Asset Play in SVCD2DVD

[PerryM]

Forgive me - I've started a new strand to concentrate on this one problem.
Initially, certainly on the demo version of SVCD2DVD, this worked for me. At some stage in the process of re-installing (the registered version) to cure other problems I lost it. Any attempt to play an H264 TS asset causes a complete lock-up with the continually rotating 'looking for resource' icon. I have to stop the app in Task Manager.
Thinking that it may have something to do with me using CoreAVC as my preferred H264 decoder. I installed SVCD2DVD on a clean version of Windows7 with no additional codecs. This also won't play the H264 asset but at least shows an error caption that states that (in effect) that it doesn't have the codec. It goes on to say that it uses the same resources as WMP, but WMP is working fine on the same asset so I am stumped.
The actual asset concerned is a FreeSat recording of BBCHD. I also tried an MPEG2 SD recording (also BBC) with identical lock-up, so maybe this is all a red herring. I am rapidly becoming disillusioned if SVCD2DVD will ever work and would much appreciate some suggestions as where to go next!

[PerryM]

Whilst I was in Windows7 it was interesting to note a big difference in the way that a project was processed from that in Vista. (Both OS are installed on two partitions of the same drive, the media is on a separate RAID system)
In Vista the two cores of my processor (Athlon 5600+) are used very assymetrically in SVCD2DVD so that although one core is going pretty much full blast, the average use is only about 50%. In Windows7 the two cores get almost identical use so that the overall average is about 80%. Obviously the process time is thus much faster in Win7, roughly 20fps vs 7fps!
Unfortunately no difference in the result - over DVD max data rate!
FWIW

[ChrissyBoy]

Forgive me - I've started a new strand to concentrate on this one problem.
Initially, certainly on the demo version of SVCD2DVD, this worked for me. At some stage in the process of re-installing (the registered version) to cure other problems I lost it. Any attempt to play an H264 TS asset causes a complete lock-up with the continually rotating 'looking for resource' icon. I have to stop the app in Task Manager.
Thinking that it may have something to do with me using CoreAVC as my preferred H264 decoder. I installed SVCD2DVD on a clean version of Windows7 with no additional codecs. This also won't play the H264 asset but at least shows an error caption that states that (in effect) that it doesn't have the codec. It goes on to say that it uses the same resources as WMP, but WMP is working fine on the same asset so I am stumped.
The actual asset concerned is a FreeSat recording of BBCHD. I also tried an MPEG2 SD recording (also BBC) with identical lock-up, so maybe this is all a red herring. I am rapidly becoming disillusioned if SVCD2DVD will ever work and would much appreciate some suggestions as where to go next!

My understanding is that Win 7 uses Windows Media Foundation rather than directshow by default. There is plenty discussion on this (e.g http://forum.corecodec.com/viewtopic.php?f=3&p=9675). I will take a look at this when i get back from my holidays. The preview is just the playback of your asset - so in the meantime you can still process stuff and preview via WMP.

[PerryM]

Had a chance to do some serious investigating - you'll have to forgive this old fart for being a bit slow on the uptake!
I restored the sytem back to just before I first bought and installed SVCD2DVD, re-installed it and the asset play has returned! So now that I know to avoid 2 pass encoding it at least runs OK. However, I have yet to make even a usable result from my H264 TS assets (BBC HD). Although the bar graph makes a reasonable stab at the expected data size, the actual results are quite different. A single 30 min program (projected at 2GB) actually encoded to 3.4GB of VideoTS which is way over the max data rate. 3x 30 min progs (projected at a SL DVD with the autofill button pressed) actually encoded to 3.4GB total, which is a curious coincidence! The resulting video was unusably stuttery.
By the way - I discovered that if you have more than one asset in the project, then 2 instances of FFDSHOW get invoked in the processing and this causes the 2 cores of my processor to run flat-out 100% (a good thing). Whether this has anything to do with the unusable result I know not.

Whilst Chrissy is on his hols, it would be great to hear if anybody out there has managed to get it to work on BBC HD assets?