This is one of most commonly asked topic in our forums and as some of our guides depend on this process, where you modify the video using VirtualDub (i.e. add permanent subtitles to the video) and frameserve that to TMPGEnc in order to encode it to VCD or SVCD compliant MPEG video.

People have had major problems opening the frameserve AVI or "pseudo-AVI" that VirtualDub creates. Some things you need to understand/try:

1) you need have VirtualDub's frameserving installed. This is done by executing auxsetup.exe file which is located in VirtualDub's directory.

2) Once you run the frameserver from VirtualDub, save the pseudofile as whatever.AVI <- note the .AVI -- This normally solves many issues, because in general VDub tries to add an extension of .vdr to the file.

3) When the frameserving is launched, VirtualDub NEEDS TO RUN ALL THE TIME DURING THE MPEG-1 ENCODING! You must leave VirtualDub and the frameserving box running while you operate TMPGEnc.

4) If you try to open the frameserving file and TMPGEnc gives you an error, go to TMPGEnc's Global Settings and look for VFAPI Plugins from there. Increase the priority of Directshow Multimedia Reader and try again.

5) If #4 fails, go to your TMPGEnc's directory and delete file called 'CurrentCfg.tpr' and file called 'TMPGEnc.ini' and run the VirtualDub's auxsetup.exe again and install the handler. Try again.

6) Make sure that the frameserver file you created with VirtualDub has a name that is relatively short, I recommend simply putting something like x.AVI as a filename for it. (this is stupid reason, but TMPGEnc has issues opening looong filenames with special characters).

7) If you _still_ have issues, you have one more option left. Go to Dub's directory and you see a subfolder called 'aviproxy'. Doubleclick 'proxyon.reg' file which is located in this dir. Reboot your machine. Try again. Whether it works or not, after you've finished your encoding, etc, go to same directory and run 'proxyoff.reg' and reboot your machine, because this trick messes up other software you have on your system.

Hopefully this helps you guys.