TMPGEnc worked fine for 1 day, now it's encoding like crap!

[UpIrons]

I just purchased a Sony DRU500A which came with Sonic's MyDVD. I agree with the people on this forum that say MyDVD is worthless. I found this out after allowing it to take my Hawaiian Vacation on DV and turn it into grainy, less-than-VHS quality fodder.

I then found this wonderful website and discovered TMPGEnc thanks to so many of you who have shared information on this forum. My first successful DVD is beautiful and the quality is what I expected for a DVD. However my dilemma now is that, for some as-of-yet unkown reason, TMPGEnc is not working the way it did on day 1. Now, regardless of the bitrate and other settings, I get extremely jagged edges on everything when there is some movement onscreen. For example, a person walking on the beach, where there might be some slight motion blur as the camera auto-focuses, it turns the blur into jagged lines/edges on all objects on screen (not just on the edge of the screen like some posts I've seen). I can even see this in preview mode and it does it on several different AVI's that I have tested, not just stuff that I've captured. I suspect that some codec somewhere might have become corrupt. Reinstalling TMPGEnc (retail or freeware version, doesn't matter) results in the same issue. Here is more information on my capture method and source material, etc...

Source Material is from a Sony 3CCD Mini-DV TRV900 camera via Firewire into Adobe Premiere, edited and saved as AVI.

PC is a P4 1.7ghz with 2 60GB 7200 RPM hard drives, Nvidia II Ultra 64 video card and 256MB RDRAM 800

DVD Writer is Sony DRU500A using DVD-R media.

TMPEGEnc settings are the default for DVD NTSC for 55 minutes of video on DVD (8000 bitrate).

I am burning with MyDVD being careful to make sure that it is not taking the video and re-encoding with it's crappy built in encoder. Actually I don't even take it this far since I can tell even in TMPEGEnc's preview mode how the video is going to turn out.

Anyone have an idea here? Sorry for the long post!!!

[bugster]

Sounds like an interlacing issue. Try reversing the field order in Tmpgencs settings, this might fix it.

[UpIrons]

Will try it and post the result. Thanks!

[UpIrons]

Tried doing this and it did not improve. I also installed the Nimo codec pack and it still does not help. Any ideas anyone?

[ian follow]

Did you somehow, unintentionally, click on 'I frames only'?

[UpIrons]

I checked the I Frames setting you referred to and it is not checked. Standard mode is what is chosen in that section.

I tried a few other things as well, to no avail...

Installed Main Concept encoder and the result is the same, regardless of setting and bitrate.

Installed Panasonic Encoder and again, same result.

I am now convinced that something is corrupt in the OS itself and am preparing to reinstall Win XP unless anyone can think of anything else that might be causing this issue.

I will repost after a clean install otherwise. Thanks!

[bugster]

If all encoders give the same problem it either has to be the source material or the decoder used.

Have you installed any new software (esp video editing apps) that may have installed a different DV codec to the original one. If so it may have taken over from the correct one. In this case, playing the avi in WMP should show the same problems. Check what DV codecs are installed, uninstall all of them and re-install just the one that you had to start with.

[ian follow]

Or you can try to fix the current Xp installation with XP CD-ROM.

[Linelle]

Check what DV codecs are installed, uninstall all of them and re-install just the one that you had to start with.

Newbie question: Where do you go to find the DV codecs and what's the best way to uninstall/reinstall?

[UpIrons]

I uninstalled all of the encoders and software DVD players on my system and reinstalled just PowerDVD and TMPGEnc and that seems to have fixed the problem. Definitely a codec issue. Thanks for all the great advice! Now can anyone tell me if NeoDVD makes quality encodings or am I better off keeping MyDVD for authoring and burning and purchase TMPGEnc for the encoding only?

[Linelle]

Newbie question: Where do you go to find the DV codecs and what's the best way to uninstall/reinstall?

Sorry to answer my own post, but I've since learned that on a Win machine, you go to Control Panel, Multimedia, Devices, then open the Video and Audio tabs to see which codecs are installed. Pretty cool.

Linelle