SVCD Menu problems

[greeknl]

I encoded with TMPGenc a Personal DVD to SVCD and made a SVCD using Ulead moviefactory 3.

After burning the SVCD, I put it in my DVD-player (Pioneer 525) and I observed that when selecting a chapter to jump to and then selecting to jump forward to the next chapter it starts playing from the beginning of the movie.

Can anybody explain???

Thankz

[SimonH]

I don't have an answer, but I have also had the same problem, and a similar one.

You may also notice that if you goto a chapter point using the Next/Prev buttons, let it play past your next chapter point, and then press Next again. It won't go to the next chapter point, it will go to the chapter point it passed.

I think that this is because SVCD chapters aren't actually chapters in the DVD sense of the word. They are entry points, which work in a different manner to DVD chapters, but can serve the same purpose in some cases.

I get the feeling that this behaviour is simply the nature of SVCD entry points, and there is no solution

I see it as, the DVD player does not keep a record of when an Entry Point is passed, so when you press "Next" it goes to the next entry point it is aware of, ie, the point after the point you have just been to.

In your case, because you have gone straight to a point from a menu, it doesn't know which point it is at, and thinks there hasn't been any, so it goes to the first - ie. the start of the film.

Make any sense ? didn't think so . . . .lol . . .

[iThinkYouBrokeIt]

I've had the same problem. There is only one way around it that I know of. It may take some time so it might just not really be worth the effort.

What you do is split the movie so that each "chapter" is its own file. For instance, we have a file that has chapters 1 and 2 on it. What you do is you cut that into two files, putting the separation where the chapter separation is.

If you do this, then next/prev will work perfectly, but you can't rewind into a previous chapter. (if you are at the beginning of chapter two, you can't press rewind and go back into chapter one. you have to press previous.)

I've done this before, but as i said, it takes a lot of time, and ... well, yeah.


--James

[adam]

It shouldn't start playing from the very beginning of the movie though, unless I'm just misreading your post. As others have said, SVCDs and VCDs only support entrypoint chapters which do have a serious limitation.

If you jump to chapter 3 and let it play to where chapter 9 is and then hit next, you will jump to chapter 4 because you never really left the segment representing chapter 3 in the first place. If you are starting back at the beginning of the movie each time you skip to another track, then there is something wrong. Otherwise, welcome to SVCD.

[iThinkYouBrokeIt]

What i mean was to make each chapter be its own file. That way there aren't any "entry points" but it is just playing all the mpeg files as a playlist. its playing them all in a row.

this way, if you start at the beginning, and when you're on ch4, you hit next, you will go to ch5, not ch2. it will do next/prev just as well as a dvd. but rewinding through different chapters (rewinding past a chapter point) could not be done.

[greeknl]

Just to clarify.

When I hit to go to chapter 3 e.g and then hitting next or previous it jumps back to the beginning and when I hit next again it jumpos back to chapter 3.

Maybe this is a authoring problem of Ulead Moviefactor?

[adam]

Right iThinkYouBrokeIt, that will bypass the limitation of entrypoint chapters, but then again those really aren't chapters they are just separate tracks. The main problem with this is that on almost all DVD players there will be a noticable pause in between one track and the next.

greeknl that's defiitely not how SVCD chapters should work. I wouldn't be suprised if this was just a limitation of Ulead moviefactor.

[greeknl]

Thanks for the input
I'll try to re-burn the SVCD again using the methods available in moviefactory and I'll come back if the problems persists.

[iThinkYouBrokeIt]

Right iThinkYouBrokeIt, that will bypass the limitation of entrypoint chapters, but then again those really aren't chapters they are just separate tracks. The main problem with this is that on almost all DVD players there will be a noticable pause in between one track and the next.

greeknl that's defiitely not how SVCD chapters should work. I wouldn't be suprised if this was just a limitation of Ulead moviefactor.

I wasn't aware of any pause between tracks...
I set the pause to 0 for each track, and, on my dvd player, and my computer, the transition between tracks is perfectly smooth.

yeah........
i dont know of any other solution to this problem.

[adam]

Then your hardware and software are rare indeed. I honestly have never heard of any dvd player being able to play two tracks seamlessly. One thing that's for sure, is that very few people will be able to do this without getting a noticable pause in between each track.

[vitualis]

As per adam's post.

The whole reason why most people will not author "chapters" as separate tracks is that on almost all players, there will be a noticeable pause -- regardless of whether you set the "pause" value to 0 or not.

http://www.michaeltam.com/chapters.html

Unless you have one of those rare Philips players that support "real" chapters, the next best option for seamless chapter support is the "entrypoint chaptering system" described in the above thread.

Regards.

[iThinkYouBrokeIt]

my dvd player plays multiple tracks seamlessly...

it is also seamlessly on my computer (using WinDVD 4)
if windvd plays it seamlessly on my computer, why wouldn't it also on other people's computers?

anyway, i'm glad mine can. i wasnt aware that it was rare.

even though i generally just use entry points. it is easier.....