Flawless DVD to SVCD!

[Joe Wicentowich]

As a newbie for many weeks, I've been interested in the easiest, quickest way to convert dvd to svcd. After too many hours wasted on experimenting with xsvcd (it played on my standalone but was too jumpy) I reverted to svcd and have finally produced (2) 80 min CD-R SVCD with no noticeble differences from DVD. I am sure TMPGEnc and DVD2SAVI are excellent programss, but I was unsuccessful in manipulating the right combination of settings to produce a burned movie that was worth watching. I went back to DVDx, and very simply produced kick ass copies!

In a nutshell..
Ripped a movie using Smartripper V 2.39. I formally used a bitrate calculator, but I found the tools within DVDx to be sufficient. I'll select the IFO file in DVDx V 1.6 (I've yet to update to V 1.8a). For Input settings I use the defaults. Change the Audio Track to High (slow) quality. Check whether PAL or NTSC. In iDCT use MMX for pentium, I used MMX-3D Now for my Athalon. For Output settings Change to Super Video CD (MPEG2). Motion search to High (slow) Keep Audio to 224, Calculation MMX-3D Now. DCT/ to FPU (Best Quality). Resolution 480X480, none (Letter Box 4/3), Bicubic, check whole for complete movie. Volume don't exceed to 80 min. VCD. Calculate Bitrate by changing numbers (Start around 1800) while observing the estimated size. Make sure the total doesn't exceed 1610 MB.
Set the output files location and encode.

DVDx automatically separates the movie into 808MB+- files after 16 hours+-.. They playwell on my PC. Sometimes the images are slightly jumpy (due to PC). BUT I burn them to cheap Memorex 80 min CD-R using Nero 5.5 (8x speed) and they play flawlessly on my Daewoo 5000N and 35" Sony TV.

Maybe I'm just lucky, but so far so good...!

[bilbogod]

Dude, give DVD2SVCD a go when you can get hold of Cinema Craft Encoder (I'm not suggesting anything ). This is pretty much the cream of the crop, the best part being that when its set up once you can basically leave it the same time and time again. Its lazy mans paradise. You get to have your cake and eat it.

[Joe Wicentowich]

bilbogod - I am all for a better way! No doubt I will continue to make attempts to perfect the whole process. I was just relieved to have finally had some success after weeks of trial and error.

[barth]

Joe, still a (lazy) newbie I am, I started my dvd ripping adventure with flask and the panasonic encoder, which i was pretty excited about. then I was curious about svcd and started experimenting and ended using dvdx. this was awesome! I continued my search and I bought the cinemacraft encoder and started using it with dvd2svcd. this is even better than dvdx! cinemacraft encodes up to 6 times faster than dvdx or tmpgenc. not that time is a issue for me ( i'm satisfied with a 24 hrs dvd to svcd proces) but with the speed of CCE you can do 3 pass VBR encoding in the time that dvdx does one pass CBR, and believe me, the result kicks ass
so I'd say, dvd2svcd is definitely the way to go