Can XVCD be Mpeg2?

[Coupedevil]

Hi, I've got one of those DVD players that can't read SVCDs (Mintek 2110). I'm going to try a couple of things, including the VCD header trick. I was wondering, though, if I could take my mpeg2 movies and burn them as an XVCD? Anyone have experience with this?

Another option is to convert them to mpeg1, but keep the 480 x 480 size and bitrate at 2000-2500. Would that be as good as mpeg2?

Thanks for your help/advice.

[Krevinek]

I wouldn't use a different frame size if you are burning VCD. MPEG-1 starts wasting tons of space or losing quality when it is encoded beyond 352x240.

My recommendation is this: Encode using a good bicubic scaler, and if the source is DVD, you can probably skip the denoiser (unless you want to up the contrast a tad to remove grain noise from the original analog->digital capture)... XVCD should be able to go up to SVCD bitrates though.

If you have to hack-n-tweak this much, likely the player will not play SVCD or miniDVD.

If only we could feed custom Q-Matricies into ffmpegX/mpeg2enc, we could use some of the KVCD templates with ffmpegX and get some better 'looking' encodes.

[kwag]

If only we could feed custom Q-Matricies into ffmpegX/mpeg2enc, we could use some of the KVCD templates with ffmpegX and get some better 'looking' encodes.

Why can't you? You have the source! Just modify it and change the matrix values from the current KVCD matrix

-kwag

[caintgetrite]

Does anyone have any specifics on how to create a successful, decent looking XVCD using ffmpegX? I've been experimenting on my own, but haven't had much luck. I have two players that can handle SVCD and two that can't, and I'm trying to make one disc that can play without the digital artifacting (blockiness? screen door look?).

One thing that I've found is that if I try settings higher than 352x240 (480x480, or 720x480), I can't get it to work on anything other than my Panasonic player. Increasing the bitrate on 352x240 to 2500kbt doesn't really seem (at least to my eye) to yield any real improvement in picture quality (and yes, this is after turning off "CBR").

I've experimented with using the settings noted on the KVCD.net website (528x480), and while it looks pretty impressive on the computer screen, none of the DVD players I have can read it at all.

Like everyone else is looking for...trying to find a solution to drastically reduce the "blocky" appearance of the video. Anyway, if anyone has been successful and can post their own "recipe" for decent looking XVCD's using ffmpegX, I'm probably not the only one who would be interested! Thanks.

[kwag]

I've experimented with using the settings noted on the KVCD.net website (528x480), and while it looks pretty impressive on the computer screen, none of the DVD players I have can read it at all.

Did you try encoding to 544x480 instead of 528x480 ?
Also, you can try encoding with KVCDx3 528x480 MPEG-2, and burn as SVCD.

-kwag

[Patmos21]

[quote]Did you try encoding to 544x480 instead of 528x480 ?
Also, you can try encoding with KVCDx3 528x480 MPEG-2, and burn as SVCD.

-kwag
[quote]


Kwag, I too am trying to do the same thing with the advice you gave above. I get beautiful results with the video, but the audio is ALWAYS crap. It stutters, makes chirping noises, etc. I've tried different settings 224 and 192 both with mp2 and mp3, but to no avail. I am using the fast mpeg1 preset with ffmpegx. I am now trying to do it in AfroPic and will see if it's any better. I believe AfroPic uses different binaries than ffmpegX does. We'll see...
If anyone has had any success with a similar situation, please advise.
Also, could you possibly post the settings you use with the kvcd presets, so that I can try them on the Mac side...ie Gop sizes, buffer, etc.

Many thanks to one and all!!!