dvd ripped vcd's time length not showing up correctly

[illest urban]

I've been using Sefy's DVD ripping guide here on vcd help for a long time now and have had no problems whatsoever until recently.

I've always ripped my dvd's and made them into vcd's and been able to play them in one of my dvd players. Now, for some reason, in the dvd player, instead of the length of the film showing up correctly (i.e. 45:00) it will show like 78:31 and when I play the film, the audio and video will be out of sync. I wasted tons of dvd's now just by trying different things to try to figure out the problem. I at first thought it was because of not choosing the right framerate for like either FILM or NTSC, but that doesn't appear to be what the main problem is now, since I'm still getting the same error in both versions.

Any suggestions? Like I said, I've only used Sefy's guide for newbies in the dvd rip section here on vcdhelp and have had no problems until recently; I dunno what it could be. Thanks again for any help.

[poopyhead]

what brand media you using? how fast you burning?

at least with my old SVCDs, winDVD always doubles the amount of time / disc. dunno why. on my pioneer dv333, it doesn't even show a time. it just states PBC (playback control) w/o any time on it. dunno why either.

however,

forced film in dvd2avi->23.976 fps + 3:2 pulldown

no forced film in dvd2avi->29.97 fps + interlaced output (no 3:2 pulldown)

did you try playing those VCDs on your computer? were they also outta sync on your comp?

[illest urban]

I'm using memorex which is what I've always used, except now memorex has changed how their cd's look, but could that really be the problem?

And actually, no I don't have problems in my computer. I'm thinking it has to be something with the ripping process. any ideas?

[poopyhead]

1) try burning 4x max

2) if you forced film in dvd2avi, make sure in tmpgenc's output video settings, you make output as 23.976 fps and make sure you check 3:2 pulldown at playback.

3) make sure you downsample your audio in tmpgenc from 48 khz to 44.1 khz.

some dvd players will have problems if you don't do these.

[illest urban]

hmm i guess i could try these suggestions but what's weird is that I've never had a problem with this before; it's jut all of a sudden. I really hope I can figure out what is wrong...

[illest urban]

what about interlace/non-interlace and field order; what do those mean exactly? maybe that could be causing a problem too? thanks guys. Ugh I'm not a newb at this but this is making me feel like it! It's so frustrating!

[poopyhead]

if you're making VCDs (NOT SVCDs) then you don't have to worry about interlacing anything...

only SVCDs you need to worry about interlacing....

[Vejita-sama]

Are you making VCDs are xVCDs? Many standalones only 'supprt' VCDs. If you change the bitrate they just assume it should be 1150kbit/s and the clock reflects that. One way to tell is to play your disc and time say 1min of play time (on the clock) vs. 1min real time and see if they match up.

Depending on how you encoded your disc the clock could run fast or slow, but your playback is unaffected.

[illest urban]

great, now I'm getting these scanlines in the mpg. any ideas what could be causing this? It's only happening now after I took the advice of doing the 3:2 pulldown thing. Check out this photo below to see what it's doing:



Notice the guy in the black shirt; see how it's all messed up? That's actually a minor one; i had a hard time catching these little lines after pressing pause but I think you get the idea.

[poopyhead]

hrm...are you making SVCDs or VCDs??????

what's your output resolution???

VCDs do NOT have interlacing artifacts.

in dvd2avi, do you turn on forced film?

also, check the box w/ 3:2 pulldown IF you turned on forced film in dvd2avi. also, make sure you uncheck the box next to "interlaced"

[illest urban]

I'm making VCD's. The output resolution is 352x240 I believe? And I turned off interlacing and still had that problem above. AND also that's with 3:2 pulldown checked b/c yes, I did have Forced Film on in DVD2AVI; and I dunno if the 3:2 thing even helped after all...

[Sefy]

I know this will propably be extreme and not like everyone else, but have you tried NOT to use "Force Film" and NOT to use a "3:2 Pulldown" and just use a regular NTSC instead ?

[illest urban]

WOW an actual reply from "THE" Sefy; haha. thanks for the suggestion, and thanks for making such a GREAT tutorial; you are THE man!

Actually guys, I'm thinking that it's the dvd player; it's a portable dvd player that was recently dropped and ever since then is when the problem has been occuring. For some reason it has no problems reading SVCD's but it just won't do VCD's; it's weird. I'm pretty sure this is the problem because the discs work fine in my computer and on another dvd player I have that plays VCD's.

What it's come down to is that I'm going to have to send this thing in for repair. I HAVE to be able to watch VCD's on this thing; bottom line.

Thanks for all the help guys and now I'm fairly confident that is the problem.

[poopyhead]

I know this will propably be extreme and not like everyone else, but have you tried NOT to use "Force Film" and NOT to use a "3:2 Pulldown" and just use a regular NTSC instead ?

can VCDs afford to lose even more quality by not using forced film??

[Sefy]

@illest urban, you make it sound as if i'm a celebrity
Either way, i'm glad you find the guide useful! it makes the work worth it!

@Poopyhead, i've mentioned I see NO quality difference between Film or Regular NTSC in every post i've made, you can claim and everyone can say and prove it as facts, but I don't see a microscopic difference between them just as I don't notice quality difference between VCD and SVCD on my TV.

[baseband]

I don't notice quality difference between VCD and SVCD on my TV.

Are you serious? Are you watching your VCDs on a 9" B&W TV or something? I see a startling difference in quality between VCDs and SVCDs on my low-end (25" Sanyo bought from Wal-Mart for $180) TV and cheap-o Mintek DVD-player that doesn't even support SVCD officially (you have to do the header trick).

