TMPGENC and PIONEER Player/Recorder

[GParent]

Using TMPGENC Version 4.2.3.193, I am successful encoding MPEG2 files and making DVDs with authoring tools like DVD_LAB PRO and DVD MAESTRO. These DVDs seem to work fine on PCs and standalone players. Except for the single following device:

Pioneer DVR-640HS Standalone Player/Recorder

The above unit belongs to a friend. He complains that DVDs I make using TMPGENC are not playing properly via playback on the Pioneer DVR-640HS through his home theater system. He has to fast forward and then it starts to play.

When I use CONVERTXTODVD, for example, all the DVDs generated play through his Pioneer. There is definitely something related to TMPGENC MPEG-2 generation.

I noticed that TMPGENC has the option of CLOSED GOP turned ON by default. If I remember correctly from when I used CCE, the CLOSED GOP option is recommended to be OFF.

Could this be the problem?

Thanks,

Gary

[Mug Funky]

more info is needed...

pioneer standalones are notorious for not playing certain things (or certain combinations of things that it otherwise would play).

- what sort of audio is in the stream, and what encoded it (some ac3enc versions would cause black video to play on menus with pioneers)

- what sort of media are you using?

- did maestro give you any warnings on compile?

- does first play go straight into the video, or is there a menu?

(big one here)

- what encode settings did you use in TMPGenc? TMPG is super compliant (if a little slow), so i'd be hesitant to single it out as the cause, or there'd be far more commercial DVDs recalled. however, there may be something set that's breaking things (it could be quite simple too, like a stream setting).

certainly closed GOP is not the problem - a majority of DVDs are encoded this way, because it is required for multiangle and it's easier to just leave it on for all encodes.

[GParent]

You made some good points. Especially the DVD Maestro. I am not using menus but I have first play, pointing at the MOVIE1. All point to MOVIE1.

The Audio varies. Sometimes AC3 and other times PCM. I think I will need to make up some test discs.

Lastly, I also suspect that since the Pioneer is very sophisticates vs a player only standalone, my friend may have some option on or off that is causing a problem.

[Mug Funky]

i suspect you'll have to borrow your mate's player, and burn some tests (use a DVD-RW or you'll be wasting a lot of plastic).

pioneers, though very good players, tend to have more playback issues than any other brands. think of them as keeping the DVD authors honest... so this player is a very good test bed for your discs.

unfortunately, there's simply so many things that can cause odd playback on a pioneer (and there's probably a few things that haven't been encountered yet), it's almost impossible to say what's causing the playback issue.

however, these settings in TMPGenc should give no problems:

- GOP at 12 for PAL, 15 for NTSC, closed or open.
- max bitrate 8500 to be safe (this is good practice anyway), or less if you have a lot of audio streams (figure it out by subtracting your audio streams from 9800 and round down to the nearest hundred kbps for good measure).
-min bitrate is not important. turn it down to 300 kbps if you like. having it higher than that doesn't really make a difference if the ratecontrol is smart enough.
- DC precision 10 bits or less (11 isn't DVD compliant so this is probably not the issue)
- aspect ratio set to 4:3, 16:9 letterbox or 16:9 pan-scan. nothing else is allowed (the wording of these options will differ, but should still make sense).
- custom matrices should have no values lower than 8, though there's lots of DVDs out there that disobey that rule of thumb.

other things to try:

- try a different audio encoder and see if there's a difference (soft encode works fine, aften should be fine but i haven't done nearly enough tests on pioneers - they can behave differently on menu audio than feature audio too)

- make sure the audio on any menus matches the audio in the first title-set with the same aspect ratio. this is due to how spruce does things - it's possible for it to make non-compliant discs if you for example have a motion menu with 224kbps and a logo/copyright message in 192 kbps. spruce just whacks the menu on the first VTS with compatible properties, but it can ignore audio when it shouldn't.

- make sure any spacer videos (like the old 15 frame black clip used to allow putting a chapter at the end of a feature, and thus allowing people to skip the credits) have the same dimensions as the feature - spruce allows 704, 352 and 720 assets to be mixed in one timeline, and it most definitely should not (playback will be unpredictible).

- do NOT run the stream though rejig or similar - pioneer players will mong out on some static scenes, like slates in between interviews or similar.

there's some other stuff involving menus that i've forgotten, but suffice to say that some combinations of video and audio on a menu can cause pioneers to simply not show the video on a menu, or refuse to load subpictures (either one is disastrous).

[edit]

here's another one:

never place your main menu on the 2nd layer of a disc. this counts for all players, not just pioneers. the IFO will end up on the first layer and so cycling buttons will take ages, also it'll likely crash most players and wear out their servos from all that moving the laser about. unfortunately i've seen this on a released disc, and it was fecking awful.

[GParent]

Mug Funky,

I think I found the reason for the problem. The TMPGEnc version 4.3.x I am using is an upgrade over the oldie version 2.x I previously was using. Therefore, I missed the nuance of maximum bitrate. I should have selected 8000 as the max. As a result, the video rate was going over 9200. Now I know that is technically on spec but the Pioneer seems to have a problem with it. I may ask the question over at AVS Forum where the Pioneer gurus live. Maybe my friend could use a firmware upgrade or tweek a parameter in setup.

[wh00t]

haha, guess what, my pio dv-575a doesn't even play some original pressed disc from the tv-series "3rd rock from the sun".
the publisher says that they've only had prob's with sony players so far. now they've send those disc to asia in order to let pioneer check out where the prob might be. obviously the pioneer firmware support is somehow "non-existent", hopefully this will change in a "not-too-distance-future" :)

p.s. sorry for reactivating this old thread, but i couldn't resist ;)