DVDx2.2 or TMPGEnc ??

[correioelet2002]

As many of you know, when ripping and encoding from a DVD to a VCD, we sometimes get some blurred images on specific frames. That's no news so far.

I have been using DVDx2.2 for a couple of reasons (facility creating volumes and subtitle support). After reading in a post that TMPGEnc was much better and that the blur would "go away" or at least reduce dramatically I tried DVD 2 AVI and then TMPGEnc. The result was EXACTLY the same.

My question is: is there really a quality difference or am I doing something wrong with TMPGEnc and just not being able to use it in the best way possible (which I doubt, because I followed ALL the instructions, but, anyway....)? Any ideas? Thanks!

Julian

[gmatov]

Julian,
What rates are you using with DVDx 2.2? At defaults, I wasn't getting the best results, either, till some one said I could go higher, and still play on my Apex 1201, and most others that will play VCD at all. (Silly me, I thought you HAD to be 1150 to be compliant, after all, Nero said so.) I've gone as high, so far, as 2300 kbps to fill up the 2nd or 3rd disk. I mean, if you have to put in Disk 2 to watch the last 10 minutes, you might as well put in Disk 2 to watch the last half of the movie, no? The quality is excellent, or maybe I'm easy to please. Any how, the only other program that gave me good results was one of too damn many loaded on the machine at the same time, and I can't remember what it was.

[kalus69]

if your standalone dvd supports it - try encoding to tmpgenc with kvcd templates. you will be able to fit high quality movies onto 1 cdr. see http://www.kvcd.net/

[correioelet2002]

Hi gmatov, thanks a lot for your reply, the video quality REALLY improved!!!

Not wanting to be a pain in the ass, but since you really got it, now another problem has appeared, and maybe you could know how to solve that too... the audio has some kind of continuous gaps with a metallic sound. Do you know what that is? Maybe because of video resolution the audio went crazy??

Let me clear one thing, though: the VCD works perfectly on my PC. The problem is only on my standalone DVD player. A LG-5822N, actually.

Thanks!

[gmatov]

Long name,
I can't tell you why it won't play on your LG. it may not support VCD, or at least not without a hack.
I have had converts with bad audio, maybe 3 second out of sync, and done the convert over and gotten a good result. I don't know if changing the audio bit rate will help, as I haven't had to do that.
First, check the subjects to the left to see if your machine will play VCDs or XVCDs, or even CVDs. If the answer is yes, try a re-encode. DVDx, if nothing else, is rather fast. 3 or 4 hours as opposed to many of the other programs. I'm using DVD2SVCD now and converts average 10 hours, so 3-4 isn't bad for experimentation

[Don2050]

correioelet2002,

Your standalone DVD player may not be playing those XVCD's (which is what they become when you increase the bitrate beyond 1150) because they ARE out of spec.(Nero was right

You could however use DVD2SVCD as gmatov is and use the header trick in TMPGEnc to make your player 'think' it is a VCD. If you are lucky, it should play them with bitrates at the 2200 mark.

The metallic sound you hear may possible be do to the encoder used DVDx, ( I am not sure) but for TMPGEnc that can be gotten rid of by using pluggins for audio encoding, namely LAME for the mp2 and ssrc for sampling rate conversion.

Goodluck.

[gmatov]

Julian,
I misread that. Your LG does play it but has audio problems, correct?
I still don't know what else you can do but try it again. As I said, a re-encode gave me a good set of disks.

[gmatov]

Don,
Julian should first check to see if his player will take a SVCD, then he won't have to use the "header trick", just make a SVCD. The hang up is SVCD takes twice as long as VCD, X or otherwise.
I LIKE DVDx. It is fast and does a very good job. I also like DVD2SVCD, but have only useed TMPGenc so far. Have to go to CCE to see if I can improve on something that is already outstanding. Also would like to reduce number of CDs without compromising quality, not for cost but to only change once per movie.

[Don2050]

ok,

I checked his standalone here on www.dvdrhelp.com and it says his player is not SVCD capable.

and, gmatov, I offered up the DVD2SVCD + header trick route cause he stated he was unsatisfied with the VCD quality.

[gmatov]

Julian,
Your machine doesn't play anything, does it?
Did you get rid of the noise with re-encode, audio bit rate, whatever?

Don,
I know it becomes an XVCD, my point at the time was that I was new to this stuff, and when Nero said "non-compliant", I assumed it would not play at all.
I should know better than to assume, you know what that does, don't you?
And, actually, he wasn't unhappy with the quality, it was the blockiness that TMPGenc duplicated, and now, the noise.
Since I don't know the answer to this ?, will the header trick let a VCD capable play a SVCD?

[Don2050]

Don,
I know it becomes an XVCD, my point at the time was that I was new to this stuff, and when Nero said "non-compliant", I assumed it would not play at all.
I should know better than to assume, you know what that does, don't you?
And, actually, he wasn't unhappy with the quality, it was the blockiness that TMPGenc duplicated, and now, the noise.
Since I don't know the answer to this ?, will the header trick let a VCD capable play a SVCD?

ok, I did not mean put anyone off, sorry if I did. Yes, the header trick will let some players that are VCD capable to play SVCD's.

The 'blockiness' and 'noise' are not a result of TMPGenc, especially cause the source is a DVD but a result of the bitrates that must be adhered to due to the VCD spec, 1150kbps I believe. The SVCD route will let him up the bitrates to 2200 or so, hopefully eliminating the 'blockiness' and 'noise'. Since his player is not svcd compatible the header trick would hopefully allow him to play the higher bitrate SVCD's in his player.

An alternative would be to try out one of Kwag's VCD templates ( I think he makes them) in TMPGenc, as I hear( though havnt tried them) that they are supposed to give good quality encodes.

Goodluck correioelet2002

[gmatov]

Don,
Don't worry, I didn't take offense. If it sounded snide, I didn't notice.
DVDx can use both TMPGenc and CCE 2.66 as client encoders, as per the read me. And the noise is on playing in the DVD player, but perfect in the 'puter DVD drive, or CD, whichever he is using to check it.

Julian,
As to the read me, found in the Start menu,
-You may get tick (rarely) in the sound if you use the Audio/Video synchronistaion
Does your metallic sound resemble that statement?
Try reading the readme_1st file. This is the first time I looked at it, so this is not a RTFM remark.
Since DVDx is generally so fast, I'm going to have to try it again with TMPGenc and CCE to see if it does better than it did before. As I said, I've been using DVD2SVCD for better results, but getting 10-12 hour encodes. I liked the 3 to 6 hour times.
George

[colinstone]

I've tried DVDx and TMPGenc and have found that TMPGenc stalled with memory errors with a 1GB vob file. In other test clips using the dolby trailers, the DVDx down mix and volume seem to be much better than TMP.

I'm using DVDx at a video bitrate of 2500, FPU processing and render every 12 frames - it will be interesting to see what the difference with a 12 frame render rather than 25 frame - any idea out there??

Intend running full comparison with video projector - that should sort out the quality issue.