BEYOND An Expert Question: Diagonal Fluttery Blip

[homerpez]

This question may not have an answer without you all seeing it first hand, but I'll try anyway.

I encode SVCD's with CCE, playback on an Apex 500W (for now), on a 19" analog TV. I posted this here as I suspect it has an encoding solution, but i could be wrong.

Here's what's happening.

Every now and again, I witness what appears to be a bright, diagonal "blip" dart across the screen on certain scene changes. Usually it's when it suddenly changes from two contrasts (black to white for instance), but my no means does it limit itself to that. Not fatal, but extremely annoying.

Picture the look of this blip as what turning on an older video game machine looked like, mixed with a scrambled channel on TV that it tries to tune in for a second. It also has a high-pitched "subliminal" sound liek a TV tuner makes while changing channels.

It happens playing through at normal speed, and it happens (get this) when I do step-by-step frames as well. When I skip over the effected area, it will flash at the same points every time. Always on the same frames, but two movies can have similar contrast changes and both may not do this. Very consistant, yet inconsistant.

So... based on "BEYOND EXPERTISE"... what's to blame for this?

The TV? ("Composite In" Port)?

Encoding? Maybe "ZigZag scanning order" shouldn't be used? (It has a diagonal zig-zag-looking pattern, thought matbe it's connected somehow)....

The player? Maybe the Apex just doesn't handle "ZigZag" well?

Combination of all of these?...

I'm stumped and annoyed. Thanks for any help, once again, in advance.

[malducci]

I have a Apex 500w as well. I think I have experienced what you have described. I made a SVCD of Peter Pan and the second CD had a problem with with what looked liked video garbage across the screen ( about 20 to 30 pixels vertical width ). I burned a new second disc and the problem so far has not shown itself. I don't think it is a spike as I have tested the DVD player up to 4000kbit on a standard CD-R and my movies do not reach that in anyway that I am aware of. I use CCE 2.5 for the encoding and BBmpeg fo the muxing/cutting.

[homerpez]

Thanks for the reply, I don't think, however that your problem and mine are the same exact one...

This is the whole screen flashing, like it's trying to tune in on something for a split second, then goes to the next scene... it's a bright white flash of diagonal lines...

The Apex's have other issues, not usually having to do with bitrate problems... what you describe sounds like a dirty disc, dirty lens, or considering it's an Apex, maybe a bad DVD-Rom unit.

I'm having that problem too... random blocks and a whir of the motor to try and keep up with what it's missing... that's why I already have a Pioneer DV-343 on order...

This is a whole new problem I haven't experienced outside of my SVCD's created with CCE... and I have this nagging feeling it is "ZigZag Scanning Order"... maybe reacting badly in a broken Apex?

I only use 3 checkboxes in my Progressive, or FILM movie encodes: Add Sequence End Code, Progressive Frames, and ZigZag Scanning Order.

What makes this weird is that not every movie I encode with "ZigZag" does this. Only certain ones. All other details (bitrate, VBR, etc) are the same. Some do this, some don't.

Would it help any if I encoded everything as if it were Interlaced? Then I could encode with zero options? I don't know. I'm totally baffled by this one...

Any other insights? With my luck, I'm the only one this is happening to.

[homerpez]

Everybody... please disregard this thread. I found the problem.

It seems that it was the TV's Composite jack. It was an intense pain in the neck to discover this (the Apex was on it's deathbed, the ROM unit kept overheating while testing!)

I had to re-wire the whole setup to use an RF modulator, then to the TV, and this solved this problem. Turns out it wasn't encoding at all...

Unrelated to this problem... If anyone is interested, though... I'll be selling my Apex 500W to a hobbyist, for parts (the ROM drive can be replaced with most any older DVD-ROM computer drive)... cheap!