SVCD requirements

[BHbrown8]

Hello,
I hope that someone can help me with some questions that i've had for a while. First of all, my DVD player plays VCDs; how likely is it that it will play a SVCD? or would i need to try the TMPGEnc trick and change only the identity of it to a VCD?

With that question, most AVI's that i've tried to convert (w/ TMPGEnc) have been at 23.976 fps and I've only made VCDs (which I thought were to be as good quality as VHS but seems pretty 'blotchy', which is why i would like to try SVCD) because VCD Film is the only format that supports 23.976 fps. Is there another program that will do differently or what can i do??

Also, DVD Movie Factory seems like a good authoring program but you can't author a Film movie (23.976 fps). Is there another authoring program to support this or what can i do??

*also, i figured the blotchiness of the VCDs is due the the fact that the display is 352 X 240; if this is not why, please tell me

[adam]

VCD support really is in no way any indiction of your dvd player's ability to play SVCD. If you want to see what your dvd player is capable of then check the dvd player list to your left. If your dvd player doesnt support SVCDs then you may be able to use the VCD header trick. Essentially you take a svcd compliant mpg and multiplex it as if it were a vcd, and hope that your dvd player can play it. It may work, but keep in mind that you creating a hybrid disk that doesnt come anywhere close to following any standard. Even if your current player will play it, there is no indication that your next one will, or that any dvd player will play it at all in 5-10 yrs.

Some will disagree, but VCD can look very close to VHS in quality. Regardless of whether you are making VCDs or SVCDS, divx is not a good source to work with. It is already heavily compressed and typically uses smaller resolutions that what SVCD supports. Divx converted to SVCD should look better than converted to VCD, but don't expect too much; you are not going to be able to reach the full capability of either format using divx as a source.

VCD, SVCD, and DVD essentially all support ntscfilm (23.976fps.) with SVCD and DVD you MUST add the 3:2 pulldown flag which instructs the dvd player to play the movie back at the NTSC required framerate of 29.97fps. (VCDs do this anyway without the flag.) TMPGenc has a 3:2 pulldown while playback option and there is also a program called pulldown.exe which can add the flag into an already encoded video stream.

DVD Movie Factory, and all other dvd authorthing software as far as I know, will accept 23.976fps encoded material fine but only if you have included the 3:2 pulldown flag. If you do not use the flag it is not compliant.

The "blotchiness" of VCD is mostly a result of the constant low bitrate. During fast motion there is simply not enough bitrate allocated to the data making up the scene, and blocks appear. It should be less noticable with SVCD, but again divx is not the best source to work with.

[Radikins]

adam:

what is the best source to work with?

[adam]

Well a studio master would be nice

Basically what I'm getting at is that it seems he is downloading divx avi's and converting them to VCD and SVCD. My point is that if these are your intended outputs then you should just download the VCD or SVCD to begin with. Divx is meant to be played on a PC, its not intended to be an intermediate format which you will then convert to SVCD, for example. Sure you can use it, and you might be satisfied with the quality, its just not ideal.

Good sources for SVCD are DC, DVD, or video captures.