VCD/SVCD Movie breaks up halfway through - Details inside

[joedotcom]

Hi all - hope someone can help me with this because it's driving me nuts. I'll try to describe the problem as best I can.

The problem: On all the VCD's and SVCD's I encode from Divx Avi files the picture starts to break up halfway through my movie. What happens is the movie starts off fine, then (almost precisely) at the halfway mark small pixel patches start flickering on to the screen. The patchiness starts getting progressively worse, eventually the picture breaks down almost completely and the sound starts breaking up as well. This has happened on EVERY VCD and SVCD I've encoded and almost exactly at the halfway mark of my movie (e.g CD1 of Monsters, Inc has 45 mins of video on it. At 20 minutes the image starts gradually breaking up, and is completely gone by minute 25 and for the rest of the film).

What I use: My divx files (good quality PAL, 720x578 @ about 2,300 kbits). These go into AVI2SVCD (1.1.3 build 2) and are encoded using Cinema Craft 2.50 multipass VBR (3 times) and safe mode (frameserving). First 4 settings in CCE MPEG2 advanced options are unselected. I don't create an image, just take the resulting mpg file and burn it at 4x using VCDEasy (1.1.5). In VCDeasy I use the Nero ASPI (Adaptec also available) and CDRDAO for authoring, and the generic mmc driver. I use 700MB CD's and my player is a Comet 3838 DVD/SVCD/VCD player.

Hardware: WinXP, 256MB Memory, 1,6 GHz P4, Matshita UJDA720 DVD/CDRW (its a Toshiba laptop)

Things to note:
I have used both AVI2SVCD/VCDEasy and Ulead's VideoStudio on separate trials to encode/burn the same file. Same problem every time.
I have used different divx avi's in case this one was corrupt - same problem every time.
When the mpg file is played on my computer, it plays fine - not a single glitch.
I haven't tried ripping a DVD with DVD2SVCD and burning an SVCD yet to see if the problem exists there as well.

My own deductions: Since 2 different programs (DVD2SVCD/VCDeasy and VideoStudio) seem to produce the same problem on my DVD player it is either most likely a) some common setting in both programs that is creating the problem (wild guess: should I use MPEGAV instead of MPEG2 and entrysvd instead of entryvcd for example?) OR b)my DVD player has the problem. But that's as far as my own logic will take me. I haven't used VCDEasy all that much so I don't really know if the settings are creating the problem or if the problem is further back, i.e. during encoding or in the divx avi itself.

If anyone has had this problem or has a solution for it, I would be very, VERY grateful.

JDC

[ZippyP.]

Do the disks play in your PC or in a different player? Try it.
What are your high and low bitrate settings? Maybe too high of low for your player.
Try different media, maybe a CD-rw.
Try burning at a slower speed, 1X even.

[joedotcom]

Thanks for your reply - yes they do play on the pc. I only have one stand alone player so I can only test them there. Bitrate settings in AVI2SVCD are min 300, max 2530 and max avg 2230. I'll give the CD-RW and the 1x a try.

Thanks again.

JDC

[joedotcom]

Ok - I tried burning at 1X with VCDEasy, but even though it says 1X in the options panel, the log file says "starting write a speed 4". Any idea what's up with that?

Thanks
JDC

[ZippyP.]

Some burners don't go down to 1X, 4X should be good for testing purposes anyway.

My player doesn't like bitrates too low (like 300) so I don't go below 600. Other players have problems if it's too high, but 2550 should be OK. A CBR encode at a setting of 2200 would still be pretty good quality, you might want to try one to see if plays any better.

[joedotcom]

Nope - no dice. I've burned at 4X (the lowest VCDEasy or Nero will let me go), used expensive CDRs and CDRW's, reencoded divxs at CBR, ripped from DVD at CBR, set min bitrate to 600, fiddled with every possible setting I can find based on the dvdrhelp.com guides and what other people have said in the forum - NOTHING. Whatever medium, whatever speed (4X and above), whatever source at 25mins into the film -bam!- the screen will start going pixelly, green blocks etc, sound goes etc.

I don't know whether this means some setting in DVD2SVCD is screwed up or its my burners fault (probably the second, its a DVD/CDRW Matshita combo on a laptop so i dont know how heavy duty it is).

Anyway, if anyone has even a hint at a solution, I'll try anything. I've burned about 30 coasters in the past 3 days and i'm about to douse my laptop with gasoline.

Thanks in advance,

JDC

[curryman]

ooh! tricky one that,
looks like a naff burner to me,
have you anyway of burning on different drive with same files

[joedotcom]

Thanks for the reply. Well - I've ripped and encoded both DVD and Divx (downloaded and my own) at CBR, bc someone mentioned that VBR might be causing the problem. CBR was at 1800 aprox (auto calclulated by DVD2SVCD based on movie length and CD size) but still didn't work. In DVD2SVCD I've set a min of 600, max avg of 2230 and max of 2530 but with CBR this setting doesn't matter, right?

The problem is that I can't set VCDEasy to burn at 1X or 2X to see if that would solve the problem - I set it in the options but it still gives me a "writing at speed 4" message anyway. And no matter what source file I choose (DVD, AVI, MPG, CUE etc) the movie starts breaking up exactly at the 25 to 30 min mark (applies to any film I've tried to burn).

JDC

[joedotcom]

Sorry - didn't see your previous message. No, I don't have another drive unfortunately - still trying to get this one to play ball and figure out how to burn at 1X and 2X