Best Way?

[Spies]

Im going to convert a divx to SVCD all at once, producing a hude mpeg2 file, now i have to apply the panasonic svcd trick to it, do i encode in svcd, cut and do the trick, or do i do the trick and THEN cut the video?

Thanks in advance

Spies

[Truman]

Why do you convert a DivX to SVCD, if your player does not play SVCD?
If you demux a MPEG-2 and remux to MPEG-1, why not just converting to MPEG-1?

[Spies]

the panasonic trick works and tricks it into playing svcd, it looks a lot better, thats why i wanna do it.

[Truman]

No, it is playing XVCD. Have you tried to convert to MPEG-1 at same resolution and same bitrate once? Have you seen a difference?

[Truman]

oops: back to the question. You can do it at once. Cutting the MPEG is a demux / remux process. So if you use TMPG to cut, just select the part of the movie, that you want to save and select type: "Video-CD(non-standard)"

[Spies]

I will try the xvcd @ same res and bitrate and post back shortly.

Edit: You cant run the resolution on a xvcd out of spec can you?

[Truman]

No, XVCD simply means "off specs". Everything, that your player can handle is allowed.

[Spies]

Ah yes your correct, xvcd looks exactly the same, an off topic question tho, rather than converting a divx to a higher res than it is, am i right in thinking a lower res would give more definition?

Im a bit confused by vbv buffer size also, it defaults at 40, is this ok for a 2520kbps xvcd?

[Truman]

Hmm, it depends... Higher resolution does effect a more detailed image but requires a higher bitrate. Converting low to high resolution is useless. DivX is natural heavy compressed, I mean lots of (bitrate eating) details are killed alreaddy, so you may try high resolution.
If you convert to XVCD at SVCD specs of course the VBV buffer size must be set to MPEG-2's maximum, 112 (resp. 224KB).

[Spies]

what was meant by resp. 224KB ?

Thanks

Spies

[Truman]

Different MPEG tools define the VBV buffer size different.
The max MPEG-2 VBV buffer size is 112 segments. 1 segment = 16 Kbit = 2 KB --->224 KB.
E.g. in TMPG we have to select 224 instead of 112.

[Spies]

Why is it that if i select an svcd template and go into settings, I see a vbv of 112 as degined by the template? Surely your not going to say these templates are wrong?

[Truman]

No, not wrong. The setting of this template is 112 KB. It is not the max MPEG-2 VBV buffer size but 112 KB, nothing else. I did not analyze the rest of the template. It depends on the bitrate (high / low, CBR / VBR) and the GOP length. 112KB may be OK or not.
For example if you do a VBR encode 0-2500 kbps and a 12 frames GOP I highly recommend to use a VBV buffer size of 224KB.