Someone posted an ESPN Chinese MPG video clip on a newsgroup, but MS Media Player (V10) was not able to play it. However, CyberLink PowerDVD played it ok. I wanted to convert the clip to a WMV file so I could send it to some friends. TMPGEnc 3.0 XPress loads the MPG file, but can only display the first frame.

I used the demultiplex tool that comes with XPress and produced M1V and MP2 files; both of these files can be played seperately by Media Player. I then used Windows Movie Maker and found that by importing the files one at a time, I could produce the desired WMV video clip, which is able to be played by Win Media Player.

Why was TMPGEnc 3.0 XPress unable to process the file? The original MPG file is 1370 KB in length, and I will gladly send it to someone for examination. Or, what software package should I have that would create a report that lists the video and audio properties of the file.

It was simply a matter of the environmental settings being wrong. Sadly, the Express version is not as "tweakable" as the older Plus versions.

The MPEG codecs needed to be at the top priority.

It's always a problem when you use video source that you did not create. You're at the mercy of relying on other people to be intelligent about encoding, which is less common than it should be.

Thank you for your help. With your comments in mind, I went to the XPress "Input plug-in setting" tab and unchecked the MPEG file reader in the "Standard input plug-in" in box. That did the trick and TMPGEnc XPress is now able to process the video clip.