Rendering cropped and letterbox MPG
 

For some time the Tsunami MPG encoder (TMPGEnc) has been my favorite. I have been trying to get a good quality cropped NTSC of my 720P stuff, and was pleasantly surprised to find the Tsunami encoder 2.5 will accept m2t files and render them to the MPG format of your choice. Just choose all file types from the drop down, and open your m2t file.

Set your favorite DVD parameters (I like constant quality 2000 to 8000 Kb per second). I used a quality of 88 for my tests, which gave me excellent quality at about 3.2 GB per hour.

Having already defined the output at 720 by 480, go to the ADVANCED tab, and choose CENTER (CUSTOM SIZE) under the VIDEO ARRANGE METHOD. Use 720 by 352 for letterbox, or 962 by 480 for cropped. You could even choose something in between and do a little of each.

I hope you find this useful.

I have been using MPEG Edit Studio Pro, and have discovered some useful hints and kinks to make this disastrous program useable. Hopefully I can post some of these soon.

Interesting, esp. with the JVC editing software. Keep us up-to-date!

heath

David,
I am very interested in your method of cropping to NTSC for the distribution of tapes. Some 80% of my clients still use 4:3 (see poll at www.longhairmodels.com). I tried the Tsunami TMPGEnec but it won't open the m2t files i downloaded from DVinfo.net/jvc/media. I tried the free version and the trial 2.5 version-the same. Any ideas?
Yoram

Yoram,
Seems like it should work! Close PROJECT WIZARD and make sure you have acceptable DVD parameters at the bottom of the main screen. You can LOAD a configuration file to get initial parameters. (I have tweaked and created my own optimized config files.) Choose BROWSE for VIDEO SOURCE. Click on down arrow on FILES OF TYPE line, and select ALL FILES. Your m2t files should appear. Open the file, click on SETTINGS, choose ADVANCED tab, and use the seetings as I had described. Hey! It worked for me. Good luck!

Dave, thanks for the reply but no avail. When i select the m2t file under Video Source and press Open, i get the message "File ..........PaulMogg_Swan3.m2t can not open or unsupported". Under Help i checked to have Version 2.521.58.169 Core Version 1.98.152. I tried playing with the settings (below Stream Type) but nothing i did helped. What to do?
Yoram

Yoram

Just read a post on doom9 forum. Concerning a problem loading files into TMPGEnc. The suggestion was to increase the priority of directshow in the environment.

TMPGEnc can indeed load mpeg2 files without problems. You can
even convert them to AVI with it if I remember it correctly. Good
find though, since it isn't really advertised anywhere!