TMPGenc and stutter

[willie1]

Files encoded with TMPGenc (DVD, CVD, and SVCD)that were originally 23.976 fps either from DVD or divx/xvid avi have a stutter during playback on my apex 1200 DVD player. Some even stutter on my software player. I have seen reference to this problem linked to the pulldown flag or too high of a bitrate or highest quality motion estimation. I tried encoding at 23.976 and using dopulldown.exe to add the pulldown flag which seems to work better but there is a stutter occasionally still. Is there some parameter I'm missing here that will make the pulldown flag in TMPGenc work correctly? Possibly field order? I re ripped one of my DVDs and had stuttery playback in DVD2AVI which was fived by reversing the field order. Changing the field order in TMPGenc didn't seem to make any difference as I believe this only impacts interlaced sources. My 29.97 fps vhs conversions play fine even with highest motion estimation.

[davexnet]

I don't think you have to add any pulldown flags.
Tmpgenc already does it when you choose the ntscfilm template.

I occasionally get stuttering when I play back SVCD on my
RAITE 215 dvd player (from 1999). I think it's because the b/r rate
goes to high.
My dvd will also stutter if the b/r goes to low, so now I use
min=900 or so, with padding turned on.
Good luck.
Dave

[willie1]

I have burned 23.976 fps svcds and they do not have the stutter. My apex will play them even though they are not standard compliant. If I use the pulldown on playback from TMPGenc the stutter occurs on the apex but not on the computer. If I encode at 23.976fps then usd pulldown.exe the stutter is less prominent but still present. I tried encoding one file with a hard conversion to 29.97 with TMPGenc and the stutter was there both on the computer and the DVD player. It would actually freeze for 1-2 seconds then start playing again. I loaded the file into DVD2AVI and fixed the stopping by reversing the field order.

This problem is most prominent with Xvid sources. Some of the Divx 3.11 is unaffected. The obvious solution of just encoding at 23.976 fps won't work when I encode DVDs as they must be 29.97fps to be accepted by authoring software. I seem to remember seeing a post in the Xvid forum that shows the b-frames being decoded out of order and I wonder if this is causing the mpeg2 encode to stutter on an incorrect frame order? I have tried limiting the max bitrate on svcd files to 2300kbps which helped but didn't solve the problem. This should not be a factor with my DVD conversions though. Some divx5.xx conversions have the stutter as well. I have tried the main concept encoder and canopus procorder at 23.976 then using pulldown.exe which again result in the stutter. These files would have a slight stutter on the computer but be unwatchable on on the DVD player. Changing the flag in pulldown.exe to all frames and all streams progressive resulted in silky smoothe playback on the computer but playing even worse on the apex. I tried playback of the dvds on my playstation 2 and the stutter is present on it as well which rules out the apex being the sole problem.

If anyone has encountered the same problem and found a fix, it would be greatly appreciated.

[davexnet]

I'm assuming the source is progressive and you select progressive
in tmpgenc. If that's the case, field order shouldn't be a factor.

You could try going into tmpgenc ivtc setting and looking at the frames. The "a" frames should be clear, "b" probably blurry.

The "a" frames are the actual film frames and represent it's own
point in time. Visible motion between the "a" frames
should be obvious (assuming the subject being filmed was moving) If you don't see this perhaps there's a problem.

Try turning off avi2dml and selecting directshow.

Dave

[willie1]

I will chech the frames on my next encode. I just completed another conversion and changed the dc precision to 9 rather than 10. I used dopulldown.exe to add the flag and the playback was flawless. My sources are 23.976fps progressive. I am not sure that dc of 9 rather than 10 could in any way account for the better playback (my svcd's were dc8.) There were no other changes in terms of software, media, or hardware so I'm left scratching my head.

[barakori]

I'm not sure what you mean by "shutter", but I'll tell you something I encountered and solved (just now, so I'm not totally sure yet).

My task was to encode a 23.976 fps movie (that arrives as an AVI file) into DVD MPEG2 video. The encoding is fine, but every now and then, motion isn't smooth. Using single frame forward on my standalone DVD player, I could see that in some cases, I had two consecutive frames that look the same. Since A/V synch is maintained, I assume I'm missing the next frame, but I can't really say.

I started testing things, and used Source Range to test on a segment of about 15 seconds. The strange thing was that in the Source range window, the title said "576x240 30 fps : ...". This was strange because VirtualDub said the AVI was 23.976 fps. I compared frame numbers with VirtualDub and indeed, the same frame had different numbers between VirtualDub and TMPGEnc (Where TMPGEnc's frame number was about 1.25 times the frame number in VirtualDub, which accounted for the frame rate difference).

In the Source Range screen I used the right arrow key to skip through frames, and I saw that I get a repeated frame after every 4 frames. Somehow, TMPGEnc thought the movie was in 30fps. This, in itself, eliminates any possibility for good conversion.

I looked around and found the solution in Option => Environmental Settings => VFAPI plug-in. I had "DirectShow Mutimedia File Reader" as the plug-in with the highest priority.

I changed "AVI2(OpenDML) File Reader" to have the highest priority. After doing that, the Source Range window reported the file as being 23.976 fps, and a quick test showed smooth motion.

I hope you didn't have to read through all this only to realise it's not what you're looking for. Plus, I use TMPGEnc for video, never for audio.

Barak
barak@xmixdrix.com

[willie1]

I currently had direct show as highest priority. I will try changing it and see if that helps. By stutter I mean the movie plays normally then stops while the audio may or may not continue. Playback looks like it jumps back a few frames then jumps foreward again and then plays normally for a few seconds. It is very noticeable at scene changes. It looks the same as a movie encoded with the incorrect field order (I did one of those by accident- that is the one that was fixed by reversing the field order in dvd2avi).