Settings in Vegas Video are the standard defaults for NTSC VCD, haven't changed anything. I compared these settings against the settings in TMPGenc and they are identical. I can only assume this is a problem with the MainConcept encoder since my VCD works when I encode with TMPGenc.

The nature of the skip is that the audio/video stops and starts, and skips several seconds at a time. Very annoying.

Anybody else out there experiencing the same difficulty? Anybody using Vegas Video with Ulead DVD Movie Factory?

Thanks!

TVeith

OK, loyal forum readers: Who among you is seeing "stuttering" in their encodes as described earlier in this thread? Who sees it?

If you are seeing this stuttering problem, please list:

OS
Vegas version #
Encode settings
Source material (all formats in project)
Authoring/burning app
Burner
Media type (exact, brand + product #)
Playback device(s)
Anything else that might help.

Thanks for trying to help out with the stuttering problem, but my original question was whether or not there were any other MPEG encoders that could plug into Vegas Video. Anybody know of anything other than the MainConcept encoders I can use directly through VV to encode to MPEG 1 or 2?

Thanks again

TVeith

This question has arisen before. Some users felt that Vegas should have the ability to frame-serve to another encoder. I'm not sure whether such an approach requires the cooperation of the encoder author too, but whatever SoFo has taken the view - rightly, in my opinion - that they should have an encoder so good that no one would dream of using anything else <g>

At the risk of boring you, can I just return to the nature of the skip? Try and visualise the skip lasting for one minute, rather than the brief period it probably occupies. Which is of these is true?

1. The playback pauses and then resumes from the point where it paused.
2. The playback pauses and then resumes from the position it would have reached if it had not paused.
3. The playback jumps past a piece of footage, as if you'd cut it out of the timeline, but without any pause or interruption.

Finally, if your skipping did not occur, would you otherwise be happy with the quality of the encoding?

-Pete

Thanks again for your reply! :)

I think answer #2 would be most appropriate. After some digging, I think I found some of the cause. Some titling and text I brought into my project may have been the root of my problem. I was creating titles using Ulead Cool 3D, rendering them as standard AVI (at the time, I didn't use the PICVideo codec for AVI), then encoding the titles to MPEG using Ulead Media Studio's conversion utility. I re-rendered the MPEG titles/files using TMPGenc, put them back in the project, re-burned the VCD with DVD Movie Factory, and the skipping went away - perfect VCD! :)

As for the quality of the encoding, MainConcept MPEG-1 encoding is really poor - lots of digital "artifacts" appearing on the screen and cannot really be adjusted for better quality (any hints on tweaking you could suggest???). The best quality I've achieved with MPEG-1 thus far is if I encode to AVI from Vegas Video (using the PICVideo MJPEG codec at a quality of 17), then render the resulting AVI file to MPEG-1 using TMPGenc. At the quality setting specified for PICVideo, I'm able to generate one hour of AVI video using 1.8GB of hard drive space and there are very few artifacts on the screen.

Cheers!

TVeith

>>SoFo has taken the view - rightly, in my opinion - that they should have an encoder so good that no one would dream of using anything else <g>

true, and they might be right, but they have also said they are focusing their development efforts on the *MPEG-2* portion of the Main Concept encoder. I think it's implied that the MPEG-1 portion is not going to get the attention it needs to truly become so good that no one would dream of using anything else.

personally, I won't be using MPEG-1 for much longer, but every once in a while the need arises for a low bitrate video that can play on lots of PC's.

I think the frame serving issue will always be there because no one piece of software can have all the latest and best compression tech built in.

I'm not saying frame-serving is the best answer. I'm discovering that a lot of the time I really *want* to have an uncompressed intermediary file so I can recompress it several times using different settings. (I'd rather have sequential stills though :)

frameserving would be a great option as long as the newest encoding tools will support it ;D

I guess the question i keep having is why some of those *other* encoding tools aren't available as plugin codecs. I would gladly experiment with TMPGenc if it was available on the dropdown list in Vegas when i render. Why isn't it? I installed huffyuv and it's there. I installed DivX ;-) and it's there. Ligos & Main Concept are there. Microsoft and SonicFoundry's DV codecs are there. Also Radius Cinepak, Intel Indeo, Microsoft Video, etc. Obviously this isn't difficult to do. If TMPGenc would provide this it would negate the whole need for frame serving and make it much more accessible to users, even users of other editing software.

Ben,

> I think the frame serving issue will always be there because no one piece of software can have all the latest and best compression tech built in. <

I was skeptical but, after a Google exploration, I agree that a future version of Vegas Video should offer frameserving. In a sense, VirtualDub is a competitor to Vegas Video, and VirtualDub has extensive frameserver support, and its users use it. And Adobe Premiere has a frameserver plugin of sorts.

> I'm not saying frame-serving is the best answer. I'm discovering that a lot of the time I really *want* to have an uncompressed intermediary file so I can recompress it several times using different settings. <

I agree with your rationale. I like to render a finished AVI and go from there. But when I start having trouble finding space for my AVIs, I may sing a different tune.

> (I'd rather have sequential stills though :) <

Could you explain that a bit? Are you thinking rotoscoping?

> frameserving would be a great option as long as the newest encoding tools will support it <

I agree. There is a frameserver article at:

<http://www.lukesvideo.com/frameserving.html>

-- Burton --

I dont understand why SoFo dont just contact the guy who wrote TMPGenc and use his encoder as well....he gives the damn thing away currently! and is proud as punch that his encoder is in crappy game-like software, he lists the programs its in, surely it would be a selling point for both parties to have this. Im sure he would licence it to them for a reasonable fee. Everyone in this forum agrees that for VCDs and SVCDs, TMPG is the best. Its what i have experienced too.

dg.

Blackout,

One disadvantage of incorporating TMPGEnc into Vegas Video is that TMPGEnc has a complex user interface, involving multiple windows and dialogs. So when you chose TMPGEnc on the Vegas dropdown menu it would sort of "take over" with a whole string of its own windows.

Perhaps SF could do a good job of integrating the TMPGEnc GUI into Vegas, but then you have the slow performance of TMPGEnc. It could "tie up" your Vegas for a long time, perhaps several hours.

Another potential "problem" is the rapid update rate of TMPGEnc. A new version comes out every month or so. An integrated TMPGEnc would almost certainly become very obsolete long before the next version upgrade of Vegas Video.

But those are just my guesses, and I am certainly not a spokesman for Sonic Foundry.

-- Burton --