Pioneer DV-444 SVCD DEMO BROKEN! My test results.. PLEASE RE

[JoeB]

I just purchased a Pioneer DV-444 for myself. My brother has a Pioneer DV-343 for about a year now.

I mostly create my own SVCD's (trying to push the envelop of compatibility here) and so I decided to download test_svcd_ntsc.zip from the SVCD menu here at vcdhelp.com

the menus work correctly, and the scrowling between scenes work correctly.

The problem is that the VIDEO/AUDIO do not work correctly on the DV-444 but they work perfectly fine (same CD) on the DV-343!

But my home make SVCD's work fine on the DV-444 (but those SVCD's have video set to max 2450 with audio hitting about 192, and not 224 - So I believe).

I was wondering if anybody else here with a DV-444 had the same problem or not and if so, what are the "max" settings they suggest for the 444.

Thanks in advance!

JoeB

P.S. I'll be taking the test CD with me to the stores tomorrow.. want to see if their 444 give the same problem, as well as the 440. Real sad if Pioneer added MP3 compatibility at the price of SVCD "power".

[diepvien007]

JoeB, I have the same problem playing SVCD too, the audio skip sometimes. Strange thing about this player is that it reads certain SVCD format, maybe it has to do with the bit rates. (29.97 fps vs. 25 fps)

Does anyone know why this player can only read certain SVCD files?

[JoeB]

Hmmm..

The wierd thing is that all my SVCD's are 29.97 fps and they work fine! The only difference is that I encoded my home made SVCD's with a lower bit rate for the audio only (192kbits vs 224kbits) than the "standard".

Looks like the player is very picky around the SVCD peaks, and the audio data rate just pushed it above the edge!

the video looks ok.. but then it starts pixalizing after a few seconds, and audio/video synch is lost from that point.

Anybody else noticed this/figured out how to fix it??

JoeB

[diepvien007]

Hi JoeB,

FYI, most of my SVCD are music video files. I've tested the same SVCD on my friends' Pioneer DV-343 and DV-434 and it works find except mine DV-444.
This weekend, I gonna try to test it with the same Pioneer DV-444 at GoodGuys.

Quinn

[JoeB]

Hey,

if possible, can you also test it on the 440?? It should be based on the same H/W as the 444.. just want to see if it'll give the same problem!

Thanks...

JoeB

[dattrax]

I have had a lot of problems with my 444 and getting a working SVCD. VBR looked to have problems when the bitrate goes too low with corrupted macroblocks, and stuttering picture and audio when it goes too high. CBR is a different matter. I tried 2600kbps and that stuttered, so I then dropped too 2400kbps which seems to work fine. The only problem is that you can only get about 30mins of video at that bitrate on an 80min CD. My next test is for VBR but tighten the range at which the bitrate can move. example 2000 average 2400 max and 1900 min. I'll report back my results when I get them. But for now CBR seems to be the only way to go.

Jim

[black-ws6]

I too have had difficulty getting the Pioneer DV-444 to play back smoothly at higher bit rates. I downloaded the XSVCD demo from the 'what is' section of vcdhelp and had the occasional stuttering (every 2 seconds or so). If this is a limitation of the Pioneer, I'd like to know about it since I chose this unit over the Panasonic RP-56 because of its supposed flexibility with regards to SVCD.

Newbie question: if this unit has problems playing back SVCD material at high bitrates, what does this mean for its performance when playing back MEPG-2 material authored to a DVD-R using a PC-based DVD-R burner? I understand the DVD material can be quite high-bitrate, so I am understandably worried about limiting my future DVD-authoring capabilities because of this machine.

Please let me know what you all think about this (or kindly let me know I am out in left field with this)

Thanks,
/Steve

[JoeB]

black-ws6:

I think the playback of DVD & SVCD is completly different. A home made DVD should be no different than a store purchased DVD movie, in which case it should be perfectly nice and smooth..

REST:

I made a few SVCDs about 6 months ago to play with my Pioneer 343 (which has no problems with the SVCD demo discs) and these work perfectly fine with the 444. The settings I use (I believe.. if I didn't forget them by now) is:

CCE 2.50 3 pass VBR
min 1900
max 2450
avg 2300

Audio at 192kbits

(Notice that audio is not 224 but only 192) the reason being that I didn't notice a difference between 224 and 192. This gives me ~40-45mins/80min disc at better than SVHS quality from TV (NTSC 29.97 fps)

Hope this helps...

JoeB

P.S. What about the Pioneer DV-440?? Same problem as 444??

