SVCD A Question of Size?

[Deepdale Duck]

Hi

I have been backing up my DVD collection to VCD for a while now and all has been fine. That is until a friend of mine lent me an SVCD and I was gobsmacked at the quality! It was near DVD quality, no blocky mess when there is a lot of movement on the screen and virtually no noise around moving images etc.

But my question(s) is this. The total running time of the film is roughly 111 minutes, about 1hr 51min. The film was split onto 2 cd's, which were roughly equal length, so that makes them about 55 minutes each.
However on my DVD player the timer stopped at the end of each CD on 39min59sec it was as if my player thought that only 40 minutes had elapsed not 55 minutes?

For further info I'm not sure whether this film is either PAL or NTSC as my DVD & TV play both formats. (I'm in the UK BTW)

I have been reading up on SVCD's this morning and as I understand a regular 80 min CDR can hold about 40 minutes of top quality SVCD - upto 60 minutes with reduced quality. Is this a factor of the strange time issue on my DVD player?

My next question is this. I'm going to create my first SVCD film using this combination of tools.

Smart DVD Ripper
DVD2AVI
TMPGEnc
VCDEasy
ChapterX
Nero for burning the image file.

I would imagine it is in TMPGEnc where I would need to alter the quality settings. I don't want to be spreading out my backup films onto 3 cd's. What is the best quality setting to use? Should I use the standard SVCD template supplied.

Or can anyone point me in the right direction for creating a SVCD with super quality on 2 CD's?

Thanks in advance

[widemouth]

Use TMPGENC.

After you have split the files, use the TmpgEnc SVCD Wizard and let if determine the bitrate by setting it to use 100% of a SVCD. If you dont mind the encode taking a long time then site it to use 2-Pass VBR and set the Min and Max to 400 and 2520. (Best if you work out the best values for you. You can go to higher MAX rates as long as your player can handle it).

There are many variations to the above but this is how I used to do it before I got the DVD burner.

[Gazorgan]

It sounds like a glitch in your player. I did a LOT of SVCD and never recall that problem coming up in other posts. Of course I don't have a timer on any of my DVD Players, so I can't truly say.

[widemouth]

My Teac DVD player does it if I use a Bitrat higher than standard. A SVCD with a average bitrate of 4000, the counter on the display of the DVD goes at twice the speed.

It must use bitrate throughput as the timer or something

[theDruid]

If you've already got TMPGEnc Plus, I'd recommend giving DVD2SVCD a go.

It automates a lot of the stuff like chapter creation etc.. and generally makes the whole process fairly fool-proof.

I've no idea about the timer issue I'm afraid...

cheers,
mcdruid.

[Deepdale Duck]

Thanks for your replies.

I've set up TMPGEnc to create my 1st SVCD tonight. I've set the CBR to max and will be burning to a 900MB 99 min cd (2 cd's I expect)

I will post back tomorrow 09:00 GMT with my results - but now I see more clearly when you use the wizard in TMPGEnc how you alter the CBR for the size of CD.

What I want is the best quality on 2 99min cd's. (like I'm sure everyone else does!)

Cheers

[theDruid]

If you want the best quality, you'd probably be better using multi-pass VBR.

TMPGEnc can do that by itself, but I'd really recommend DVD2SVCD.

I tried dozens of other methods before coming across DVD2SVCD, and I really do think it's the best way.

cheers,
mcdruid.

[FulciLives]

A lot of stand alone DVD players do wierd things with the time counter when playing back CVD or SVCD discs. As long as your SVCD is made to the standard and your DVD player plays it then I would't worry about the time counter much. It's just one of those quirky things

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

[ZippyP.]

You can create blockiness if you lower the bitrate too much when trying to squeeze a lot of minutes on a disk. VBR is a great way to preserve quality while squezzing as much time as possible. Another method to keep quality is to use 352x480 resolutiion, also known as CVD. You can go with a lower bitrate than SVCD while keeping the video looking good. I can get an hour on a CD at CVD resolution using 2-pass VBR and the quality is good to my eyes. You need to view the video and decide your own bitrate thresholds though. Look in the Tools section for CVD templates for TMPGEnc.

[Gazorgan]

DVD2SVCD is pretty nice. I typically shoot for 40-50 minutes/disk for 4:3 and 45-55 minutes/disk for 16:9 (letterboxed uses less bits). 2-pass VBR and it's pretty much indistinguishable from the DVD on 25" TV's or smaller. You can control all this in DVD2SVCD very easily. You get BIN/CUE's when its done :P

[gmatov]

Gazorgan,

I always got both bin/cue and mpegs. Was there a setting I overlooked?

I set DVD2SVCD to make movie to 2 80 min CDs and on occasion, not always, got a 3rd half sized disk. No biggie.

I, too, think it is one of the best packages for SVCD. And that from someone who swore by DVDx, till I learned to use it.

Cheers,

George

BTW, Merlin, at 3 hours length, coded onto 3 CDs at default, VBR. Quality, to my eye, as good as DVDshrink, 7+ gigs to 4.3 DVD+R. For some reason DVD-R glitched out of my LiteOn 411, into my Philips 724. +R, outstanding, and compression at 54%. Very impressed

[Deepdale Duck]

Thanks,

I managed to succesfully create an SVCD backup. My film was only 1hr 28min so I split it into 2 44min parts.

The files however ended up being over 900MB in size, so I'm struggling to overburn the 2nd CD.....

I used the CBR setting of 2520 so in my opinion the quality is excellent, but I will try your suggestions of MVBR setting and also using DVD2SVCD too.

Cheers

[cooljoe666]

I think that CBR is a waste of time. It makes big files that are no better than using CQ 2520 w/ 80 quality setting. With a 44 minute file you would get around a 500MB MPG file. And put motion search on slow(high quality). I have done this with all my movies and have no problems.....except some present issues unrelated to this.

[Deepdale Duck]

Thanks again.

I've tried CBR and 2 pass VBR - I get better results with the latter.
As for file sizes I've started to use 99min 870MB cdr's so that I can fit more on without compromising the quality too much.

On an earlier issue I'd just like to say that my DVD player (Sony SLVD950GS) on all of my SVCD backups the timer runs to 39:59 - whether the running time is less or greater!? Just a Sony glitch I guess!

Thanks and a Happy New Year.