SVCD formatted MPG file plays fine, SVCD image won't play

[Zedd]

I've tried everything I could think of, and can't for the life of me figure this out. I used DVD2SVCD (using TMPGEnc Pro as the encoder) to convert a DVD into 2 SVCD images, and everything seemed to work perfectly. When I mount the image, PowerDVD won't play it, though. It recognizes it as a video CD, but when I try to play it, it just shows a black screen, and the play timer stays stuck at 0:00. If I manually go into the mounted CD image, and tell PowerDVD to play the AVSEQ01.MPG file, it plays fine.

I'm afraid I don't know much about video conversion. The settings I used in DVD2SVCD were Anamorphic (I tried 16:9 with borders added, same problem), No deinterlacing. For TMPGEnc, I tried CQ, 2pass VBR, and CBR, all had the same end problem.

I've spent all weekend trying to do this, it's really frustrating me. Any help would be appreciated.

[johns0]

I wouldnt trust powerdvd to play certain authored svcd or vcd,best place to try is your home dvd player.

Anamorphic svcd isnt supported and you might have problems playing it back in dvd players.

[Zedd]

Hmm, I didn't know anamorphic wasn't supported by SVCD. But as I said, I tried the 16:9 borders added option (as in 4:3 video, with the top and bottom black bars encoded right into the video stream. At least, I think that's what it means ), and it had the same problem.

As for trying it in my DVD player, I did that too. It took a good 10 seconds to recognize the disc as an SVCD, and then it wouldn't play it. It read the video length (the timer on the LCD front display showed the max length of the movie on the disc), but when I hit play, it just ignores it. It won't play the disc.

[sanjayk]

Since your mpeg file is playing properly it seems DVD2SVCD and TMPGEnc are working properly. The problem could be with mounting of the image.

In any case of you keep your mpeg files on your hard disk you might as well play them without the botheration of mounting them by creating a playlist.

The better way to check would be to create VCD/SVCD on a CD-RW and pay in a standalone DVD player.

[Dragonsf]

What authoring software did you use to author the SVCD?

[Zedd]

I figured out why PowerDVD wouldn't play it. As soon as I enabled PBC, PowerDVD played it fine.

The reason I tried that, was because I have some SVCDs I made a long time ago, which play perfectly on my standalone DVD player. I compared the file structure, and the ones that worked had two files that the ones I'm trying to make now don't: LOT.SVD and PSD.SVD. I enabled PBC and those files were there. Now PowerDVD plays it, but when I burn it and try it in the standalone, same problem. Takes about 10 seconds to recognize the disc (the old ones that work are almost instant), then it shows the length correctly on the LCD display, but refuses to play the disc. It just sits there, doing nothing.

As for authoring the SVCD, I've both let DVD2SVCD do it, and done it myself with VCDEasy. Same result both ways. I've tried re-encoding the movie so that GSpot shows all the movie's stats to be identical to the old ones that work: still nothing. It just won't play. I can't figure out why.

[sanjayk]

Well I guess you could try a diff tool to convert your DVD to SVCD.

Try - WinDVD Copy from InterVideo or WinAVI Converter or Super DVD ripper. They can read dvd directly or from hd and convert to VCD/SVCD compliant mpeg files.