[black-ws6]

Thanks for the clarification, JoeB. If I understand correctly, you're saying it's the method of 'burning' onto the different media that will result in smooth playback at kickass bitrates on a DVD-R. Cool. That's a relief.

Ironically enough, I am (at this moment) encoding an SVCD file using settings very close to yours. I am hoping for the same type of quality as what you got.

Your feedback has been greatly appreciated.

/Steve

[JoeB]

UPDATE:

I took the SVCD demo from here to the store today, and tried playing it on the Pioneer DV-440.

THE EXACT SAME PROBLEM!!

It looks like Pioneer has changed something in the DV-440/DV-444 line..

So for those of you who need SVCD playback a lot more than MP3, your best bet is to but the DV-343/DV-434 over the DV-440/DV-444 since they play more SVCD compliant disks..

But the DV-440/DV-444 can play MP3's..

JoeB

[diepvien007]

Hello everyone, just found out why the player can only play certain format. It can only read NTSC(29.97 fps) but not PAL(25 fps) format.
http://www.vcdhelp.com/svcd.htm

In order for it to work you must convert to NTSC, and by doing so, I use DVD2AVI to convert M2V music videos to AVI and TPMGEnc to convert to SVCD format. You might be able to convert straight from TPMGEnc instead of going through DV2AVI if you have other format beside M2V.
http://www.vcdhelp.com/convert.htm

The convertion process takes a while.

Cheer!
Quinn

[SiCN]

First off. The DVD Player plays PAL and NTSC just fine. I believe even NTSC-Film.

The player indeed has problems with playing movies once you exceed a total bitrate of about 2700. So I'd keep it under 2700kbps. I believe I have a backup of Legally Blonde (NTSCFilm) which has a total bitrate of 2744kbps (audio 224 + video 2520) and it runs fine.

My personal recommendation (with which I get good results) is to use a resolution of 352x480 (or 352x576 for PAL) at a video bitrate (CBR, since high bitrate fluctuations seem to screw anything up) of 2000-2500. I know, this is by no means a standard SVCD, but as I said. High Bitrate fluctuations seem to screw the playback up. You could try it with VBR (max. 2500, min. 1500, avg. ~2000), maybe that works. Anyway, stick with 352x480, since it WILL increase the picture quality (more bits are allocated to the picture, so even low bitrates give good results).

Anyway, don't take this as a guarantee that anything works fine. But I have good results, so maybe it's good for you, too?

[w00kiee]

the reason the player cant handle to high a bitrate for svcd is the spin speed (for cd-r reading)
the player is only spinning at 2x so if a peak or peaks of data are too much for it it goes nuts

dvds have the data closer together so it doesnt have to spin as fast to read in alot more data

a 3x cdr read speed will allow a xsvcd with a peak of about 3900 kb/sec. which would allow it to read a standard svcd quite handily

[bbb]

On the Pioneer 440, you can't use Tmpgenc's MPEG2 VBR encoding or else it will not sync (audio before video).

With Tmpgenc MPEG 1, you can use VBR and CBR.

With Tmpgenc MPEG 2, you have to use CBR for sync. Use <2600 bitrate or else it will stutter (2520 works well).

*With CCE 2.5 MPEG 2, you can use VBR with sync.

Therefore, Tmpgenc encodes VBR differently than CCE encodes VBR. This difference exhibits itself as sound sync on the Pioneer 440 and 444. Other (older-e.g., 525) Pioneer players avoid the sound sync problem.

To fix this problem with Tmpgenc's VBR encoding, we have to find the actual encoding differences between Tmpgenc's VBR and CCE's VBR. Then find a way to convert a Tmpgenc's VBR file to one like CCE's VBR file without using CCE (for those without PIII's or Athlons). Petitioning Tmpgenc's author to fix this or Pioneer to fix our 440/444 dvd players is unlikely to work.

[JoeB]

Anybody noticed that when they encode a 4:3 video (SVCD) and try to play it back on the 440/444 you never get the full picture??

If I tell the DVD the TV is 4:3 and I want it normal, it adds black lines! (even when Bitrate is reporting the source is 480x480 at 4:3 NTSC!) So when I say the source is 16x9 and I want to crop, it shows full screen, but the video is not complete (about 10 lines on each side are missing).

Anybody else got this?? How do I fix it?? The source is record as 4x3 from TV.. I use virtual dub with the only filter being to convert to 480x480, leave interlaced, and use precise bicubic.. and I then use CCE 2.50 to convert it to MPEG2 file (min 1900, avg 2300, max 2520). I then use TMPEG to create the 192mbps audio stereo file, and lastly TMPEG to combine the audio/video and nero to burn (SVCD compliant).

HELP!

JoeB