more about SVCD ff and rew, expert commentary welcome

[Auric]

First I tackled with my Philips DVD711, no ff or rew even after adding blank scandata.dat in the ext folder.

Then tested encoding the streams with Ligos LSX-LE plugin for Premiere. Surprisingly Ff and rew started to work on Philips DVD711.

Then purchased Yelo 800. Big surprise, no ff or rew even that the discs were now ok on Philips.

Then added blank scandata.dat in the ext folder. Now have ff and rew also on Yelo 800.

But the big question: why can't Nero provide correctly formatted information for scandata.dat

Clearly this information is needed. I want to see the correct lenght of the track and the remaining playtime and the player calculates this based on the scandata.dat file. If the file is blank nothing can be calculated.

THis is not satisfactory, we have to ask about this issue from the maker of Nero.

Meanwhile, is there anyway to get properly formatted scandata.dat information and add it manually? I already tried VCDimagerGUI and tried to extract the scandata.dat file but the lenght is not correct and ff and rew does not work.

Anybody have a working solution for scandata.dat?

(Thanks for aldus4 who helped in this matter, I can now ff and rew even if I can't see the correct lenght of the tracks nor the remaining playtime)

[hvr]

well, I don't know, if you regard this as expert commentary, but since I have gotten to know the svcd specs quite well I guess I may be qualified...
(nb: I've developed vcdimager...)

forget about nero... they don't (seem to) have the experience required for getting nero to create proper SVCD's.

btw, why did you try to extract the scandata.dat from a vcdimager created image?!?

that's like buying a new car for just pulling out its gears in order to replace the ones in your old rusty car; instead of using the new car...

the scandata.dat is closely related to the disc structure and TOC entries of the authored disc... you can't simply take it from another disc and expect it to work flawlessly with another image... even if the mpeg streams are the same... the sector addresses won't match the original scanpoints...

using a blank scandata.dat isn't any better... this may just divert attention of the playing device from a possibly faulty SEARCH.DAT file... some players react well to it, some don't... philips ones surely won't

btw, and there are other issues beside scandata/search.dat as well: compliancy of the program streams!
The specs require your SVCD streams to include scan data offsets for aiding ff/fr; but there seem to exist 2 formats for those... vcdimager warns if it's missing or malformed...
sequence headers are sometimes required as well for ff/rf

and then there's still the possibility of your firmware being buggy... sometimes ff/rf behaviour improves after a firmware upgrade...

btw, have you ever tested using a vcdimager generated bin/cue image directly?!? if not, I'd suggest you try vcdimager easy with the latest vcdimager beta (0.7.9).... and be sure not to use nero for burning the bin/cue... there have been reported problems that it screws up bin/cue svcd images... this problem may have been fixed with the latest one, but I haven't got enough confirmations yet...

[duck712]

On 2001-08-09 04:14:26, hvr wrote:
<TABLE BORDER=0 ALIGN=CENTER WIDTH=85%><TR><TD><font size=-1>Quote:</font><HR size=1 color=black></TD></TR><TR><TD><FONT SIZE=-1><BLOCKQUOTE>
btw, have you ever tested using a vcdimager generated bin/cue image directly?!? if not, I'd suggest you try vcdimager easy with the latest vcdimager beta (0.7.9).... and be sure not to use nero for burning the bin/cue... </BLOCKQUOTE></FONT></TD></TR><TR><TD><HR size=1 color=black></TD></TR></TABLE>

I have done this (and burned it with CDRwin), and unfortunately it didn't fix the FF/RW problem with SVCD on my Philips DVD712. Are there any special settings that I should use in VCDimagerEasy?

You also mentioned the search.dat. Does vcdimager create a correct one?

Doe you think that GOP-settings may be related to this problem? Tmpgenc and CCE have settings to 'close gop'. Would this help?

BTW: nice job on developing vcdimager!

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: duck712 on 2001-08-09 04:52:22 ]</font>

[Auric]

Thanks very much for the information, I'd consider that quite expert!

I did try to burn the bin that came out of the process of vcdimager but I had only Nero available and the resulting disk choke my Yelo 800 -player.

I think that the Ligos LSX-LE created streams might be ideal to use with vcdimager as they cured the ff and rew on my Philips DVD711. I didn't see any warnings when vcdimager performed the build.

I start to see the complexity of this whole thing and I appreciate the information you give. I'm sure things will improve as there seems to be capable persons tackling the issue.

BTW: Yelo 800 is capable of superimposing the remaining playtime of the track on the screen, very cool feature.
With blank scandata.dat it shows only lots of zeros. Other players might be able to do the same but I haven't done enough testing yet.

Good Luck with the vcdimager!

