Windows Media Player can't read my MPEG-2 w/overlayed title

[ally]

I just recently purchased a TRV-350 Digital 8 camcorder. I’ve transferred video to my PC via the firewire connection. I can get the date code / stamp to show up on my camcorder using the commander remote; however, the date code won’t show up on the video transferred to the PC. I called Sony’s tech support and Sony said it’s not possible to get the date code to show up when using the firewire. The date code does transfer when using the RCA jacks / S-video connected to the TV / VCR, though. Apparently based on my research in these forums, all digital camcorders can’t transfer the date code when utilizing the firewire transfer method.

This is so frustrating because I primarily film my toddler and infant and have many short clips. To see how your child progresses, you would really need to have the date on the video. Utilizing Window’s Movie Maker (MM), I’m able to overlay the date onto the footage, but that takes a lot of time given how many short clips that I have in an hour of video. And that’s not even factoring the time MM takes to save the overlayed video back to another AVI file and the time MM takes to import the AVI file to begin with. Then to encode the AVI back to a DVD compliant MPEG-2. Creating a hi-quality DVD is time consuming enough…to overlay the date just adds another 2-4 hours to the process.

Anyways, here's my question:

When I encode my AVI file with the date overlayed using TMPGEnc Plus (CBR of 8000) to a DVD compliant MPEG-2 file, XP’s Windows Media Player (WMP) can’t read the MPEG-2 file. However, when I encode AVI files without any title overlays, WMP has no problem playing back the file. Has anybody encountered this and come up with a solution?

Thanks for your help and time reading this long message,
Ally

[dhluke]

This is not an answer to your problem as I don't do what you do... This is only a suggestion in case no one answers you.

Why don't you use VirtualDub to subtitle your video files. A program called Sub Station Alpha can be used with Vdub to subtitle any video. In SSA, you can set the times for the subtitles (dates) to come up. This is burned in the video and can't be turn on and off... It is always on... You can make turn on off subtitles using another program but I don't think that's what you want... If you do it's a combo of DVD Maestro, MaestroSTB, and SSA.

Anyways, I hope that didn't confuse you too much and at least gave you another option.

dhluke

[ally]

dhluke,

Thanks for the response. Can Sub Station Alpha actually decipher the date code on a digitally shot AVI file and then automatically overlay the date onto the video? Or do I still have to do it manually?

Thanks,
Ally

[dhluke]

You have to do it manually... You have to type everything in and put the times yourself.

dhluke

[racer-x]

(WMP) has a hard time playing most of the MPEG-2 files I create. I use Power DVD to play MPEG-2. I only use (WMP) to play AVIs.

[ally]

Good to know that I'm not the only one with the WMP problem reading MPEG-2 files. Why does Microsoft problems always have glitches?