incorrect GOP when trying to author DVD with files extracted from VCD

[ibzomie]

I'm trying to convert some old VCDs to DVD. Using Isobuster, I've extracted the files. It was my understanding (perhaps, maybe probably, incorrect) that these files would be DVD compliant. Be that as it may, when I load them into Tsunami DVD Author, I get a message that the GOP is incorrect. I've tried to reencode them with MainConcept, but it didn't work.

Short of spending money on advanced programs (the files are not that important), is there a fix for this?

Or is it a lost cause?

[Baldrick]

Can't you ignore it in tmpgenc dvd author? I'm pretty sure the dvd will work fine on most dvd players.

[jman98]

Yeah, I've seen this before too. AlanHK, one of our regulars, used to do that VCD->DVD thing a lot. I'm not sure what his method was. I found that the old Scenarist program was pretty forgiving about GOPs and as long as they were valid (18 or less for NTSC and 15 for PAL if I remember correctly) it didn't care if one GOP was say 17 and the others were 18 if you had NTSC. Scenarist is insanely expensive and I can't advise you to get it from a warez site, but as long as your GOP is valid, it did work for this kind of thing. Scenarist also has a gigantic learning curve and it is not user intuitive or user friendly, another drawback.

I know it's not DVD, but you might just convert the files to Divx/Xvid. Baldrick's suggestion is also worth trying and you might look into the free TMPGenc and see if you can re-encode the video to use only valid GOPs. Or you could (ugh) get an editor of some kind like MPEGVCR or VideoReDo and snip one frame from the offending GOP and see if that makes it happy. But it would be cheaper to just buy the movie on DVD than to pay for an editor to do that.