Intermittent pauses in compiled dvd playback

[pcnoob101]

I compiled a DVD with DVDLab with two movies. I played the IFO in WinDVD and one of the movies has intermittent pauses every second. The pause is very short but it makes the video jerky. Does this mean if I burn to a DVD disc I will get the same jerky playback on my dvd player? The movie plays fine when I play the mpeg in WinDVD. What can be causing this jerky playback?

[Krispy Kritter]

Software glitch? Try another player first, such as PowerDVD. If the problem occurs on multiple players, then there would appear to be an issue with your files. If it only occurs with WinDVD, then you most likely have software error.

[mats.hogberg]

Sounds like a frame rate conversion gone bad to me...

/Mats

[guns1inger]

Either converting PAL to NTSC or NTSC to PAL, or badly encoding 23.976 material to 29.97 fps will do this.

What was your source, what did you do to it, and how ?

[pcnoob101]

The movie was downloaded as an image file and is in svcd format I believe. The movie plays fine as an mpeg file before I compile it into a dvd. It is PAL and I compiled it with DVDLab as a PAL project. I used mpeg-vcr to save the mpeg from the image file to my HDD. Any ideas?

[GreyDeath]

Try to demux the video into an .m2v file using TMPGEnc (Tools) or some other program, then use DGPulldown to change the flags from 25fps to 29.97fps. Use the Pulldown file as your video and keep the audio.

[guns1inger]

Are both PAL, or have you mixed PAL and NTSC on the same disc (possible, but outside spec - then again, so is SVCD on a DVD) ?

Do you have a PAL capable DVD player ?

Again, note that SVCD resolution is outside the DVD space, and not all players play discs like this well - some won't play them at all.

[pcnoob101]

GreyDeath, I did what you suggested but Im still getting the problem when I play it in WinDVD. I have not yet tried to burn to dvd and tested in my player, because I am assuming I will get the same type of playback. This time I only put the one movie Im having problems with in DVDLab when I compiled it.

My dvd player seems to be able to handle most formats. I used to just burn images I downloaded straight to CD-R and never ran into any problems.

I don't understand how the movie plays fine as an mpeg, but after I compile it, it is all choppy. Is it the software Im using? Any other ideas? I appreciate the help.

[guns1inger]

Changing the pulldown isn't going to help on it's own anyway.

Which version of DVD Lab ?

[pcnoob101]

Im using DVDLab version 1.3.

[pcnoob101]

The mpeg is svcd format. Ive read that any kind of encoding loses quality, but do you think it would help if I encoded to dvd spec?

I am extracting the svcd mpeg from the image file with mpeg-vcr. I am merging two mpegs and then saving as an mpeg2 stream. Should I be doing this differently or with different software?

I just realized that when I merge and save the files, I am actually encoding with mpeg-vcr. I have not been changing any settings and it has been encoding to svcd. Should I be encoding to dvd? I can post screenshots of gspot and the encoding dialog box if that would be helpful.

[guns1inger]

If it is going to encode, you may as well go to DVD spec. Look at the source resolution, look at What is DVD (top left corner of this page), and choose the best DVD resolution for your source.

[pcnoob101]

Actually I've read that womble does not re-encode the video when you merge two files together and save it. Anyways, I converted the file to dvd spec and tried burning to dvdr. The pauses still appeared at different parts in the movie, but not the whole way through like it was before. There were also parts of the movie where audio was way out of sync. I'm just going to assume there's something wrong with the file itself and that there is no way to fix it, or if there was a way it would not be worth the effort to figure it out. Thanks anyways.

[Krispy Kritter]

Personally, it isn't worth any effort to convert and burn downloaded files. It just wastes time and discs. If you have many files such as this, it would be well worth the money to get divx certified dvd player. Then just burn the files to dvd as data (6 700mb files per SL disc) and play.