Encoding SVCDs in TMPG using DVDx

DVDx is another of these all-in one programs that have begin to appear lately, but in contrast to most it's not just a few programs glued together, but it's really one single program. The only external software used is the authentication dll but that's included in the package. DVDx is also fully open source and still in heavy development so we may see improvements in the future (better resize and crop for avi output anyone?).

You'll need the following software for this guide:

DVDx
TMPGEnc
VideoServer plugin
Nero - NOTE: Demo version, you can buy the full version online. Homepage

Step 0 - One time setup

To set up the Videoserver, unzip it to its own directory, then copy CM-Avisynth.prm to the directory where you have DVDx. Also, unzip bbmpeg.zip from the videoserver directory to the DVDx folder and do the same for pulldown.zip and wav2mp_1_1.zip. You only have to perform these steps once.

Step 1 - Setting up the source

DVDx has included DVD ripping abilities. Unless traditional tools to encode a DVD directly off the disc DVDx buffers the data and the buffer size is adjustable so it shouldn't be too bad for your drive. However, if you have any doubts about this mechanisms you should use DVD Decrypter to first rip the WHOLE! DVD to your harddisk and select the IFO file on the hardisk instead.

In this step you'll configure important source parameters for your rip.

Step 2 - setting up the output format

In this step you set up DVDx to use the videoserver plugin to frameserve into your encoder. Note: TMPG does 3:2 pulldown when necessary (in step3 you'll be told when this is necessary) so don't activate the pulldown option in the plugin configuration.

Step 3 - encode

All you need to do now is press the encode button in DVDx.

Then start up TMPG and configure it. Make sure you deactivate audio functionality as we're not serving this into TMPG. Then start encoding in TMPG, and make sure you have DVDx still running, including the frameserver (do NOT press stop). After TMPG is done a few other windows will come up, this is due to the audio encoding and multiplexing. You can simply wait until it's done, the only thing remaining to be done is burning.

Step 4 - burn

The last step is burning the video in Nero or a cue/bin capable burning tool.

This document was last updated on 06/19/02