Non Compliant = No Play?!

[thehessian]

Quick question....

Can someone give me a scenario where I might burn a non compliant VCD in Nero (where it prompts me that the VCD/XVCD ect is non compliant and I click *go ahead*) might play in my CD player?

I swear in the past I was able to burn VCDs to CD (as vcd or svcd) even if they were non compliant and they played with no problem?!?

I may be totally wrong since I can't seem to find any of the CDs I burned or verify that now, but as of late I've run into a few VCDs when burned as VCD (non compliant) I'm getting corrupt CDs when I try playing them.

I was under the impression I only needed to worry about them being compliant if I was going to play them on some sort of DVD player (not my computer).

These movies play fine on my HD so I don't think its a codec problem, nor my media, or the speed I'm burning at, but maybe something else like FPS or bitrate the VCDS are at?

For example I have a VCD thats 352x320 (29fps) and 59340kpbs.

When I try burning it as VCD in Nero I get prompted it isn't compliant so I continue...then when I try playing this movie on the CD it won't play or acts like the data is corrupt.

What am I missing here besides a brain ?

Is there a scenario where the VCD will still play on my CD player? Also might it be because the bitrate is high and my CD player is unable to play it?

Also, one more question lets say my player (TDK burner 4800b) might not be able to play XVCD or higher bitrate CDs, but still be able to burn these? (I don't have a 2nd drive to check the burns on).

Sorry but the information on this site is overwhelming and sometimes hard to find specific answers.

thanks.

[bugster]

Your PC should be able to play ANY XVCD you can throw at it. Only if your CD drive has problems reading mode2 burnt CD's will you experience any sort of difficulties, but even this is unlikley. Check the disks out on a Mates PC, I suppose its just possible your CD rom is on the way out. New ones (readers) are dirt cheap these days.

[thehessian]

Your PC should be able to play ANY XVCD you can throw at it.

I'm still confused just why this CD won't play on my computer from the CD versus any other CD I've burned in the past year...

Looking at the stats on the mpg file for the movie it shows it as

352x240
29.970 fps
1150 kilobits/sec (avg bitrate)
32KHz mixed mode, 112bps layer II audio

One other thing in Nero it gave me the standard error message saying the file has *stream encoding* which I ignored and burned this MPG file as a XVCD.

Check the disks out on a Mates PC, I suppose its just possible your CD rom is on the way out. New ones (readers) are dirt cheap these days.

This is about a year old drive though I've burned close to 1000 cds on it I bet so far. I'm not sure how long drives last, but I would surely hope much longer than a year.

I tried the CDS on another drive and they gave me the same results...My guess is the burn went bad, but why?

(still searching forum)

[thehessian]

ok let me also add that I just tried burning the CD to image file and then loading the image file into a virtual drive and playing it..

I get the same results (corrupt video and audio) as on the CD??! could this be a bad codec problem then?

or any suggestions on how to debug what might be wrong?

[bugster]

Looking at the stats on the mpg file for the movie it shows it as

352x240
29.970 fps
1150 kilobits/sec (avg bitrate)
32KHz mixed mode, 112bps layer II audio

The audio stream being at 32khz is the only thing there that makes it XVCD. I can't see why that should cause it any problems but just in case you might want to try re-encoding a small section with normal 44.1khz audio.

[thehessian]

Looking at the stats on the mpg file for the movie it shows it as

352x240
29.970 fps
1150 kilobits/sec (avg bitrate)
32KHz mixed mode, 112bps layer II audio

The audio stream being at 32khz is the only thing there that makes it XVCD. I can't see why that should cause it any problems but just in case you might want to try re-encoding a small section with normal 44.1khz audio.

ok I'm begining to think the header is just corrupt or causing the problems on this mpg because I can rencode it with the exact same stats as above and it works fine.

I tried running VCDGEAR v3.50a on it to fix mpg errors and it pads the file a lot and stops halfway, so my guess is the files header is corrupt somewhere.

Now I can save myself a full headache and just re-encode the whole thing or anyone recommend a program I might run on it to fix this problem? Also anyone have an idea why VCDGEAR v3.50a stops halfway?

[bugster]

Bite the bullet and re-encode with TmpGenc. You might lose a little quality but I doubt you would notice it!

[thehessian]

Bite the bullet and re-encode with TmpGenc. You might lose a little quality but I doubt you would notice it!

ok did that and it worked except for the fact the movie shows a different time versus the real time but plays fine.

Sounds like it was maybe put together wrong (maybe originally in two parts). Is there a fix for length of movie or a way to edit header easily?

[bugster]

There may well be but I am not aware of it. If I was you I would just be happy to have got it to play properly. If you really do want to fix the remaining problem try a forum search. I seem to remember one or two similiar questions recently.