VCD / SVCD / miniDVD FAQThis is a by no means complete collection of frequently asked questions on VCD and SVCD creation. Admittedly it's not really an FAQ since I don't like the answer, question structure but I'll just mention the problems and give an answer to it. Certain technical terms are explained in the DivX FAQ. Encoding related Flask crashes after a certain
time when using Panasonic Editing related How can I cut my movie? Format related questions How do I burn a VCD that's larger
than 650MB? Playback related The movie plays choppy on my
player
Flask crashes after a certain time when using PanasonicThis is most likely an installation problem. If you have
the plugin properly installed - specify the folder where FlaskMpeg resides
as the Adobe plugin folder - and installed on a clean system - no previous
Panasonic plugin installed or if one was on your system then you have
to remove that first before installing another one - then everything should
work fine. Also... stay to VCD bitrate. Panasonic has a VBV problem when
you increase the bitrate above a certain number which I don't recall.
For better quality I suggest you go to SVCD right away since if a player
can play XVCD it most likely also plays SVCD. The movie plays choppy on my playerMost likely you have a non specs-compliant (S)VCD. If a program bitches (for instance bbMPEG reports errors after muxing, Nero says the file is not compliant) or if you simply went beyond the bitrate limits - 1150kbit/s video & 224kbit/s audio for VCD, 2600kbit/s total for SVCD - then it's highly likely that although the file might play perfectly on your pc your standalone will choke on this files since it was not meant to play such files. Another explanation could be that you used the wrong program to cut the files or set the wrong format in the cutting program. Some programs claim that they are VCD compliant but in fact they are not and the resulting files will either not play at all or play very choppy. For VCDs you can process the movie in iFilmEdit's record mode. You'll first have to convert your VCD back from DAT to MPG format using vcdgear2.0. Thanks to chris for pointing that out. Fast pans are not fluent and/or interlacing is presentThis should be a SVCD problem only. I've tried movies that have incorrect rff flags and in VCD format no interlacing was visible. Thanks to incorrect encoding Flask can't properly extract the 24fps of a movie source in some cases. One solution is to enable the deinterlacer in Flask (I hope you read my advice and set the framerate to 29.97 in such a case... as written in the guides). Another is to use a deinterlacer of the encoder. For instance TMPEGEnc or Heuris have a deinterlacer built-in. In TMPEGEnc you can try to change the Field Order in MPEG Options - Advanced. TMPEGEnc's deinterlacer offers many options.. in fact too many for me to test them all. I'm afraid you'll have to do your own tests since not every movie is encoded the same way so my findings might be different from yours. Which program is best to make a VCDI prefer TMPEGEnc. However that's a personal preference... according to my eyes TMPEGEnc is less blurry than Panasonic and less blocky than bbMPEG.. hence the choice. How many minutes of video can I fit on a VCD / SVCDFor VCD it's simple: CD size in Kilobit (multiply with
1024 to get from MB to KB and with 8 to get from KB to KBit) / 1374 =
number of seconds. For SVCD you divide by (video bitrate + audio bitrate)
to get the playlenght for a single CD. How can I fit my movie on X CDsThe key is bitrate. VCD has fixed bitrate which means you have no choice but to encode using the default settings of 1150kbit/s for video and 224kbit/s for audio, and cut to how many CDs are needed. Every other bitrate will be outside of specs and probably not play. For SVCD you can calculate the bitrate as follows: Number of CDs * CD size * 1024 * 8 / movie length in seconds = bitrate per second. Now subtract the desired audio bitrate from this value and you'll end up with the value for the video bitrate you have to set. Please not that you should encode at least at 1500kbit/s.. otherwise the quality difference to a VCD will be hardly noticeable and you can go for the faster VCD format right away. Which program is best to make a SVCDCCE or TMPEGEnc. The output quality is about the same, TMPEGEnc can be better if you set the right options (like motion search precision... but it'll slow down encoding) but it's way slower. However, considering that CCE SP costs $2500 and TMPEGEnc is free the choice is obvious. TMPEGEnc is also SMP optimized and can do almost everything, cutting, mux/demux, etc. LSX is quite fast, too but the quality is far away from CCE/TMPEGEnc. My Pioneer Player won't properly play my SVCDApparently the Pioneer can't deal with a movie that has a horizontal resolution of 480. Therefore if you have such a player you have to reduce the horizontal resolution to 352. How can I cut my movie?Try TMPEGEnc's MPEG tools. If they fail you'll have to use a commercial alternative as M1/2-Edit or Vitec's Video Clip Pro. Other programs may not be specs compliant and you'll run into synch problems or choppy playback. TMPEGEnc error: Can't open movie.avs.txt - file not foundYou clearly didn't read my guide good enough... the error message betrays you! You tried to load a .avs.txt file which won't work. Your file must end with .avs nothing else. Rename the file to movie.avs. How do I burn a VCD