Complete Newbie - questions re: SVCD

[MarkyMids]

Hi,

Today I successfully burnt my first SVCD (and it worked!) - but I just have a few questions that I couldn't find the answers to:

1. I burnt my SVCD at 16x speed and I noticed whilst watching the SVCD using PowerDVD (as I don't have my own DVD player yet) that during "sweeping shots" the picture was jerky.

Is this because I burnt at too high a speed - or has this nothing to do with the speed at which you burn? When I watch the original Xvid Avi file the jerky sweeping shots are not present..

2. The Avi source file was "NTSC" does this mean that if I buy a DVD player, chances are it won't play it? (I live in the uk and therefore use the PAL system).

3. It took me around 5 hours to create my SVCD.. I followed this procedure...

- Extract AC3 audio using VirtualDub
- Created a standard Wav audio file using Ciler's AC3 tool
- Loaded the wav audio and the XVID video into Tmpgenc and converted to .mpg (this part took about 4 hours)
- Burnt to SVCD using Nero 5.5.9.0

Is there any quicker way of doing this? Can't i just load the .avi file straight into Nero and let it burn it straight to SVCD.. or isn't that possible?

I'm sorry if these are incredibly basic questions and they've been answered elsewhere.. but I can't seem to find the answers!

I hope someone can enlighten me!!

Thanks in advance.

Mark

[banjazzer]

1. I burnt my SVCD at 16x speed and I noticed whilst watching the SVCD using PowerDVD (as I don't have my own DVD player yet) that during "sweeping shots" the picture was jerky.

Is this because I burnt at too high a speed -

Almost certainly not. Burning at too high a speed may cause problems when playing back on a DVD player, but this very much depends on the DVD player and the media. And it is unlikely to cause jerky movement.

2. The Avi source file was "NTSC" does this mean that if I buy a DVD player, chances are it won't play it? (I live in the uk and therefore use the PAL system).

Most DVD players you can buy in the UK at present should be able to handle NTSC, either automatically or by adjustment to the system menu. Most downloadable avi sources if they are NTSC are actually likely to be NTSC(film). 23.976fps. For this you should use the NTSC(film) template to create the SVCD. If you use the NTSC template you will get jerky movement as extra frames are added when you encode. What I do (although it is not always strictly necessary) is alter the framerate of NTSC(film) avis in Virtualdub to 25fps, and then shrink the audio in Soundforge, so I can encode to PAL SVCD.

3. It took me around 5 hours to create my SVCD.. I followed this procedure...

It really depends what mode you used to encode. 5 hours is generally considered a short time to encode to SVCD. It depends on your CPU and the amount and type of RAM you have. Also constant bitrate encodes are relatively quick, but wasteful. 2-pass VBR will generally fit a movie to 2 or 3 CDs, but can take as long as 24 hours to encode, depending on your hardware. CQ mode is much quicker, but you never know the actual size of the encoded mpeg. Cinemacraft Encoder is much quicker, but also ridiculously expensive.

Is there any quicker way of doing this? Can't i just load the .avi file straight into Nero and let it burn it straight to SVCD.. or isn't that possible?

Yes, this is possible if you get Nero's SVCD encoding plug-in. However, results will be much inferior to those you get with TMPG, and you will frequently find you get weird aspect ratios. Basically, only use Nero to burn, not to encode.