Best way to convert divx/xvid to SVCD

[ssjdominic]

I need to know whats the best way to convert avi to svcd cause when i try the quality turns out to be low any help is appreciated

[wolleric]

It depends on what encoder you use. I will describe how to do it with VirtualDub and TMpegEnc, because they are free.

1.) Open your video in VDub. If it complains about an improper audio encoding, select Audio/Full Processing Mode and Audio/Compression,No Compression(PCM). File/Save to WAV, then Audio/WAV Audio, select the newly created WAV.
2.) Go to File/File Information. Take a piece of paper and note the following information: frame size, frame rate, # of video frames and audio compression (if it says "Unknown (tag 2000)" here, the audio is AC3 encoded, see below).
3.) Decide how many SVCDs you want to make. Normally, you shouldn't put more than an hour on one SVCD, or else the quality will suffer too much. In this example I presume that you want to have two CDs.
4.) Go to Audio/Full Processing Mode, then choose Audio/Compression,No Compression(PCM) and Audio/Conversion,44100 Hz,16 bit,stereo.
5.) Calculate the frame numbers at which you will have to cut the movie (with two CDs that would be the exact middle of the video). If you are lucky there is a scene change near to those frames (it has to be very near! not more than 1-2 seconds off). If so, note the frame number before and after the scene change. If not, simply pick the calculated frame and the next one.
6.) Select each frame range (p.e. 0-middle and [middle+1]-end), go to the File menu and save it to WAV.
7.) Select Audio/No Audio. Video/Compression,DivX 4 LowMotion.
8.) Resize the video with VDub's filter. Video/Filters,Add,resize. Set the width to 480. Now you have to calculate the height so that the video will have the correct aspect ratio:
height=(source-height/source-width)*640
If you have a PAL source (i.e. a frame rate of 25 fps), you have to multiply this height with 1.2. Now round because VDub needs whole numbers. As filter mode choose Bicubic or Precise Bicubic (selecting Bilinear filtering will speed up the encoding a little but the image quality will sometimes decrease a bit).
If your calculated height is not 480 (or 576 for PAL), you will have to "Expand frame and letterbox image" to a total of 480x480 pixels (again, 480x576 for PAL).
9.) Select the first frame range again.
10.) Now you are ready to File/Start frame server. If you have not installed the frameclient before, do so now by running Auxsetup.exe from the VDub directory and selecting "Install handler".
I always give my frame servers short 8.3 names since otherwise my encoder sometimes crahes. Save the signpost to a VDR file.
11.) Start TMpegEnc, load the appropriate SuperVideoCD template (PAL for 25 fps, NTSCFilm for 23.796 fps, NTSC for 29.97 fps), select your VDR file as video source and the first WAV as audio source. Choose an output file, hit Start and go shopping...
12.) Quit the frame server, select the next range and repeat steps 10+11 for every CD you want to make, using the frame numbers you wrote down in step 5.

AC3 sound
If your AVI happens to have AC3 sound, you need a special VirtualDub version with AC3 support (I think you can get v1.4.8 with AC3 from DivXDigest or somewhere). Save the sound with Direct Stream Copy to an .AC3 file and convert that to WAV with Azid. Then go to your normal VDub version, open the video and select Audio/WAV Audio, then load your WAV. After that you can proceed with step 3.
If your AC3 has 5.1 sound, you can keep that by converting it directly to MP2 with Hypercube Transcoder. The problem is that you cannot cut MP2 files as precisely as AVI audio. So you will have to convert the entire video as one, then multiplex and cut with TMpegEnc's MPEG Tools.

[ssjdominic]

I got one problem when i convert it works perfect the first half works great but when i convert the second half the sound dont work at all its xvid im converting and i seperated the audio in a wav

[Compound]

i dont bother with vdub boost your direct show filters in tmpge to +4 youll find it under enviormental settings.get this simple bitrate calc http://www.vcdhelp.com/calc.htm convert with tmpge then cut with bbmpg. i never have sync or no audio problems.