Follow up : audio problems with VCD authoring

[thelotusman]

Hi there, first of all a BIG THANKS for all the detailed responses I have received especially CORNUCOPIA (Scott) for you very detailed reply. With all your help I have been able to narrow down the source of my problem but i am YET TO FIX IT.

As previously mentioned I have a VIDEO JUKEBOX and I am in the process of downloading music videos from predominantly the ARES site to load onto the juke. I am using NEROVISION to then author the video files to CD (VCD). Thanks to you guys I have established that the problem is occuring during the authoring process.

Within NEROVISION I am using the 'burning rom' section. I currently have 30 clips downloaded. I have identified that the problem is occurring as I am selecting and adding each file to the disc. 16 of the 30 clips have been fine, as I select them they automaticly add to the playlist for the disc without any dramas but the other 14 clips respond in the following way ; as I select the suspect clips NERO brings up the following message

'This file is not a standard video CD V 2.0 disc. A compliant Video ile requires the following

MPEG1
Audio - 44.1 kHz stereo 224 Kbit/s
Vid - 352 x 240/ 29.97 hz or 352 x 240/ 2.976 Hz or 352 x 288/ 25 Hz

PROBLEM FOUND

- stream encoding which is invalid for (Super) Video Cd
- invalid vid stream : ??? fps, 352x 288 pixels, 1152 kbit/s, CBR

*TURN OFF STANDARD COMPLIANCE AND CONTINUE
*RE ENCODE THE VIDEO FILE
*CANCEL

..........................END OF THE MESSAGE.......................

WHAT DOES ALL OF THIS MEAN, I'm sorry if I sound ignorant but thats why I'm talking to you guys, I only have a very limited understanding of how all this works. When I select the RE ENCODE option the file is re encoded then added to the playlist but it is when I try and play the RE ENCODED files that I am hetting skipping/ jumping with the sound and the picture. The files that music video files that do not cause this message to come up play fine. I have also tried to use the other option 'TURN OFF STANDARD COMPLIANCE AND CONTINUE' but when I try and play these tracks I just get wierd noises and a flashing screen.

Scott ; what do you think the problem is and is there any way I can make these files the same as the ones that are working. From the ARES site A file that works is Moby ' Why does my heart feel so bad' and a file that doesnt work is Bruce Hornsby ' The way it is'. Is there a way to identify on ARES what is what before I download it or if not what do you reccomend to convert them to play as the others do.

THANKS AGAIN FOR ALL OF YOUR TIME AND EFFORT.

Regards Elliott

[jman98]

Clearly your 14 problematic files don't conform to VCD specifications. Nero is a terrible encoder - can't say I'm surprised anything you let Nero encode isn't working too well. Use GSpot and figure out what you have to begin with. I would make a rough guess that perhaps these files have odd frame rates to begin with and they don't convert very well to VCD frame rates. I've seen this a lot with MOV (QuickTIme) sources.

I have no idea what ARES is. Don't know, don't care. You'd probably be a better judge than us on whether it's even possible prior to download to identify what the file is. You could download Super and use it to convert clips to VCD. It's pretty easy to use. Just set it up to convert to VCD. VCD specs are available at this very website (look at the top left under "What Is") to give you an idea of what you need to have in the video, but Nero told you too what it needs to have.

Don't you get tired of beating your head against a wall to make this old piece of crap jukebox work? I usually don't help masochists so I may not respond to any followups on this.

[Cornucopia]

This is the crux of the matter:

PROBLEM FOUND

- stream encoding which is invalid for (Super) Video Cd
- invalid vid stream : ??? fps, 352x 288 pixels, 1152 kbit/s, CBR

It ??can't figure out the correct fps??

I STRONGLY suggest, especially for this kind of dedicated hardware VCD player, that you get all of your clips into 1 TV system first. You're in Australia, so that should be PAL.
This means, all clips should be:

1150 (or 1152 depending upon which encoder you choose)kbps CBR (no more, no less) MPEG1 for the video stream.
224 kbps CBR MPEG1Layer2 (aka MP2) for the audio stream.
Video specs: 352x288 @ 25 fps
Audio specs: stereo, 16bit, 44.1kHz

I also STRONGLY suggest to STOP USING NEROVISION for this kind of task. It's just not up to it.
Get:
Better MPEG1 encoder(s): TMPGEnc, Mainconcept, CCE, Panasonic, BBMPEG even.
Better VCD authoring app(s): VCDEasy/VCDImager, Philips VCDToolkit, others that are grey area products by now
As the MPEG1 encoding function of TMPGEnc is free/unlimited, and VCDImager is free, and VCDEasy is free up to v1.52 and they're all great!, so what's the holdup?

