If you're making an xVCD use a bit rate calculator (look under the tools links on the left) to calculate the bitrate, # of CDRs, audio settings, etc. that you want. In order for the calculators to work you need to encode with either CBR (constant bitrate) or 2pass VBR (variable bitrate).

In order to make a VCD/xVCD:
1) Open TMPGenc
2) Click on 'Load' from the bottom right
3) Under templates choose VCD (or SVCD)
3a) to make a xVCD after you load the VCD template, click load again, and then look under 'extras' and load the 'unlock' template. This will unlock all the greyed out areas in the standard VCD template

Ok, so you've got your source file. You've decided on the bitrate and number of discs. And you've loaded the correct template in TMPGenc.
Make sure when you open your souce file that it loads in both the video AND audio input sections (an avi/DivX file should). Name the output file. And you're pretty much set. However, there are a lot of settings you can/should set.

Set motion search to high (slow)
Turn off detect scence changes
Soften block noise to 32

Not sure if any of this helps, but re-read the online faqs (www.vcdhelp.com http://www.doom9.org http://www.flexion.org/vcd) and I'm sure you'll get it together. The Flexion site has a step-by-step walkthough with LOTS of screen shots so it should help. Good luck