Maybe your eyes just aren't so good. Can you tell the difference between VCD and DVD on your TV? SVCD and DVD?

On a completely unrelated subject, I love your guides! You seem to have put a great amount of effort into them, and I, along with the rest of the Internet community are quite grateful. Thanks!

[Sefy]

@baseband, yes, I am quite serious, and I have a Pioneer 525 and a 29" Philips TV, and I can see NO difference between VCD and SVCD. DVD of course is another issue, obviously it's much sharper.

I've got a Perfect Eye Sight, I can see clearly for far distances and for short distances, but unlike most people, I don't LOOK for the screwups in a movie, I just enjoy the movie! Cause if I wanted to shove my face in the TV and go search for defects, I can find them easily even on a DVD movie

Lastly, thank you for the comments, they are more appriciated then you might think, and I am really glad that people find them usefull, I do wish I could do more updates, unfortunatly if it wasn't for the last two donations, I couldn't even keep my Internet Connection on

But as long as I can, I will keep them as updated as possible and cover as many aspects of Backing up a Movie, who knows, maybe when i'm rich and famous i'll have a DVD Burner and i'll add that to the guide as well

[baseband]

@baseband, yes, I am quite serious, and I have a Pioneer 525 and a 29" Philips TV, and I can see NO difference between VCD and SVCD. DVD of course is another issue, obviously it's much sharper.

I've got a Perfect Eye Sight, I can see clearly for far distances and for short distances, but unlike most people, I don't LOOK for the screwups in a movie, I just enjoy the movie!

It's not that I look for them, it's that I SEE them and it bugs me (just a little). Friends of mine who aren't familiar with computers and couldn't give two sh*ts about video quality have noted the difference between the two formats. I'll show them a VCD of a Simpsons episode and they'll tell me it looks pretty good, but not as good as watching it on cable TV. Even though they're not looking for them, they see the blocks. When I show them an SVCD, they remark on how much BETTER it looks than my cable!(Both the VCD & SVCD I showed them came from sources other than myself, obviously.)

In fact, maybe I'm crazy, but I see less difference between a properly-encoded, compliant, SVCD and a DVD than I do between VCD and SVCD.

I'm not a real stickler for perfect quality and don't mean to come off as a snob in that manner. I've been known to happily enjoy low-quality ASF and RM files of TV shows and not give a whit about what they look like. However, if I can get a sharper picture from my encodes, naturally I would prefer it.

[Sefy]

Well, i'm sorry to disappoint you, but I see no difference in quality between VCD and SVCD, heck, i've made a VCD out of Disney's Dinosaur and it came out so good, that most of my friends thought it was the DVD itself!

Again, I see ABSOLUTLY NO difference between VCD and SVCD, and if any thing counts, then the waste of CD's and Bad Compatibility and the time itself to make a SVCD made it completly pointless to even bother with SVCD, so i'm sticking to the best format that exists.

[poopyhead]

Again, I see ABSOLUTLY NO difference between VCD and SVCD, and if any thing counts, then the waste of CD's and Bad Compatibility and the time itself to make a SVCD made it completly pointless to even bother with SVCD, so i'm sticking to the best format that exists.

i'm sorry i don't agree with you. i personally am a quality freak, but for some, like south park episodes, i just don't give a damn. i just want to watch them, as i don't have cable. however, those eps really give blocks, but like i just said, i don't really care in this case.

however, for movies, quality is a big factor. there is a difference between VCD and SVCD. Even a 2 disc VCD is going to be worse off than SVCD because of the VBR vs CBR issue. i noticed it on my old 21" TV, and i wasn't even looking for any blockiness, it just was there (especially in those panoramic shots where the camera pans through a scene rather quickly, i.e. a crowd. VCD would have lots of blocks, while SVCD would have some.)

also, making SVCD (ripping, encoding, cutting, burning) is basically the same as making a VCD, just with different settings. actually, the same programs can be used to make both. in terms of discs, i personally am a quality freak, so i would use more discs for SVCD than VCD, but like i mentioned earlier, a 2 disc SVCD would still have better quality than 2 disc VCD. this is especially the case if standard VCD 2.0 can't fill up the entire 2 discs, while a standard SVCD can fully utilize disc space. as for compatibility, it looks like more and more dvd players are compatible with SVCDs. even the cheap apexes, etc.. are really compatible with SVCDs, so i don't see a problem with that. also, people can just make sure a particular DVD player is compatible with SVCDs before buying it.

i would think the best format, that we can use, that exists right now would be DVDs authored onto DVD-Rs. we would only need 1 DVD-R / movie if we transcode, and only takes 2-3 hrs max to rip, transcode, and burn.

[Sefy]

@poopyhead, you can disagree as much as you like, Quality is in the Eye of the Beholder, and this holder sees NO difference except waste of time, CD's and patience on the use of SVCD, and there really isn't any debate or any kind of discussion, cause you can't convince me!

I see NO difference on my TV, even from all the big show offs that posted links to their fabulous quality clips, on my TV and my friends equipment, looks exactly like a VCD to me except it abuses more CDR's, harder to optimize and has a lot more fucks ups then a VCD! :P

Even when I get a DVD Burner in some century, i'll use it not for DVD movies but to burn a VCD format! that way I can put tons of movies, or heck, all the TV Episodes I want in Excellent Quality (in MY opinion!) and it will work great on every DVD Player, while SVCD works only with SOME equipment.