Now that the colder, winter months are around the corner, I am looking to spend a little more time on this (indoor) VideoCD hobby of mine. In particular, I've been reading the guides for XML, menu creation, chapters, and entry points (a big round of applause to vitualis for taking the time to learn and share what he knows in such detailed, online documentation).

Now, in my attempt to begin this process, I've recently encoded two movies, "Iron Monkey" and "Swordfish", the way I normally do, with only one difference, the enabling of the "Create Bitstream For Editing" option. I noticed that in doing this, the last two B frames in the GOP are dropped, making the GOP shorter and end on a P frame.

Well, before attempting any menu creation, I figured I'd burn the mpeg to CD-RW media and test it on my JVC standalone, making sure the added option does not adversly affect playback. Well, it does! The playback of the resultant VCD's (or more precisely XVCDs) video stream stutters! Audio, as always, is fine.

Could this be because it is non-standard VCD (CQ_VBR, 352x480)? Or, is it my JVC standalone player? (which, by the way, has played every CQ_VBR, MPEG-1, XVCD I've ever created with no problems, 352x240/480, 480x480, 640x480, 720x480, up until I now). I have not tried testing the option with a standard VCD yet.