TMPGEnc Questions

[turet]

I'm just getting used to this software. I'm DVD-encoding an Mpeg using TMPGEnc.

There are two options for audio. One is CDC or something...linear....which is super compressed, I guess, and didn't sound like a good idea. The other option was some kind of Mpeg layer, so I selected that.

There are two checked boxes on the next page or two, by default. The top one is the one that maintains the same bitrate as the original, that sounds good. The second one I deselected because it forced the file to fit a DVD file size restriction.

When I deselected the second setting...sorry I don't recall exactly what it's called and it takes my computer forever to open this program with a file in it...it told me that my file would exceed the DVD size. Fine, I said. But... the green bar indicating file size never expanded beyond the 4. whatever. I decided to ignore this and encode the file anyway, but it shrunk the file down to 4.0 anyway.

What did I do wrong, or what can I do to maintain the 6.-something gig file size that this thing should be?

BTW, I decided just for giggles to apply the video noise filter, knowing it would take longer to encode, but seemed like a good experiment. It took 17 hours to encode a 2 hour movie and then it wasn't right anyway and I have to start over.

Thanks for any and all help!

[rsquirell]

Are you aware TMPGenc has a Wizard? It can be found under the "file" tab. If you follow it's queries you should be alright. Rule of Thumb...for a 720X480 VBR DVD MPEG2 it takes 3 hours to encode for each 1 hour of video...any changes out of the ordinary add time. If you select CBR or CQ rather than VBR you can cut your time to encode in half. (This is with a 1.4GB processor.)

[turet]

I'm using the project wizard. It was there that I learned about deselecting the Auto setting for video...which didn't seem to deselect.

What's CBR, CQ and VBR. Does it matter which one I use in terms of quality?

Sorry..I'm a real newbie at this.

[rsquirell]

VBR (Variable Bit Rate) first scans the entire video to determine where it should apply different bit encoding speeds so the fast movement scenes don't blur...and then it encodes at the calculated rates. CBR (Constant Bit Rate) encodes the video at the same rate with no prescan...which takes half as much time because the scan is eliminated ( and the final MPEG will be smaller as well.) Some people have complained that CBR sometimes leaves fast action scenes a tad blurry. CQ (Constant Quality) changes bitrate on the fly...it's a compromise between the two (in a one-pass process taking half as much time as VBR).

[turet]

Thanks for the explanation. I ran the same two hour movie last night, but trimmed first, which knocked a few minutes off the total. It took 6 hours, as you predicted. This isn't bad, as I just let it run overnight while I slept. Since I'm converting from video, which isn't the best quality to begin with, I think I'll generally go for the VBR. But it's nice to know that there's another option in cases where I don't care so much.

[rsquirell]

I think you'd be hard pressed to find any difference between quality of CQ and VBR. In fact...if you look in the "Load" area you'll find the standard NTSC DVD template that TMPGenc offers is CQ. And the time to encode is dramatically faster.