how to play seamless loop svcd's

[markwest]

I tried searching, but haven't been able to find a solution... I am in desperate need of some good advice concerning looped play of SVCDs. Here's the problem: for many years, I've been playing advertisement slideshows on monitors inside a restaurant, created using Sony Vegas in MPEG2 format and then recorded onto SVCD. The DVD player- an old CyberHome CH-DVD 500 had repeat buttons that not only worked on SVCDS, but also created seamless transitions (provided that the end of your slideshow was identical to the start). In other words, there was no delay, flash, blackout or other visible glitch that would show the SVCD is looped. After many years of good service, the Cyberhome is acting up and I need to replace it with a new player. Problem is, all players I tried have a very visible flash or blackout (although very brief, less than half a second) that does not look very professional. I tried recording with VCDEasy using the "play forever" option and it does play forever but with the same problem. How can I play custom slideshows without having theis split second visible glitch in between loops? Any advice? thanks!

[jman98]

I'm not sure where this "flash" is occuring. Is it between each clip or only at the very end when the disc goes back to the beginning? If it's at the end, well, there's nothing you can do about that. If it's between each clip, you should note that VCDEasy defaults to 2 seconds pause between video segments and you have to manually change that to 0 seconds.

Dude, SVCD is really old technology by now. You live in the USA. You have no excuse for still doing things this way. You're not some guy in India who can't afford to spend 30 dollars on a DVD burner. Consider making a DVD. Let's say you have 6 clips and they play in this order on SVCD:
1 2 3 4 5 6
and then you go back to the start. With the extra space on a DVD, you could do this if you had to:
1 2 3 4 5 6 1 2 3 4 5 6 1 2 3 4 5 6 etc.
and probably be able to repeat the clips 6 or 7 times because of the extra disc space before you had to cycle back through to the beginning of the disc. You can make DVDs that repeat forever. The ancient DVD Maestro program actually used to do this by default so I know it's possible, but I don't know specifically how to do this with other DVD authoring programs.

[markwest]

jman, first thanks for your advice. The split second blackout in question does happen the at the very end when the disc goes back to the beginning. It is actually a split second black screen that looks like a quick flash since the scenes preceding it (end of disc) and following it (beginnning of disc) are anything but pitch black. Anyway, the reason I'm still using SVCD's is that they're much quicker to make vs. DVD's (I do have a DVD burner btw), they cost much less (I do have to make a new one every 2-3 days) and the quality of SVCD on regular CRT is still great. Speaking of DVD's I did record one to experiment with and I was experiencing the same "glitch" when looping as with SVCD's.

[jman98]

Speaking of DVD's I did record one to experiment with and I was experiencing the same "glitch" when looping as with SVCD's.

Well, my point was that with DVDs, like I tried to illustrate, you could repeat the same segments 6 or 7 times before having to go back to the beginning of the disc, so it would at least lessen the occurance of the flash you are seeing.

[markwest]

your're right, however my clips are between 2-3 minutes long so I can also do this with SVCD's. Anyway, I was playing around with couple of players and discovered that using point A to B repeat works much better than whole track repeat. The flash is gone but the transition is still a bit visible. Oh well...

[tomlee59]

One other option is to use an old pc/laptop instead of a standalone player. VLC and other software players use decent-sized buffers, so the loop back glitch might not be visible. Just one more thing to experiment with in your spare time...

[ZZTech]

You can use vcdimager on linux or with Cygwin on Windows to create looping VCDs. There are details here: http://zztools.blogspot.com. These do not flash during the transitions.

[jman98]

ZZTech - very interesting post. Be warned that in the past I tried to use CDRDAO and could never get it to work with my burners Your mileage may vary.

[ZZTech]

Hi jman98 - cdrdao works ok for my hardware on Windows XP with Cygwin. I will add the setup instructions for cdrdao to http://zztools.blogspot.com when I get a chance. ZZTech.