Data Execution Prevention and MPEG vid encode

[chasarumba.livejournal.com]

I don't know if anyone can help with this, but I figured I'd give it a whirl.

I've been using TMPGEnc XPress 3.0 to produce DVD-quality MPEG-2 encodes of my finished vids for a while now, with no problems to speak of. And I'm not even sure what's happening now is related to TMPGEnc, frankly, but whatever, I'm just guessing. I finished a vid with 23.976 source (as per the rather awesome A&E Tech Guide, I edited at 24 fps in Premiere with an adjusted copy of the audio and then changed the framerate of the final AVI and rejoined it to the original audio) and did my DVD render in TMPGEnc, specifying 3:2 pulldown. It rendered fine, but the problems come in dealing with the resulting mpeg. When I even so much as select the file, I get a Data Execution Prevention (DEP) error letting me know that Windows Explorer needs to shut down. Again, this hasn't happened with any other mpegs that I've created in TMPGEnc (never gotten the error before, period) -- just this one using 3:2 pulldown. I managed to burn it to DVD once (after I got the error message, I was able to continue with my DVD burn setup in Nero), but not since. I tried recreating the render; updating to the last build of TMPGEnc XPress 3.0 (in case it was some sort of bug that was fixed); uninstalling my version of ffdshow (from the AMVapp v.2.1) and installing a newer one (don't ask me why I thought that would help...was desperate)...none of those made any difference.

I've been Googling like mad and reading about various problems with SP2/DEP, but nothing that mapped exactly to what I'm experiencing. I'm hesitant to start modifying the DEP settings without understanding what in the hell I'm doing. I've also got a support ticket in with TMPGEnc, but their auto-reply said it could take up to a week to hear back. If anyone is familiar with the problem and has any help to offer, it would be appreciated.

Comments

[absolutedestiny.livejournal.com]

Interesting, I've not seen that issue before (though I havent used xpress 3.0).

One thing you can try is encoding it without the 3:2 pulldown (just have it straight 23.976) and then get the Pulldown gui from doom9 or similar (I think it's a woofwoft app) to add the pulldown to the mpg file. Maybe that will work better.

[chasarumba.livejournal.com]

Bless you for the suggestion. I will give that a shot.

I'll be interested to hear back (whenever) from the TMPGEnc folks to find out if it's something they know about and were able to fix for 4.0.

[doki.livejournal.com]

If that doesn't work, I'd try another video. If you don't have any others edited in 23.976, just AssumeFPS(23.976) with an existing one.

I know this is a weird question, but how many frames are in the video?

[chasarumba.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the idea, doki. I advertently ended up doing something like that -- I tried absolut3destiny's suggestion, and because I'd never used the DoPulldown GUI before, I first re-encoded the mpeg as straight 23.976 with no flags...I didn't realize I'd need to run the audio/video streams separately for DoPulldown. Anyway, *that* mpeg (straight 23.976 with no flags) did not cause the DEP errors when I tried to click on it, etc. Which was good to know, I guess. However, when I separated the streams, used DoPulldown, then muxed them back together...well, the DEP error was back. I don't know *why* pulldown flags (any pulldown flags, it would seem) are causing this, but that seems to be the deal.

But I got a reply from TMPGEnc that actually may have helped. They suggested that, as a workaround, I might try setting "use Windows classic folders" under my folder options and see if that allowed me to manipulate the file without DEP errors/Explorer crashing. I tried that once quickly, and to my surprise, it worked. I didn't have time to try to do anything with the file, but I could click on it safely and hopefully that means I can also drag it around for DVD burning. I kind of don't care whether or not it will play on my computer...so long as I can get it burned when I'm making DVD compilations of my vids, I'm (mostly) happy. For now ;)

On the number of frames question: 4017

[doki.livejournal.com]

"I tried that once quickly, and to my surprise, it worked."

Yeah. The newfangled Explorer reads information about the files it displays, and can crash if you have some sort of bad file.

If someday you care about playing it on your computer... You could try to see what on your system is decoding MPEG2 files with GSpot (http://www.headbands.com/gspot/). Go to System->List Codecs and Other Filters, then sort by Format and look under MPEG2. There may be multiple entries. You can right-click on one and do "Set Filter Merit" to change its likelihood of being picked by the system for use.

I asked about the number of frames because I've seen a bizarre problem when it was 2^n or 2^n-1, I forget. If you'd said 4095 or 4096 I'd have suggested adding a couple of black frames.

[chasarumba.livejournal.com]

Thank you so much for your ideas -- the email from TMPGEnc had similar suggestions, re checking on my system's default MPEG2 decoder. I will definitely have a look at that. I'm not sure what my default is right now, but is there a particular one that's preferred?

[doki.livejournal.com]

I'm not very familiar with the different options so I don't know what's preferred, sorry. But if you have FFDShow installed, you could try changing the MPEG2 setting in the "FFDShow Video Decoder Configuration" tool. You could also try looking at the info here (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/306331).

[doki.livejournal.com]

Oops. When I say "bad file", the file might be okay... but the software that returns information about it may be flawed.