Jerky Playback with Xvid - Has anyone fully solved this yet?

[yorkie98]

Hi,
I'm still having (and i gather i'm not alone), problems with Xvid to DVD conversion. At all stages of the conversion process, everything seems fine.
Even playing the final vobs in PowerDVD is fine but once put onto disc, the picture freezes for a second or two at unspecific intervals then quickly catches up. This only seems to apply with standalones.
I have tried dozens of different things which have been recommended in this forum, and various combinations including just about all of them at once, but still this problem persists.
I have tried:

Various codecs including FFdshow but settled on Koepi's 04/10/2002
The Four CC trick
Changing the priority of the DS filter in Tmpgenc to +3 and -1
Re-encoding to various other formats.
Frame serving
Creating a separate audio and video stream to encode from.
Different authoring and burning software.

Still getting the exact same pauses in the exact same place every time and this only happens with Xvid. All other formats are fine.

It seems as if there is some inherent corruption or difficult picture information carried in the Xvid files which survive transcoding any number of times but seem to show up only in a standalone player.

Someone surely must know how to solve this one. I have been trying for weeks now and i'm pulling my hair out.
Thank goodness for DVD-RW, i'd have had over 50 coasters by now.

Any help will be very much appreciated.

Yorkie.

[Don2050]

What is the framrate of the source Xvid file ?

[LSchafroth]

I have a Xvid to VCD problem too. When I play the final MPG1 files on my PC they are smooth, perfect.

When I put them to disc, I get blocks all over and chirping sound. It's never in the same spot either. I gave up after a week of trying and 8 discs wasted.

LS

[yorkie98]

I have tried Pal, 30Fps and 24Fps NTSC. The framerate is irrelevant. Any Xvid source causes freezing of the video on standalones after conversion but plays perfectly on the PC at all stages of conversion, even the final Vobs and the Finished DVD play 100% fine but in standalones, the freezing happens. Just can't understand why.

[Gurm]

Nobody likes to hear this, and I'm sure I'll get flamed...

But it's because XVID is crap.

It's based on pirated code stolen from Microsoft by hackers, and is now developed open-source.

Just finding a codec that will PLAY XVID properly on your PC is an exercise in pain.

- Gurm

[Icu2]

Hi everyone about the beeps and noies.. i had the same problem..but what i found out it was..that it is the burning speed..well for me it was anyway..i know u hate hearing this but burn at a slower speed i use 2 be able to burn at 24x and that worked fine with my dvd player..but now it is like 4x that is after going down to 12 and 8 but yeah its a 4x that i have 2 burn at. It isnt ur burner..i dont think..it is ur standalone dvd player i dont really know much about it but the slower burning speed should fix the problem

put simpely...burn slower even nkow ur burner says 52x or 48x or wateva just burn at 4x to be safe or even 12x is ushally safe

i hope this works reply back and tell me if it did[/quote]

[yorkie98]

Well i'm talking about DVDR so the speed issue is not relevant. Besides, I have done burns at 1,2 and 4X but the freezes still happen in exactly the same place.

What I can't understand is after encoding to Mpeg2 the file plays perfectly, after creating Vobs, these play perfectly and when I play the resulting DVDR in the PC, this plays perfectly too, so I can see that every frame has been encoded and is fine but as soon as you play it on a standalone, it acts like huge chunks of frames are missing.
I would have expected that if you get a perfect Mpeg file, this should play fine once authored but for a strange reason, anything from an Xvid source gives this problem.

On this basis, i do have to agree that the Xvid format cannot be all that good and a very large flaw in it has obviously been found.
IMHO, there was never much wrong with Divx so why such a shift over to Xvid has happened is a mystery.

I Have used a clean install of windows with only the minimum codecs and software required to do the job, this did not help.
I have even tried converting to HuffyUV, then Svcd then to DVDR, checked for freezing at every stage and it still does the same, falls over in the standalone.
I have now tried over 100 different conbinations of methods, software, codecs, fixes, conversions and every burn has shown the exact same feezes in exactly the same places when played.
There must be someone who is doing perfect Xvid 2 DVDR so how is it being done?? what's the secret?

[vmesquita287]

Check if the source is 23.976 fps. If it is, you have to pulldown to 29.97 fps. Search around for pulldown.exe and use like this:

pulldown myfile.m2v myfile(pulldown).m2v

Import myfile(pulldown).m2v in your favorite DVD Authoring application, and now it should work. Doing this does not increase the filesize.

A little bit of history, for those who doesn't know. XVid is an open-source effort to create a free MPEG4 codec. It came from Project Mayo, *not* from the stolen MPEG4 codec form Microsoft. The stolen one was Divx 3.11. Project Mayo was the first efford to create an open source MPEG4 codec, but when DivXNetworks decided to go commercial, a few developers joined their efforts and the pieces of code they still had to go on. This iniciative was called XVid.
It's not right to say that has been a shift over, since DivX is still widely used. Some people shifted over to it because the think it gives more quality, crispier images, or simply because it's open-source and free. But it's hard to came to a conclusion about which one is better, DivX or Xvid, IMO.

[]'s
Vmesquita

[Gurm]

The fact remains that due to licensing, the XVID people will not compile their own code. This means that you have to rely on some video geek's personal favorite settings for a compiled codec that may or may not work for 99% of the video out there.

For what it's worth, you WILL eventually find one that works... but it may take three or four tries.

But DO try the pulldown thing, I hadn't even thought to suggest that.

- Gurm