i made a lengthy answer for the above question but i came back and deleted it. because the problem is solved!!!! thank god. after replacing my lagarith sources with huffyuv sources my encoders no longer crash! for once i had a suspicion and it was right. lol. i do not know why lagarith was crashing my encoders and never will. but at least the problem is solved. however i do not think i will be able to use cce for the encode because according to the timecode shown in the front it is missing 14 seconds. i have heard of cce chopping seconds off before does anyone know if there is a fix for this? anyhow i can still encode it in tmpg with no problem. all that is left is to adjust the subs to appease the good people of ot.com.lol seriously though i owe you guys at least good subs that will be up to your approval. so i will experiment and post pics until we all agree its as good as it gets. thankyou ot......fricking awesome.com