Why does VCD stutter?

[JPHenry]

Finally got my first VCD to burn today - made the BIN/CUE files with VCDEasy and then used CDRWin to burn onto a disk with my HP200i. Because it's trial version I was only allowed to burn at 1x (but everywhere I read, this seems to be a OK.)

Disc was made successfully and it loads right up into PowerDVD.

But about three times in it - it skips, or stutters, - no audio problems, just a little video glitch. The glitches are not there in the original MPG file.

Is there a common reason this sort of thing happens?

Thanks for any help!

[Olli]

Are you converting an NTSC source to PAL or vice versa ?

[JPHenry]

No. It's to NTSC.

I looked around here and found out that sometimes it's the media that can cause skipping.

I'm using these cheap OfficeMax discs (I think they were Spinmation - or Spin-somthing and they said 32x on them)

Could that have something to do with it? Haven't had a problem with them before. Read somewhere that TDKs are the best for music and video.

I've found the lists here of DVD players and capture cards extremely useful. Is there some kind of equivalent for CD-R, CD-RW media - a list that says which is best, etc.?

Thanks

[JPHenry]

OK.

Did some more experimenting and it doesn't make sense -

The VCD worked fine in my friend's Toshiba SD-P1500 (a little portable DVD player).

But I noticed that where the glitches were on my home computer (PowerDVD on Pent. 4, 1.8GHz, 512MB) there was a split second where the picture went sort of fuzzy - almost as if it had gone out of focus - but it didn't glitch like it did on the PC at home.

Does this sound familiar?

[energy80s]

Does it play OK in Windows Media Player?

[JPHenry]

For some reason, I couldn't get Windows Media Player (7 on XP PRO) to play the VCD. Tried all sorts of things but couldn't get it to load the MPG file off the disc.

In PowerDVD, you just pop in the disc with the program already running and it automatically loads it.

However, I did try it on my other computer and got it to run under the Creative Player (comes with a Nomad Jukebox) - file played perfectly (although for some reason it skipped the title card .mpg image I had) - and had 0 skips in it.

This, along with the fact that it played fine in my friend's portable DVD player leads me to believe that there might be something wrong with PowerDVD when it comes to playing VCDs.

Anyone else have this experience? Is there a "BEST" program to watch these under?

Thanks for all your help!

[puertorican138]

WinDVD is the best for playing (S)VCD.