Now, these might say that you have a non-compliant file as a source. Using TMPGEnc or Mainconcept templates, all your MPEG output should be compliant (given good input).
If these are complaining of bad input, then the problem is probably bad NTSC -> PAL conversion, bad Film -> PAL conversion, bad AVI/Divx/Xvid encoding to begin with. This ought to be fixed in the appropriate converter/editor FIRST before presenting as an input to one of the above encoders. Don't make these encoders do the conversion as well as the encoding, they're not optimized for that.

Other than that, or more detailed MPEG stream info and/or step-by-step settings and procedures from you to pin this down, it's hard to suggest anything else.

Scott

[thelotusman]

Cornucopia (Scott),

thanks again mate I really appreciate your reply. On your advice I have downloaded TMPGEnc and as you advised it is really simple to use. I have taken the problem files and done as the site instructs re de multiplexing and simplemultiplexing, I specify that I want to create a standard Video CD and at the end of the process the program seems to re convert the file BUT when I then try and burn them to disc the burning program is still saying the exact same thing ie 'invalid video stream etc' Its almost like TMPGEnc is not actually doing anything. By this stage its probably all down to operator error, I'm way out of my depth!

Thanks again for your help.

Elliott (Melbourne, Australia)

[jman98]

Nero often complains about stuff that isn't wrong. This could be your problem. The only other thing that seems wrong is that maybe you are not using 25 frames per second when encoding. If you are creating 352x288 resolution MPEG-1 video at 25 fps, then once again, Nero is full of crap.

Get VCDEasy (for God's sake, if you are going to do all this time consuming crap to get VCD to work on this ancient player then you certainly can afford to pay for VCDEasy, which WILL make your life a lot easier) and use it to create a BIN/CUE image to your hard disk. Then burn that image with Nero. Nero is fine if you let it burn images, but I wouldn't trust it to burn VCDs like you are by using the VCD creation option.

Seriously consider whether it's REALLY worth the effort to get VCDs to work on your player. Maybe your spare time is meaningless, but you are really starting to seem like a masochist here.

[thelotusman]

Jman,

firstly the reason I choose to pursue what you consider a frivolous task is simply because I have an extremely large number of these machines and they are no longer in production. Much like a good bottle of red or a luxury car they are going up in value every day. At present they are worth three times the price they originally retailed for and they have made me alot of money over the years. Even though they are a few years old the technology for the time was fantastic and they do not miss a beat. They have no problems playing any decent media and up until speaking you guys I was not aware that this was my problem. You see I am interested in having my own VCD compilations rather that commercial bought VCD's with predetermined tracks. This is why I began attempting to author my own stuff. The world has changed so much and not nescessarily all for the better so to me I think being able to re live some of the best times in your life can be done through great old pieces of equipment like this jukebox. You probably however are all for technilogical advances and thats great for you; to each his own. This is the first and probably the last time I will ever get on any type of chat site but you will probably continue to spend alot of your time continuing to do exactly this. So to me its all relative, as people we spend our time doing what makes us happy.

ALL THE RHETORIC ASIDE, I just wanted to say thanks for your time, you were 100 % spot on with your advice. I downloaded TMPGEnc and SUPER and they did exactly as you said. MOST IMPORTANTLY it was your advice about NERO saying there was a problem when there really wasnt. I did as you advised and ignored the prompt stating there was a problem and it processed the track accordingly. I put the cd in the jukebox and all the tracks played perfectly! In saying this there are stil a couple of tracks that play to a certain point then just cut out and go to the next track (they were not doing this prior to being converted) so I dont know why this is happening but as with everything else I will work through it.

SO once again thankyou for your expert advice, its great to think that you can jump on to a site such as this and there is someone on the other side of the world who is both willing and able to offer advice. Theres not much in this world that is free anymore so thanksagain, much appreciated!

Elliott