AVI fine on G5, Toast 7 DivX DVD jerky on TV

[mkgordon]

Greetings. Yesterday I bought a DivX certified DVD player - the Philips DVP-3040.

The DVP-3040:

12Bit/108MHz Video DAC
192kHz/24-bit audio DAC
Plays DVD, DVD+R/RW, DVD-R/RW, (S)VCD, DivX 3.11/4/5/6x

I took it home and prepared a DivX DVD to play in it.

I burned 12 350Mb AVI files to a DVD using Toast 7.0.2's DivX DVD function on my Pioneer DVD-RW DVR-K05 burner.

I dragged the files into ffmpeg X to get the file type info:

VIDEO: [XVID] 640x352 12 bpp 23.976fps 1109.3kbps (135.4 kbyte/s) audiocodec framecopy (format=55 chans=2 rate=48000 bits=0 B/s=14722 sample-0)

MPEG Streamclip's Show Stream Info:

Stream: aaaaaaaaaaaaa.avi

Duration: 0:39:28
Data Size: 346.52 MB
Bit Rate: 1.23 Mbps

Video Tracks:
Generic MPEG-4, 640 × 352, 23.976 fps

Audio Tracks:
MPEG Layer-3 Audio stereo, 48 kHz

Stream Files:
aaaaaaaaaaaaa.avi (346.52 MB)


Toast "Edit" info

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa.avi
Video: DivX 6.0, 624 x 352, 23.98 fps
Audio: MPEG Layer-3 Audio, Stereo, 48000 Hz

The AVIs had previously been played with no quality issues on my iMac G5 and my Powerbook G4. I was overjoyed when Toast 7.0.2 burned the files to DVD without doing any encoding despite DivX Encoding in the Toast burn window being set to Automatic. I had a DVD ready to play in about 12 minutes.

So imagine my disappointment when the DVD playback was jerky, especially on panning shots. Even some of the still shots seemed to have some stop-motion happening.

I wondered if this was a PAL/NTSC issue. As far as I can tell, the AVIs were recorded in an NTSC environment. My TV and DVD player can both do either PAL or NTSC, but the NTSC flavour is not North American standard. I had burned the DVD with Toast set to burn NTSC. I tried changing the DVD player's NTSC/PAL settings, but it had no apparent effect on the quality. I reburned the DVD with Toast set to burn PAL. Made little if any difference.

Can anyone suggest a fix? I'm hoping whatever I have to do doesn't involve hours of recoding video - not having to do that was one of the main incentives to buying the new DVD player.

Thanks!


Mike

[mkgordon]

Hey everybody!

No replies? How come? Has this question been dealt with before and I'm just not seeing it?

Would really appreciate some help with this.

Mike

[SERBIAN]

Try to re-encode your file in Toast since it has NTSC film frame rate /23.978/...Toast should make new file with NTSC frame rate of 29.97...Maybe thats why your player has troubles...Just guessing...

[markatisu]

Shouldnt your player just be able to read a Data directory?

If you try burning just a data dvd in Toast with the avi files in it that should work, do not encode them or force them into mpg.

The problem you are seeing most likely is the field order/interlaced part is getting messed up (Top Field and Bottom Field, Deinterlaced and Interlaced), I have seen this problem many times after doing PC encoding work and not paying attention to which order it is

Stuttering during motion, things not moving right, just overall crappy video.

The reason you dont see it while watching it on the Mac is because the codecs of the program you are using to play it compensate for it and the monitor does not show the same thing as a TV, same issue with IRE and colorspace I think as things will appear lighter or darker on a monitor at times than on a TV.

[mkgordon]

Much later - I figured out what was happening and why the video was jerky.

Once again, from ffmpegX Info:

VIDEO: [XVID] 640x352 12 bpp 23.976fps 1109.3kbps (135.4 kbyte/s) audiocodec framecopy (format=55 chans=2 rate=48000 bits=0 B/s=14722 sample-0)

I got an email from Philips after a long delay (in July!)

====================

Dear Mr. Gordon,

Thank you for your recent e-mail.

With regards to your query, please ensure that the following criteria are adhered to:

- DivX movies with "packet bitstream" are NOT supported.

- Make sur the bitrate (kb/s) is not higher than 1000.

- DivX files which are encoded with 23/23.97 FPS should playback when re-encoded as 25 FPS.

We trust . . . [snipped]


====================

From my understanding, XVID files have "packet bitstream". As you can see, my file was XVID.

When re-encoded to DIVX, the files play with no problem.

I looked into getting a hacked firmware upgrade that would support XVID and "packet bitstream", but I couldn't figure out how to burn the firmware upgrade using Toast (the instructions were for Windows/Nero users) and nobody answered my requests for help.

Anyone who can help me at this point would be greeted as a hero.


Thanks,


Mike Gordon

[markatisu]

email me at markatisu@he-man.org the instructions and I will try to tell you how to burn it in TOAST. I have both a Mac and a PC so I can easily go between the 2 to see what needs to be done.