Problems with Standalone VCD player / self-made VCDs

[sideshowfreak]

HI guys i really hope someone can help me out here. I recently made a VCD of all of the music videos i downloaded off the net. I used Nero Burning - Rom v.5.5.4.0 to do this. The problem is some videos work and others don't. My menu worked perfectly and some of the videos too. But there were a few that ended up not working. What i mean by not working is i'm able to play them on my VCD player, but it doesn't play smoothly, it's almost like when you're playing a video on your computer and you're computer is really slow and you get that play/pause/play/pause deal. However the videos work perfectly on the computer. So i'm wondering what i did wrong. Are there MPEG-1s that are not compatible with VCDs?? should i have made a SVCD instead?
Here is my encoding info:
VIDEO:
type: MPEG 1
Size: 43.03MB
Length: 6317 Frames, 3 min. 30.8 sec
Format: 352x240, 29.97 Frames/sec

AUDIO:
type: MPEG 1
Size: 43.03MB
Length: 3 min. 30.8 sec
Format: MPEG 1 (L2), 44100Hz, Stereo

OTHER: This video is Eden's Crush and was encoded by the Zone group.

When i do burn it on CD Nero tells me that the file is compliant and does not need to be reencoded, so i'm really confused as to why it works on the computer, but not on the VCD player.
Please respond ASAP
THANXS @ ALL
P.S. This forum is great!!
~SIDESHOWFREAK...

[vitualis]

I'm not quite sure of all the details here.

Did you use Nero to do the encoding or did you encode it to MPEG-1 with another proggy first?

If you used Nero to do the encoding, then perhaps some of your clips were originally in another framerate. Framerate conversion never turns out well...

Why don't you try playing those problem clips from the VCD on your PC... Do you still have the same problem as on the stand-alone VCD player?

Regards.

[sideshowfreak]

Hey thanks for replying
well actually nero did not need to reencode the file and just told me that it was compliant for the creation of the VCD. I'm not very good with this, so i'm not so sure about frame rate.....but i know the original was encoded at 29.97 fps so i'm assuming that's correct. You see the mpg itself was not encoded by me and when i burned it onto CD the problem came with my standalone player........And yes it works perfect on my PC...but just gets yucky on the VCD player. I don't know what could have happened........
~SIDESHOWFREAK

[vitualis]

Okay. I take it that you downloaded "VCD ready" MPEG-1 files then?

I don't quite know what's wrong... Perhaps some of the specs are off???

You could try demultiplexing your MPEGs and remultiplexing them in a VCD aware muxer (e.g., with TMPGEnc or bbMPEG). See if you have the same problem afterwards.

Regards.

[sideshowfreak]

Ummm, that sounds so simple........except you gotta remember you're talking to a dummi here and i have no idea what you just said......i do have TMPGEnc....now i'm not so sure about demultiplexing.......and what is multiplexing if you don't mind me asking.........but ya i need just a bit more instruction........
THANX
~SIDESHOWFREAK...

[sideshowfreak]

o and another question what's the difference between simple and non-simple demultiplexing? And if you know what all the settings of "VCD Ready" MPEG-1 should be please tell me..
THANKS AGAIN
~SIDESHOWFREAK

[vitualis]

Just use simple demultiplexing. The "non-simple" option just gives you more flexibility -- but you don't really need that for this.

Demultiplexing is splitting the video and the audio from your MPEG and outputting them as separate files.

Multiplexing is putting them together again.

How a MPEG-1 is multiplexed is important for VCD compliance too.

To use these tools with TMPGEnc, click on Files --> MPEG Tools

Use the simple multiplexing to put your video and audio together again. Make sure you choose MPEG-1 Video-CD rather than MPEG-1 Auto.

Regards.

[sideshowfreak]

THANKS SO MUCH FOR YOUR HELP
i figured out how to do the demultiplexing and the multiplexing...thanks very much.....except when i multiplex the files when everything is done there is an warning message which says:
20962 s packets cause buffer underflow
the MPEG file might cause error when it played

that's the msg word for word........now what does that mean?? should i just okay it??
THANX,
~SIDESHOWFREAK

[vitualis]

<TABLE BORDER=0 ALIGN=CENTER WIDTH=85%><TR><TD><font size=-1>Quote:</font><HR size=1 color=black></TD></TR><TR><TD><FONT SIZE=-1><BLOCKQUOTE>
On 2001-08-29 18:57:22, sideshowfreak wrote:
THANKS SO MUCH FOR YOUR HELP
except when i multiplex the files when everything is done there is an warning message which says:
20962 s packets cause buffer underflow
the MPEG file might cause error when it played

that's the msg word for word........now what does that mean?? should i just okay it??
</BLOCKQUOTE></FONT></TD></TR><TR><TD><HR size=1 color=black></TD></TR></TABLE>

There may have been something wrong with the original specs of the MPEG after all. Your MPEG will undoubtedly play with sync problems...

Can you check what are the specs of your original MPEG file again?

This could be a problem with TMPGEnc only... so you may want to try bbMPEG as a muxer.

Regards.

[sideshowfreak]

don't mean to sound stupid, but........what r specs?? hehe sorry....

[js1604]

vitalis,

Similar problem is troubling me for quite some time now. I thought I was the only one experiencing this, but I know now that I an not.

When I first encountered with this problem I tried to trim off the few frames at the beginning of the the clip using TMPGEnc's cut&join mpeg1 video cd template. When the resulting mpg file was burn on to cdr using nero 5.5.3.3 would not play smoothly on my vcd stand alone player, I tried to burn the same mpg file using WinOnCD 3.8.

When this also did not give satisfactory result and out of desperation, I reencoded the resulting mpg file using LSX via VDub frameserving (which originally was encoded by PWI 2.50) and burn it with nero. Suddenly the vcd will play fine on the same player.

After this I thought that I sould avoid PWI and encode using LSX instead and it will always give good result. But no!!! Since then I rarly get a good working vcd anymore despite of using different CDRW (Plestor-1230A / TEAC-512EB), even changing the media.

I also have tried to reinstall all software involved without getting better result. When it worked file, I could not tell why, because I always use AVI_IO to capture from VCR then edit using VDub 1.4.5 frameserve to encoder.

Can you explain what could have caused this?

Thanks

JS