that's larger than 650MB?Burn it as normal.. as long as it's not longer than 74minutes. You don't have to overburn or use 80 minute CDs. What's DVCD?Double Video CD is a more advanced VCD in terms of playlenght. You can store about 90-100 minutes of video on it. However not every player will play them and I don't know how to create them. What's a DAT file?Dat files are slightly modified mpg files that are present on VCDs. To edit them you have to convert them using VCDGear. How do I fix asynch VCDs /SVCDs?If the movie progressively gets asynch there's nothing you can do except to reencode using another program. You can't just change the framerate in an (S)VCD.. since these formats have clearly defined framerates. If the audio is off by the same value you can demux the files using MPEG Tools, vstrip or bbdmux, then use AVI2MPG which is included in bbMPEG as part of the SVCD pack, press start encode without loading a file, then press settings... chose the audio and video file and in the Program Stream Settings you can set startup delays at the bottom. Then set the right program stream type and multiplex again. How do I make a menu for my VCD?You can proceed according to the I-Author guide but select VCD as project type and the menus have to match the resolution of the VCD... that is 352x288/240. How do I fix the reference clock error?Start the TMPG's MPEG tools, go to Optimize VBV, load your file and save it again. You may have to download an old TMPG version from the official English TMPG site. What bitrate should I chose for a VCD?VCD has fixed bitrates for both audio and video: 1150KBit/s for video and 224KBit/s for audio. Anything else is non-standard and known as XVCD. Not every player that plays VCD will play XVCD. What bitrate should I chose for a SVCD?Once again visual perception comes into play. I can't tell you.. you really have to find the best settings out on your own. SVCD can have up to 2600kbit/s video and 224kbit/s audio. You can use lower audio for SVCDs and get a higher video bitrate. To increase the quality encode at 23.976fps rather than 29.97fps and enable to 3:2 or 2:3 pulldown. How can I increase the quality in TMPG?You can increase the DC coefficient precision, increase the motion search accuracy, increase the quality settings if you're using one of the QC modes for bitrate control (QC VBR is my preference). Then you could theoretically mess around with the GOP settings but until I fully understand these I wouldn't dare to touch these. How can I increase the quality in bbMPEG?The advanced settings allow you to mess around and make quite some noise. However.. most I don't understand what most options mean so I suggest if you're interested you'll ask in the bbMPEG usergroup. Of course DC precision, motion search vectors and such things are obvious candidates to change. How do I enable AC3 demux in DVD2AVI?It's enabled by default.. however DD decoding overrides that. You can disable DD decoding by making sure that no audio track is selected in the DD decoding submenu. Can I encode at 23.976fps in CCE?If you could, don't you think I would have written it in the CCE guide? The answer is no. CCE can't set 3:2 pulldown flags. Can I make SVCDs using the Panasonic Encoder?No. The SVCD specs call for MPEG-2 video and the Panasonic encoder only can do MPEG-1. However it's possible that DVD players will still play these discs, but the appropriate name for such discs is XVCD. What is XVCD?eXtended VCD. VCD at higher bitrates or non standard solutions. Most major brand players won't play them, however far eastern players usually play them. Can I have a VCD/SVCD with AC3 sound?No. VCD only support 2 channel mp2. SVCD theoretically supports MPEG-2 multichannel, however there's no Windows software to make these kind of audio tracks. There's some Linux software but before you install Linux I suggest you read the my thoughts on the format. Why does my DVD player not play miniDVDs?Most DVD players will load their player software according to the media type detected and they will load VCD / SVCD software if they detect a CD-R/W. Another problem is that DVD players are slow reading CDs. They can only read CDs at 1x or 2x speed.. 1x is enough for audio CDs and VCDs, 2x is enough for SVCDs. This is the reason why VCD and SVCD have a bitrate limit.. this is due to physical limitations. Only few DVD players have a DVD drive that is capable of the speeds your CD have to turn in case of the high bitrates of a miniDVD. How do I use the SVCD subs on a pc?You can't. Apparently only standalones can use SVCD subs. How do I play an SVCD on my pc?Both WinDVD and DVD Station (which is the software for the Hollywood plus) can play SVCDs. PowerDVD is not SVCD capable. Which player can play SVCD / miniDVD?For miniDVD the answer is easy: Affrey SD 2060 if you replace it's drive with a pc drive (otherwise you'll still have a bitrate limit that's equivalent to the SVCD bitrate limit). For SVCD take a look at the player list at VCDHelp. How can I cut an mps file muxed with I-Author?You can't. I suggest you multiplex the video and audio using bbMPEG or TMPG's MPEG tools, then cut at the appropriate position and demux again using MPEG tools, vstrip or bbdmux - for more information on how to use these tools please read the SVCD guides. CCE encoder always crashes / won't workCCE needs a 3rd generation Celeron (600+MHz), Athlon, Duron, Thunderbird or Pentium3. Pentium 2 and AMD K6 won't work! |