If anyone could help with this I would be so grateful, I am almost tearing my hair out. I
am also a bit of a newbie.
Basically I have an NTSC Xvid avi I want to convert to PAL MPEG-2 so I can burn it to DVD. I have been following the guides available (on dvdrhelp.com) and have run into a few problems.
The original Xvid AVI movie is 1:27:56 long.
I used VirtualDub to extract the audio, which I have then run through Besweet to convert from NTSC -> PAL. Virtualdub tells me the movie is 23.976 fps, ending at frame 126417. I extracted the WAV, ran it through Besweet to get a new mp2 which is of the shorter length 1:24:16. This ties in to what I expected from a 23.967 - 25 fps conversion. It all sounds good so far.
My problem is in getting the m2v (is that right?, mpg without audio) from TMPGEnc that i can then multiplex with this mp2. I go through the wizard as it says in the NTSC to PAL conversion guide on this site. I go to advanced settings and select "Do not frame
conversion" so that it will just run the frames through as 25 fps without trying to do anything fancy. When this completes I end up with a 1:45:27 slowed down film!!
Earlier I said Virtualdub told me the avi has 126417 frames. When I have "Do not frame
conversion" selected and run TMPGEnc I end up with 158179 frames (31762 more?). I did some maths and for the original film length (1:27:56) this equates to 29.97 fps. If I do not select "Do not frame conversion" in the advanced tab it gives the 126417 frames, as
expected, but it is appears it is doing some conversion of some sort to get there.
One place I think may possibly be the problem may is that in the Wizard under the "Content of Video" tab it says "Video" and is grey'd out so that I cannot change it to "Film."
I am confused as to whether the avi I have is 23.976 fps or 29.97 fps. I have downloaded AVIFrame (or something named similar) and checked the AVI header which says 23.976.
If it 29.979 will I have to do an inverse telecine back down to 24 fps then try again?
If it is 29.979 fps how come the WAV file extracted with virtualdub (which is happily
telling me it is 23.976fps) is the correct length?
Also in virtualdub I pan to the last frame and is exactly at the end of the movie, and
tells me the frame number is 126417 (as for 23.976, not 29.97). Could Virtualdub be
picking and choosing frames whereas TMPGEnc is reading every one?
Should I be doing anything with the "interlacing" options, or is that something completely different that i am just getting myself confused about?
THANKS FOR ALL YOUR HELP! ESPECIALLY GIVEN THE LENGTH OF THIS NOTE!
I believe your problem is in the setting of TMPGEnc. I noticed in your statement:
?One place I think may possibly be the problem may is that in the Wizard under the "Content of Video" tab it says "Video" and is grey'd out so that I cannot change it to "Film."?
I believe this is causing TMPGEnc to add interlacing to your final product, essentially doubling the number of frames.
The way you can unlock any of the grey?d out options is to move your cursor over the text (in you case ?Content of Video?) that is located just to the left of the option you want to change. With your cursor hovering over the text, right click your mouse and select the unlock option. If you change this option to Film I believe you?ll get the correct frame output.
I'm running the Plus version of TMPGEnc 2.58.144.52. If you close the Wizard and click on the settings button at the bottem of the window (or on page 3 of 5 of the Wizard select the button for "Other Settings"), this will bring up all of the settings tabs. Select the "Advanced" Tab and pick for the "Video Source Type" >> Non-interlace (Progressive). This will make sure your not interperting the source as interlaced.
sorry for delay in reply, I just got final scratch (play mp3's from pc on your decks as vinyl). So I haven't been devoting much time to this little project for a week or so..
Anyway I tried what you said, setting video source to "Non-interlaced - Progressive" and it still gave out as many frames as if it was at 29.97fps.
What is more confusing is I started looking around in the GOP structure section and did a preview and it showed me frame by frame what it is seeing, and there was four frames then the fourth repeated and then four and then repeated and so on and so on. Is TMPGEnc just copying this last frame, or is VirtualDub ignoring it, or is there any reason it should not work on my machine (dodgy installation of xvid or divx or something silly like that)
Interesting about the repeated forth frame. That sounds like a frame rate conversion process where 24 fps is converted to 30 fps. But I don't understand why VirtualDub is reporting 23.976. I know there are some filters to decimate 1 in X frames for VirtualDub. If the clip is realy at 29.97 that would bring it back to a real 23.976 and stop some jumpiness. Sorry I'm fairly new at this video conversion stuff and have not had to use these types of filters yet. Do some searching around (http://www.dvdrhelp.com is a very good source) or maybe someone with more experience will respond.
It's definately TMPGEnc. I got results finally. I took a demo of LSX MPEG and it read the file exactly as is, i.e. 23.976 fps. I ended up trusting that it was 23.976 fps and frameserving it in to TMPGEnc using VirtualDub without doing anything to it (earlier I had done the same thing after using AviSynth to IVTC the whole lot, and the results weren't as good).
I also had an audiosync problem. This one was wierd, because looking at the file information in VirtualDub it appears the audio data is a good second smaller than the video data. So to convert the audio so it would by sync'd at 25 fps I had to compress the time stream by the same amount as the video stream would have been compressed, then I had to trial and error add delay to the audio until it mapped up with the video.
