Philips 615 & SVCD Playback

[tpalik]

I own the Philips Q35 and purchased the 615 as a gift for my in-laws. Given the similarity physically between the two players and feature list I assumed that compatibility would be equivalent.

However, when I placed an SVCD into the 615 it would play for 5-10 seconds at a time, then freeze, then continue on having jumped over a few seconds of video. This same SVCD lays flawlessly on the Q35. It was rendered with TMPEGnc and authored with ULead DVD Movie Factory.

Does anyone have any thoughts on this ?

On the plus side, Picture CDs are fine and I think the black levels are better the the Q35 or 724 and they can be adjusted too. In all other respects it seems about the same.

Cheers,
Tony

[leon.biggel]

I have the same player and in the past had the same problems.
This player can only handle the maximum bitrate of a standard SVCD.
This is about 2750 Max. When you exceed this value a little the picture can freeze sometimes. When you exceed this value a lot (say 4000) the picture freezes every 1 second or so. The more you exceed this value, the more chance your picture freezes. You need to make SVCD's that have a maximum bitrate of 2700 (to be sure), this is inclusive the audio bitrate. (example Picture=2300 and audio=398). The player plays DVD+R/W without any problems. Also it does support multiple audiotracks and selectable subs in SVCD.

[tpalik]

Leon,

Thanks for the quick reply I need to check my rendering software accordingly but do you know any way to check an SVCD to see if the freezes line up with peaks in bitrate ?

Cheers,
Tony

[leon.biggel]

You can use the program Bitrate Viewer (bv.exe) which can analyse mpg streams. Maybe that the program ReMpeg can analyse this as well, but I only tried that with vobs. These programs are easily found in the tools section.