[hvr]

I haven't tried tmpgenc/cce myself yet, I'd suggest you compare the output of

vcdxminfo.exe --generic-info --dump-aps yourmpeg.mpg

for an mpeg stream with closed GOPs and one without...

as to SEARCH.DAT; vcdimager tends to create a correct one ..provided the mpeg stream has proper access point sectors...

you can always dump the contents of search.dat/scandata.dat by running vcddebug over the created .bin file...

--

[digvid]

I have used CCE, TMPGEnc, bbMpeg, and LSX for encoding, CDMotion, Nero, I-Author, and VCDImager for authoring, and Nero, CDRWin, Easy CD-Creator, and FireBurner for burning. With all of these SVCD's, FF/RW did not work properly on my player (Philips DVD-711) unless there was less than 40 minutes of video on the disc!

- digvid

[rayjr13]

I think hvr just called Nero a rust bucket... I don't think I can ever melt with it again. I don't want to be seen driving a bucket...I'll stick wit my Lamborghini VCDiabloImager

[Medical]

@ digVid !

I have exactly the same problem. longer SVCD clips
don't play on my DVD 751 (Philips).
I am afraid it has something to do with the player
itself and not with the mpeg-files we created.
Unfortunatly I don't have any solutions.
I already wrote Philips some e-mails...I will see if
they answer.

Med.

[digvid]

Please let me know if Philips responds!

[Auric]

I managed to use VCDimagerEasy to create SVCD. After I burned it with CDRWIN -demo the disc now plays beautifully on Yelo 800.

The player now calculates the remaining playbacktime correctly and presents it on the screen with very professional looking manner, the numbers run backwards and stop at 00:00:00 where the playback of the track ends.

However, with Philips DVD711, i get incorrect lenght. The player counts the time but shows a 54 sec clip to be only about 35 sec. Ff and rew work, though, so I think I can live with it.

Hvr, how about offering your work to Ahead GmbH? I think they need it.

Also, is it possible to incorporate a menupage using VCDimagerEasy?

[Medical]

@ digvid:

Philips responded writing me that the DVD751 originally
was not created to play SVCDs although it is able
to play them any special feature (like FF/Rew.) are
not supported...

Well, because I am able to FF/Rew. SVCDs (clips which
are shorter than about 35-40 minutes) I'm not sure if
the person answering my question is competent enough...


@ all:

Auric's posting sounds promising! Anyone else tried this
so far???

Thanks,
Medical!

[Auric]

All struggling with Philips -players, go grab a copy of Ligos encoder, there's demoversion of both their plug-in for Premiere 5/6 and also a stand-alone encoder.

I use the plug-in (I bought it because it's about ten times faster than TMPG!!! and, yes, the ff and rew started to work immediately on my Philips after encoding with Ligos.

Needless to mention the picture quality is superb, so you really get what you pay for (I don't work for Ligos even if it sounds so).

http://www.ligos.com

BTR: Auric

[hvr]

<TABLE BORDER=0 ALIGN=CENTER WIDTH=85%><TR><TD><font size=-1>Quote:</font><HR size=1 color=black></TD></TR><TR><TD><FONT SIZE=-1><BLOCKQUOTE>Hvr, how about offering your work to Ahead GmbH? I think they need it.</BLOCKQUOTE></FONT></TD></TR><TR><TD><HR size=1 color=black></TD></TR></TABLE>

well... from one point of view it would be great, since that way I would indirectly help many people to finally author correct SVCD's but on the other hand I would help the people at ahead which make plenty of bucks with a product which I personally regard as overloaded with features (for selling better) that just don't work they way they are advertised... nero has already the biggest market share it seems... so they don't need any help in getting more customers...

and finally, many users have come to try out vcdimager in the first place because nero created non-working discs... if nero worked perfectly vcdimager would get less publicity

any comments?

ps: because it is free software (fyi, I don't earn any money with it), vcdimager's source code is open for everyone... even for programmers of commercial products... whether I like it or not

[duck712]

On 2001-08-10 08:46:35, Auric wrote:
<TABLE BORDER=0 ALIGN=CENTER WIDTH=85%><TR><TD><font size=-1>Quote:</font><HR size=1 color=black></TD></TR><TR><TD><FONT SIZE=-1><BLOCKQUOTE>
All struggling with Philips -players, go grab a copy of Ligos encoder, there's demoversion of both their plug-in for Premiere 5/6 and also a stand-alone encoder.</BLOCKQUOTE></FONT></TD></TR><TR><TD><HR size=1 color=black></TD></TR></TABLE>
Auric: One thing I don't think you mentioned is how many minutes your fully working SVCD is. As you can see on several ff/rw related threads the SVCD's that give problems on Philips players are all over, say, 40 minutes long.

How many minutes is the SVCD that you got fully working on your Philips player using Ligos?

[Medical]

Auric, the length of the mpeg2 file would really be of
GREAT interest!!
Thanks in advance!
Med.

