DVD Player will play one VCD but not another on same media

[jrewingii]

Hi all,

I have a Sony DAV-S500 and am having problems playing certain VCDs... I know the media isn't the problem.

Here's the situation: I have a copy of Young Guns from a while ago which plays beautifully, but a recent release of Brotherhood of the Wolf on the same media does not. It recognizes it's a VCD as I get the "PBC" display and what-not, but then I get the dreaded C:00:13 error saying the disc is "dirty".

Does the way the VCD is encoded matter? If I try and play the VCD on my computer there's no problem. PowerDVD and XingMPEG recognize it as a VCD.

*help and TIA*

[Vejita-sama]

Yes, how the the VCD is encoded does matter. While you PC can play any MPEG1 file, some stand alone DVD players are very picky about what they will play. Some will only play white book VCD standard (ie. no xVCD).

How did you encode the problem MPEG? What's the resolution and video/audio bitrates?

[jrewingii]

Unfortunately I didn't do the encode, but it looks like it was originally encoded with DIVX..

According to VirtualDub & XingMPEG it's 352x240 @ 29.970 fps with an average bitrate of 1140 kilobits/sec or 140K/s with an audio rate of 27 K/s for a total datarate of 172 K/s

That probably doesn't help you much since I don't exactly what the encoder was, right?

[jrewingii]

Incidentally.. I just had a peek at TMPGenc settings for MPEG1 VCDs.. looks like it encodes at 1150 kbits/sec.. could that be the problem?

[Vejita-sama]

Hmm? video=1150kbit/s is the VCD whitebook standard, could be the problem but I doubt it. I think the real problem is that you didn't encode it and don't have the source, so you're most likely stuck with what you've got. Hard to fix that which you don't have Sorry..

[Sarcoptic]

I have had problems with vcds lately too, I would burn using Nero and have problems, try using VCDEasy to burn the the movie this has helped me greatly

[jrewingii]

..sigh.. thanks for the help anyways.

I guess I'll have to settle for hooking up my comp to my TV with REALLY long A/V cables.. I hope the video signal loss isn't too bad.