SVCD to DVD-R : Scenarist / Maestro / IFOEdit do not agree

[gooshie]

While ago, I was trying to put some SVCDs on DVD-R, but my Pioneer standalone wouldn't play them correctly. I thought I had come to a solution when I figured out what was apparently needed for my Pioneer DV-535 to play those properly was that the MPEG-2 file had to contain the "Sequence Display Extension" where you tell what part of the image the decoder has to use. Now this is something all of you know since SVCD2DVDMPG exists. But once I had found about this trick, I faced another problem that is still very real to me.

Authoring such MPEG-2 (modified SDE) file with Scenarist (basic authoring, no menus, juste one title for my 100Mb video example) gives me a DVD structure (obviously), which, burnt with Nero, plays really fine on my standalone.

The weird thing is that when I author the very same video with Maestro (once again, basic authoring), and I throw the disc in the player, I get the usual SVCD-to-DVDR problem : video is squizzed on the left side...

Seeing this, I had only two explanations :
- the two programs MUX differently, giving me totally different VOBs
- or they AUTHOR differently giving totally different IFOs

After few tests, I figured out the problem was about the IFOs. The muxed video from Maestro, put up with Scenarist's IFOs work just great.

So I went into IFOEdit, and watched for differences. Working on Maestro's output, I stripped all the unused things (it puts VOBs for menus that don't exist, and put a lot of subtitles information), and I get to have the same information that I get with Scenarist's IFOs. I then did a complete check on differences, and found only two differences (that might still be it, but I don't really think so) :
- in VTS_VOBU_ADMAP, VOBU_X start sectors are different from time to time (always 1 sector later)
- after stripping, number of entries in time map (VTS_TMAPTI) is different (Scenarist's and Maestro's = 300, Stripped-Maestro's = 75)

So my problem is "Why don't I get the same video be authored the same way ?!"

You could tell me "don't ask, stick to Scenarist", but Maestro is a little "smoother" on some SVCDs not really standard (GOP structure), and even if, I really need to know why there is a difference.

I've ran my tests between Scenarist and Maestro, but as far as I went, I simply authored the video with IFOEdit for a test, and it didn't work either. So what does Scenarist do that others don't ??

Thanks for your help...

Gooshie

[joepic]

I also have a Pioneer 535 and tried using Maestro for my SVCD's without luck. So if you happen to find something out I would appreciate a post here.

I have not tried Scenarist yet. I gave up on IFOedit long ago. Of course SVCD2DVDMPG+ works for my Pioneer.

Just curious, did you do anything special to get Sceanarist to work for the Pioneer?

Thanks and good luck finding an answer for Maestro.