Trying to go from DVD to Mpeg4 with the best quality, uncompressed PCM sound if posible. First mistake I bought Tmpgenc3.0! Found this doesn't actually supply required codecs so installed coles2k codec pack 6.0.5. Steps 1. Discovered Tmpg3.0 won't open VOB files so converted VOB to M2V + WAV. 2. Opened .M2V + .WAV with TMPGENC and selected any number of MPEG 4 codecs including H264, xvid for the output AVI. They will do a low quality single pass but when I go for multipass at full 720x576 I get invalid sample format 0x80048002 error. 3. Read lots on this site including a moderator who explained that I shouldn't be putting Mpeg in AVI container anyway , not really sure I understood why, I thought that nearly all players would recognise an AVI and play it! 4. Returned ti TmpG and encoded to xvid direct. 8000kps max / 4000 average 720x576PAL. Output for 16x9 input was wrong aspect ratio and quality very disappionting. Question is there really anything to be gained by trying to use Mpeg4 (xvid, Divx, H264) compression for a stand alone dvd players on a DVD-5 disc when re-compressed Mpeg2 from the likes of DVDShrink seems to give better looking results? Or have I got it all wrong? Over to you!
Why PCM sound? Not even sure if that is allowed under MPEG-4 specs. Sounds like you are talking about DivX/XviD in an avi container though. Only the video is MPEG-4, avi, etc. has nothing to do with MPEG-4 specs. My advice would be to keep the original AC3/DTS audio though. I also wouldn't recommend TMPGEnc for encoding to avi's. That isn't what it was designed for and you will get better quality using something else since at least you avoid a RGB colourspace conversion (DVD is YV12, as is MPEG-4). If the movie fits on a DVD5, then no you don't gain anything by re-compressing to MPEG-4. Take a long movie like any extended LOTR. You will get much better quality converting to a DVD5 sized MPEG-4 than you would with MPEG-2. H.264 is even more efficient, but no standalone's supported it you. There are chipsets available and HDTV tuners that can handle it. I really wouldn't recommend using avi to store AVC either. Isn't exactly a good idea for MPEG-4 either, but a majority of the standalones out there only support avi as a container and not mp4.
Thanks Celtic_d for replying but I have more questions! If we want to put a long movie on to a dvd5 keeping ac3 sound but encoding video with something more efficient than MPEG-2, What do you suggest? What program or codecs stay in YU12? Lets consider I'm using the output in 2 ways, first on a hard drive and a convient video jukebox and second in a dvd5 for use on a cheap £50 dvd player such as the H&B DX3255 Mpeg-4 enabled DVD
As I said all MPEG-4 Part 2 codecs are YV12. AVC does allow for other colourspaces but I don't think any publically available encoders excluding I guess the reference one support it, plus if you have a DVD source, then it is YV12 anyway. AVISynth, VirtualDubMod, x264 cli, xvidencraw, mencoder, ffmpeg, etc. support YV12.
