converting SVCD to DVD or CVD?

[marti286]

I'm looking for an easy way to convert SVCD to DVD with out loosing to much. I just want to consolidate some of my movie to use less disks. Any help would be appricated. Thanks

[galactica]

There are several posts already addressing this issue

Things to do
1. extract all of the mpeg2 files from the images. Using VCDTOOLSX is the easiest

once you have that, you can add the mpegs together to create one single mpeg2 file.

This you can burn directly to dvd-r if your player supports raw mpeg2 playback.

If not, read the posts that discuss how to image a mpeg to burn as a dvd-r
Particulary the recent post by WIZEMAN

[marti286]

hmmm i've heard of resizing to something that DVDSP will accept. With your method can I do more than one image. I would like to stick 3-4 movies on one DVD-R. My player does not support raw mpg2 play back.

[Wizeman]

Don't expect to be able to fit more than 3 movies onto one DVD-r unless they are really small (i.e. pretty low quality) or short

Basically, I'd say there are three ways of getting SVCD films onto DVDr if your player doesn't support raw MPEG2 playback (doesn't matter much, as they all produce better quality than raw MPEG2 playback imho - every player I've tested has problems w pixelisation, variable video track speed problems etc)

1) The Correct Way
SVCDs are generally 480x480/576, a resolution that is *not* supported by the DVD standard. This means you will have to re-encode them to, for instance, 720x576 using freeware tools like mpegenc etc, or QuicKTime Pro (if you have the MPEG2 components installed). Message me if you want details on how to do this, or search the forum for more info. Once you've transcoded the video track (this takes about double the length of your film on a G4/700 using QuicKTime, or five times the length of your film using the freeware tools), it will be importable to DVDSP. So the Correct way is also, sadly, the one that takes most computer time.

2) The Clever Way
There are DVD authoring solutions that are less picky about the resolution size etc of the files you feed it. Sizzle is one. Using the program in itself (takes less time than the Correct way) or extracting the commands ifogen and tocgen from the package contents, using the commands in Terminal (much faster), you can build a DVD-SVCD, which is basically your MPEG2-files slapped into a DVD-like structure. Check under DVD Players here and search for your model to see if it supports the DVD-SVCD format or not. Basically, you need to extract the MPEG2 from the .bin, demux it into audio and video tracks, re-mux it (as DVD!) and author it using Sizzle or those Terminal commands. This is the way I do it, and it works fine for me. (On a related link, I've posted about some difficulty with lower bitrate and my new Pioneer player though - still no response there...)

3) The Cheating Way
Supposedly, there is a way to use HexEdit and alter the raw data of your film files to make DVDSP believe your files are rightly proportioned, author a DVD disc with "badly" formatted files, change the settings back before muxing and "fool" your player into accepting it, but I've never managed to get this to work. See homepage.mac.com/rnc for more details on this, but be forewarned: this is dodgier than the others, in my opinion.

Good luck, and don't hesitate to post/msg with more questions.

/Wizeman

[marti286]

thanks for the post. I was afraid that you would say I would have to re-encode. I've actually tryed this svcd->cvd. i had synch issues like always. I'll try someother things. thanks again

[marti286]

wizeman-

i tried your sizzle techniqe and i get a video that is out of synch towards the end. i also added track 2 and it didn't seem to read. am i doing something wrong? i see you are in sweeden. is it a ntsc problem. thanks

[Wizeman]

Never had any sync problems using that technique, and I've done both PAL and NTSC files. Note: not talking about transcoding here; I've n-e-v-e-r tried transcoding NTSC (heard it's a complete and time-consuming b*tch), only PAL. But as far as demuxing/remuxing, I've never had a file go out of sync by that. Perhaps your original file had sync problems? Just a thought.

/W

[marti286]

I found that a little weird that it was out of sych. The original plays fine. I'll try it again. Have you tried to make tracks?? My player doesn't let me skip to the next track and stops after the first track is done. thanks

[Wizeman]

When I do it, I use the commands separately from Sizzle, i.e. I use "ifogen" and "tocgen" in Terminal. This is much quicker than using the gui, don't ask me why. When my disc is burned, I have the same number of chapters that there are MPEGs in the source folder. I've never heard of a player that stops after playing the first chapter (well, apart from Apple's own DVD Player that is hehe). This sounds very strange indeed. In my 2 DVD players and the 3 others I have tested the discs on, the tracks are selectable and available (Next chapter - Previous chapter etc) like on any other disc. Not sure whether this means it's one Title several Tracks, or one Track several Chapters - but it works just fine.

Sorry I can't be more helpful.

/W

[marti286]

This sounds like what I need. I tried using the GUI only because I'm not to familiar with terminal. Can you send me intruction for terminal with sizzle. I have appreicated all of your help mart0593@mac.com