A Better Way To Make an SVCD ?

[wulf109]

The method I'm currently using is to open the VOB file directly in Tmpeg and encode to SVCD without going thru DVD2AVI. I find the results are far better. I get no stuttering,motion artifacts,or macroblocking. The picture qaulity seem stunning to me.
There are two problem opening a VOB in Tmpeg. First it can only open one VOB file. When you rip do it as one large file or two equal size large files for movies. I'm usually encoding ST episodes so file size isn't a problem. Second,many VOB files contain PTS pointers which trick Tmpeg into thinking the file has ended long before it has. To get around that use Mpeg Tools in Tmpeg. Use simple-demux to create an m2v and ac3 file. Then use simple-remux to create an mpg from those two files. The new mpg contains the video and audio at DVD quality but no VOB extras. Tmpeg can open the new mpg and encode it to SVCD without any problem. It would seem to me at least that DVD2AVI introduces all the encoding problems that people attribute to Tmpeg.

[sterno]

This actually matches something I was guessing but hadn't yet had a chance to test. I've found that converting VOBs to VCDs caused me to lose sync here and there, it looked like media problems (I had no problem with SVCDs). When I burned to other CD-R/RW discs I had problems in the exact same places. Reconverting with different VCD templates gave me problems in different places.

So I tried capturing some MPEG2 at DVD-resolution with a pretty high bitrate, and it encoded to VCD flawlessly. I was pretty sure that my problems had something to do with the frameserving. Now that I see somebody else saying that the results are better without DVD2AVI I have a little more motivation to try it.

[adam]

Skipping dvd2avi is not a good idea. You are missing out on one of svcds most important features, the support for ntscfilm. Almost all dvds store the movie at 24fps and telecine the video to 29.97fps as it plays. This saves you %20 bitrate and the exact same thing can be done with svcd. With dvd2avi you can use forced film on almost all dvds and export your movie at 23.976fps. Otherwise you have to do an inverse telecine (takes a loooong time) or encode at 29.97fps interlaced (much lower quality plus has lots more problems with interlacing and such.) %20 more bitrate to play with makes such a noticable difference when you have such a low max bitrate cap, ex:less than 2.6mbits. Its really a shame not to take advantage of it since it actually requires less work and causes less problems than regular ntsc. I have never, ever had any issues with dvd2avi causing "stuttering, motion artifacts, or macroblocks", and I don't see how any of these could be caused by your frameserver. I can assure you that, whether dvd2avi is the culprit or not, the problems you mention are not normal. I can assure you that with proper methods and adequate bitrate these problems are not normal.

I can only really see your method being viable when source and output formats are going to be pal or where the dvd is not stored as film. Even in these cases I still think dvd2avi solves more problems than it introduces, but of course always use whatever method works best for you. But I do recommend giving dvd2avi another chance so that you can take advantage of forced film.