Apex players & VCD's

[spudz]

Hi guys..

Whenever I play my VCD's on an Apex AD-500 or AD-500W they usually play ok at the beginning but eventually the do this weird speed up stuff for a few seconds where the video speeds up really fast and then goes back to normal. Also the audio will eventually get out of sync with the video quite bad.. DVD's play fine however without any of these problems.. The same discs play perfect on a computer cdrom however.. I burn them at 16x or 12x.. is that the problem? Do I need to burn at 4x or lower? Or is it just the apex players are shite? It's really getting on my nerves.. I think I tried burning at 4x and had the same problem but I will try one again and see to make sure..

Please let me know how you guys have made out! Thanx.

Spudz

[klay51]

It's ur player im guessing. I have vcds and they play fine on my Toshiba or Phillips 711

[homerpez]

Nope. The more Im finding out about how to eliminate this, the more I can say it's not the Player itself (at least not totally...

Assuming you made the movie using TMPGEnc...

What you'll need to do is demultiplex the video/audio with TMPGEnc, then remultiplex using bbMPEG. Use "VCD" button, and all options checked there EXCEPT FOR "SVCD Scan Offsets" or "Align Sequence Headers". The first you don't use for obvious reasons, the second you don't use because it solves one problem, but causes another worse problem. Also remember, if you did a VBR encode (like Sefy's template or 2-pass), check off "VBR" here too. Then use "0" typically for mux rate (or use the MAX value they allow), and start remultiplexing.

If you do this, you should (SHOULD...) notice the video is more in synch than it was before. It may have a couple of spots where it fluxtuates, but it will be for only a half a second, then it should go back in synch. You may notice this drift a bit longer after FF/RW sometimes, but this should also go back into synch while playing.

Let me know if this works. And beware of "Align Sequence Headers". It's tempting to use, and creates PERFECT synch, however it created glitches on every movie I did with that. It looks like a scratch or skip on the CD, even when there is none (it's cause by this feature).

EDIT: I forgot to mention I have the exact player you have, and thus far this worked for me...

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: homerpez on 2001-09-01 18:00:46 ]</font>