TMPGEnc Plus HELP!

[Mike Rinkunas]

Hey everyone,

I'm using TMPGEnc Plus to encode my .avi's into .mpgs. it works great the features are incredible...however, for busniess usage I place these encoded videos into MS powerpoint, now on some computers the videos play fine, and on others its just a screen of green lines and crap, i can't understand it, for it seems to play great on the very same computers in media player and etc, just not in powerpoint...

has anyone dealt with this before? and if so how did you over come it?

thanks
~Mike

[Rob Lohman]

Can you give us a little bit more information?

- are you encoding to mpeg1 or 2?
- if 2, dvd compliant?
- what resolution? framerate?
- how large is the resulting MPEG file and resulting Powerpoint?

Keep in mind that a product like PowerPoint is not a video playback
program by nature. Also Microsoft products tend to not like
mpeg too much.

[Mike Rinkunas]

I'm encoding Mpeg-1's at 2500kbps, 29.97 fps and with old field deinterlacing.

Now, what throws me for a loop is that these files might not play on a given computers copy of powerpoint 2000, but it will play perfectly in windows media player on that same computer, however on some older computers with older versions of powerpoint, the same mpgs play just fine....

In powerpoint when the mpg doesn't work, the audio will come out just fine, but the video will just be green lines of static .

is there a way to up-date video codecs, specifically for mpg, for windows? and if so is there a way to distribute it to my clients?

well, given this lack of mpeg happiness on microsoft's end of things, is there a specific a/v type that it works well with while maintaining a high level of compression and visual quality?

just a personal question: what is the difference between VCD and non VCD mpeg-1s?

~Mike

[Rob Lohman]

I'm thinking you are using a too high bitrate. If you want something
else you the free XviD codec and distribute that to your clients.
You use XviD with AVI. That I think is the best alternative. Otherwise
you will get into things like QuickTime and that is a more heavy
program to install, and I don't know if that will work with Powerpoint.

The difference between VCD and non-VCD compatible mpeg1 is
the resolution and bitrate. This comes from www.dvdrhelp.com:

This describes VCD 2.0 that all DVD Players with VCD support should support and most VCD authoring/burning application makes VCD 2.0 today. But what about VCD 1.1? Read below here.
PAL


Video:
1150 kbit/sec MPEG-1
352 x 288 pixels
25 frames/second

Audio:
224 kbit/sec MPEG-1 Layer2

Extra:
Menus and chapters
Still pictures in 704x576,352x288






(real size sample)
NTSC/NTSC Film


Video:
1150 kbit/sec MPEG-1
352 x 240 pixels
29,97 frames/second
23,976 frames/second NTSC Film

Audio:
224 kbit/sec MPEG-1 Layer2

Extra:
Menus and chapters
Still pictures in 704x480,352x240


(real size sample)


and even more technical details about VCD 1.1 and VCD 2.0:

Video CD 1.1
This is the most basic Video CD specification dating back to 1993 4 , which has the followingcharacteristics:
• One mode 2 mixed form ISO-9660 track containing file pointers to the information areas.
• Up to 98 multiplex-ed mpeg-1 audio/video streams or cd-da audio tracks.
• Up to 500 mpeg sequence entry points used as chapter divisions.
The Video CD specification requires the multiplex-ed mpeg-1 stream to have a cbr of less than 174300 bytes (1394400 bits) per second 5 in order to accommodate single speed cd-rom drives. The specification allows for the following two resolutions 6 :
• 352 x 240 @ 29.97 Hz (ntsc sif).
• 352 x 240 @ 23.976 Hz (film sif).
The cbr mpeg-1, layer II audio stream is fixed at 224 kbps with 1 stereo or 2 mono channels.It is recommended to keep the video bit-rate under 1151929.1 bps 7.

Video CD 2.0
About two years after the Video CD 1.1 specification came out, an improved Video CD 2.0 standard was published in 1995. This one added the following items to the features already available in the Video CD 1.1 specification:
• Support for mpeg segment play items (SPI ), consisting of still pictures, motion pictures and/or audio (only) streams was added. See Section 1.6.2 [Segment Items], page 9.
• Support for interactive playback control (PBC) was added.
• Support for playing related access by providing a scan point index file was added.(‘/EXT/SCANDATA.DAT’)
• Support for closed captions.
• Support for mixing ntsc and pal content.
By adding PAL support to the Video CD 1.1 specification, the following resolutions became
available:
• 352 x 240 @ 29.97 Hz (ntsc sif).
• 352 x 240 @ 23.976 Hz (film sif).
• 352 x 288 @ 25 Hz (pal sif).
For segment play items the following audio encodings became available:
• Joint stereo, stereo or dual channel audio streams at 128, 192, 224 or 384 kbit/sec bit-rate.
• Mono audio streams at 64, 96 or 192 kbit/sec bit-rate.

[Rob Lohman]

I just saw an article on DV.com about movie files in Powerpoint
files. Check it out here.

You do need to be registered to view it, this is easily done and
is free.

[Mike Rinkunas]

thanks alot for your advice guys!

after much thinking, i think i hit on what may be there problem.....the sony vaio codecs....

TMPGEnc stuff does not want to play properly on the vaio series, atleast in ppt. it seems like there is some conflict between the native sony code and any other mpg format.

can anyone else help to verfiy this?

Thanks
~Mikr

[Rob Lohman]

Guys? There was only me :)

I've done a bit of searching on the web and newsgroups for
you regarding your problem, but I cannot find anyone else
that seems to have this problem. Sorry. Since I do not have
a Vaio myself or anyone else I know I cannot try it out for you
on another machine.

I do have heard sometimes that the Sony Vaio's tend to cause
problems with other applications....