I've read all the posts on this topic and can't find one that applies to the problem I'm having. I'm new to this but I have burned 3 VCD's of varying quality as I've experimented with different settings. What I'm trying to do now is create an SVCD and I can't get the Merge & Cut to work. I encoded it as an SVCD and now just need to cut it to pieces small enough to burn. I get through the process to the point where the actual window "Edit Merge Item" comes up, at this point an error message pops up that says "Could not open this file with DirectShow. (0x80040200)" ANYONE HAVE ANY IDEA WHAT THE HECK IS WRONG???? Any help would be much appreciated. Thanks
We just added a guide how to split and merge MPEG-1 and MPEG-2 files with DVTool. Please visit our article section http://www.afterdawn.com/articles/ ...TMPGEnc's merge/cut somehow doesn't seem to work always for MPEG-1.
Thanks, I actually found that a couple minutes ago and got it to work. Another question though. I burned the first chunk of the SVCD and when I played it in my standalone player the video is kind of jerky and choppy. I know those are real technical terms but that's the best I can describe it. I'm 99% sure I did the whole process right. Any thoughts?
Ripping really (generally speaking) can't produce any errors, so your problem is definately with encoding. Did you use TMPGEnc's SVCD templates to encode the video?
Yes I did, and I chose the correct format too. I used Smart ripper and it said that the disc was NTSC film 97% but I burned it and encoded it (i think) as just plain NTSC. Would that matter?
when I open up CladDVD it says that the DVD is MPEG 2 720x480 NTSC with 4:3 aspect ratio. But when I use the wizard on TMPGEnc the SVCD is only 480x480, does that matter?
It doesn't matter as long as you know what to do with it. I suggest that you read our DVD->VCD guide from our article pages and follow it up to the point when it comes to TMPGEnc and use SVCD template instead of VCD template. That procedure (SmartRipper, DVD2AVI, TMPGEnc) should give you good results.
okay, that's what I was suspecting, so that means I have to start all over encoding into NTSC film correct?
I suggest you use TMPGEnc's Advanced settings and select short clip as your source range and see how it performs, so you don't have to encode the whole thing everytime you make changes to your settings. I would suggest, after you've finished your first movie, that you use 2-pass VBR encoding and use some bitrate calculators to calculate the average bitrate for your movie so it fits to 3 CDs. But this _ONLY_ after you've first managed to create your first successful SVCDs
Just one more easy to answer question. Is TMPGenc the fasted encoder out there? or is it just the easiest to use. In the guides I've read I've seen references to other more advanced techniques and I'm just curious if those are faster or just produce higher quality. Thanks again.
TMPGEnc is free and produces the best quality. That's enough. Speed and quality normally don't mix, actually in most cases they're the opposite to each other. (and to be honest, TMPGEnc is relatively fast anyway)
cool, thanks. One more thing and I swear this is the last one. Does doing other stuff on my computer while TMPGenc is running screw up the encoding process?
It doesn't screw it up, but it's too **cking slow to do anything else (other than maybe surf the Web). That's why Someone has invented nights -- leave the computer encoding and go to sleep