[Auric]

I wanted to test that also and encoded a 47-minute episode using 1,8 mbit/s. The filesize was about 700 megs (took almost a day to encode on my PII 350 mhz...).

I then tried to build the bin using VCDimagerEasy. It scans the file but stops then and says:

"GNU VCDImager 0.6.2 [cygwin/i586]
INFO: scanning mpeg track #0 for scanpoints...
assertion "_vcd_salloc_get_highest (obj->iso_bitmap) + 1 == 225" failed: file "vcd.c", line 612
0 [sig] vcdimager 232345 stackdump: Dumping stack trace to VCDIMAGER.EXE.stackdump"

No file is produced. I also tested using a 200 meg file but the result is the same. Only very small files are generated into a bin and cue file.

Is there a cure for this?

[Auric]

hvr wrote:
>if nero worked perfectly vcdimager would get less publicity <

True, but you don't need publicity, you need money (note:humor) and Ahead has plenty of that. Selling your knowledge would be beneficial for both your bank account and also for the thousands of Nero-users who might not even know that they are not building fully working SVCD's.

I personally want this feature included in Nero but I don't mind using it as a stand-alone program either. The cold hard fact however is that if you decided to continue developing it on your own you will never get the attention that would result from co-operating with the Germans.

My advise would be to arrange a meeting with their representative. They speak English, so you can phone them. Insist arranging a meeting with their software engineers. They will see the trouble in their own product and as you mentioned, a market leader wants to stay in that position so you will probably end up co-operating with them. It's not as bad as it sounds.

If you fear phoning to Germany you could first contact your local Nero representative.

My Humble Opinion.

[hvr]

...that assertion feels like a deja-vu (note:humor)...
please use latest 0.7.x release which should cure that problem;

as to the ahead language problem; actually I speak german better than english...

another thing is, as soon as I've outlined the problem to them; they won't need me anymore... because they can't be that uncapable not to be able to fix something if they get pointed directly to it...
I guess they would only want to stay in touch if they believe I could be useful to them in future...

I don't think a physical meeting with their SEs would be that easy, the travelling cost would be too high...

maybe next week I'll give them a call... but honestly I think I'm wasting my time, I may even regret it if they take an arrogant position

[next]

Not to sound overly simplistic here but I simply created a scandata.dat file and drag it to the EXT folder in Nero when I burn SVCD's. The scandata.dat file contains the line:

scan_vcd

It works on all of my SVCD burns. I am my no means an expert in this area but this works for me.

[cyborg--]

Personally I found that using bbmpeg 1.24 beta 18 can leave u do fully rw/ff movies even when u load the mpeg in nero and burn it. The only problem that occured after is that my dvd player dosn't display the time left correctly and that goto goes only at half of what they are supposed to go.

On the other hand, when I use vcdimager and cdrwin to burn the movie, these problems are gone.

My DVD player is a APEX 660.

BTW if any version of bbmpeg other than beta 18 is used then ff/rw and goto wouln't work properly and would get the sound desynched.

[Auric]

Sorry to tell you but Philips DVD711 does not ff or rew my testdisc that contains 47 min of footage. Apparently there really is a bug on the Philips players that prevents ff and rew to work for anything over 40 min of footage.

But my other player, Yelo 800, ff's and rews this disc that I burnt with Nero and added blank scandata.dat

I also created the same disk with vcdimager 0.7.9 but it now unfortunately presents incorrect tracklenght and refuses to ff or rew even on Yelo 800.

[aldus4]

<TABLE BORDER=0 ALIGN=CENTER WIDTH=85%><TR><TD><font size=-1>Quote:</font><HR size=1 color=black></TD></TR><TR><TD><FONT SIZE=-1><BLOCKQUOTE>
On 2001-08-11 16:35:03, hvr wrote:
maybe next week I'll give them a call... but honestly I think I'm wasting my time, I may even regret it if they take an arrogant position
</BLOCKQUOTE></FONT></TD></TR><TR><TD><HR size=1 color=black></TD></TR></TABLE>

I think you might be right here. I have sent them 3 emails (2 in German, 1 in English from 3 different email accounts) regarding the missing SCANDATA.DAT in SVCD mode. I have never heard back from them...mind you it's only been 3 months! (Dazzle took 11 weeks and 3 days to reply!!)

Of course it has often been rumoured that the new version 6.0 will have DVD authoring and maybe then, they will fix this SVCD thing. Big Upgrades usually aren't free and therefore Ahead maybe don't want to fix this problem in the upcoming version 5.5.4.5, 5.5.5.5, 5.5.6.3 etc. etc.

[hvr]

It's funny... I'm working on implementing DVD authoring as well... although that will be a separate tool... =)

this time they might get it ready first, since they have the specs and I don't (and I can't without a bloody NDA which would prevent me from publishing the source code...)
So I have to reverse engineer part 3 of the DVD-V specs....
(part 1 and 2 are available as ecma standards...)