Panasonic MPEG1 Encoder ... help required!

[energy80s]

I normally use TMPGenc for all my MPEG encoding needs, but I recently bought a little portable VCD player and it doesn't like TMPGenc encodes. After a lot of experimenting I found that it would play discs made with DVDx and Panasonic, and as the Panasonic coder is way better than DVDx I would like to use that.

I have "aquired" a copy of 2.50 and have been playing with it over the last few days, however I don't know how to get it to change the display aspect ratio from 4:3 to 16:9 the way TMPGenc does. If I select "mpeg1 stream" I can select 16:9 but when this encodes it doesn't letterbox the picture, so in some players it appears 16:9 and in others 4:3 anamorphic! Is there a simple way to force a letterbox display on a 16:9 image? Also, should Virtual Dub be able to frameserve to the Panasonic? I'm buggered if I can get it to do it - keeps saying it can't open the file - although a frameserved .avi from the VFAPI Codec app works fine! I would like to be able to edit files before sending them into the Panasonic encoder.

Maybe a guide for this Panasonic encoder is required? I have looked all over the net and don't see anything very detailed about its use.

[energy80s]

Just checked and it's actually version 2.51 that I have.

[baker]

You said you searched everywhere for a guide why not use mine.

Baker

[energy80s]

Becuase I don't want to use DVDx as it seems to be very memory hungry and crashes out on me every now and then.

[baker]

aspect ratio from 4:3 to 16:9 the way TMPGenc does

MOST PLAYERS CANNOT HANDLE ANAMORPHIC (S)VCDS

Baker

[energy80s]

I know. That's why I want to change it from 4:3 anamorphic to 16:9 letterboxed in a 4:3 image. I can't get the Panasonic encoder to do this, whereas TMPG does it at the click of a button. I suppose I will have to investigate AVIsynth, although I don't know if this will re-size a DVD image or not.

As I said before, I think a proper guide to using the Panasonic encoder would be very useful.

[baker]

creating a fake avi from vdub should work no bother. Another option is to load a tmpegenc settings templet into vfpai and then load that into panasonic.

Baker

[energy80s]

Another option is to load a tmpegenc settings templet into vfpai and then load that into panasonic.

Baker

That sounds interesting. How do I do that?

[energy80s]

Anyone else have anything to contribute?

I see that Michael Tam uses the Panasonic encoder for all his VCD encodes, so maybe he would like to chip in with a few basics on how to use it (the standalone version) with widescreen DVD rips. Every single guide I've seen doesn't mention how to get it to output a widescreen image in a 4:3 letterboxed picture. It must be easy enough to do, otherwise it would be useless for DVD rips. Fullscreen is no problem, it's just the widescreen bit that has me pulling my last few remaining hairs out!!

[vitualis]

Widescreen movies will have to be letterboxed on a VCD (unless you are lucky enough to have a player / TV that can force a video image into the right aspect ratio).

Yes, I use Panasonic MPEG encoder and my suggestion is that you should never use it to resize anything. It doesn't do a particularly good job! Since I use FlaskMPEG with the Panasonic plugin, encoding widescreen movies is a piece of cake. BTW, I don't use the stand-alone version for DVD rips. I generally use the plug-in version...

With Flask, just set the output aspect ratio (4:3) and output image size (352x288 for PAL) and it will automatically do the relevent resizing + letterboxing.

I don't have that much experience with DVD2AVI but I'm sure that someone here can help you...

If you are using the Panasonic encoder, I would suggest that the FlaskMPEG route is the superior one in terms of easy of use and lack of problems (and quality).

Regards.

[energy80s]

Thanks, I'll give FLASK a try. I have a copy of the 2.0 version of the plugin, have been trying to get it to work with both DVDx and MPEG Mediator but it won't work and crashes after a few seconds / minutes. The standalone was the only one to give me a reliable encode.

[energy80s]

OK, I installed the latest version of FLASK and the Panasonic 2.0 plugin. However FLASK doesn't recognise the plugin at all (even after re-naming it to .FLASK). How do I get this to work? The standalone encoder is a piece of cake to use (apart from the re-sizing aspect) so why won't the plugin work (in any program?)

Is there some other program that would re-size the .vob/d2v file so that I could run it directly into the standalone encoder?

[vitualis]

Flask definitely recognises the Panasonic plugin (at least, for v2.51). Just follow the instructions on the "readme" html files that comes with Flask.

Regards.

[energy80s]

I have now managed to get the standalone version to work and have given up on the plugin! I will print a short guide here soon, but it seems to be working well for me.