[Help] Problems creating VCDs.

[DereX888]

Was also waiting for that panasonic encoder from buddy Derex.

(I didn't knew I had buddy in India )

As I told you in PM, last weekend I have scanned with WhereIsIt more than 200 of my oldest CDRs, but unfortunately it wasn't on any of them. I still have plenty of old discs to scan/catalog (I was planning to do it for long time anyways, so no need to thank) but I thought it should have been there on those oldest ones from 1997/98.

But l(fortunately for you ) I had nothing to do at work, so I did some search on the web - and I can confirm what scott wrote earlier, this piece of excellent coding is nowhere available (handful of sites carry a trial version only, but none have it in full version available for sale, nor as freeware, not even as "warez"). So I contacted few people on irc and one of them uploaded last standalone version to one of those fileshare sites for me, but you'll still need a legitimate serial number and unlock password - and I don't support piracy (reverse engineering is NOT piracy! regardless what crooked lawyers say), thus I won't publish it here (there are plenty of "stolen" ones on the web, you can google it up without my help ).

However I also don't support greedy companies that often take great software to the market grave with them when they die (and networkserve.co.jp - the sole former seller of this app - apparently is one of them), so I have sent 3 emails to Panasonic, Matsushita and Lead Tools Inc. (formerly LEAD Technologies) regarding this software, to figure out ownership among them, and their stand on the future of this software - which at this moment appear to me as unsupported abandonware at best.
(although its name is Panasonic MPEG1 Encoder, it was developed by LEAD Technologies using Matsushita encoding engine).
If none of them objects, I think Baldrick may be interested in hosting it on videohelp (specially that there is empty stub in our tools section for Pana MPEG Encoder already?). The "standalone version" still requires serial number and password (both easily available on the web nowadays from what I've seen) thus technically it still should be completely legal to host it on videohelp even without any permission from either of those companies (assuming any of them indeed still has ownership of this app), but that's up to Baldrick of course.

[Baldrick]

If none of them objects and you receive answers from them I guess it will be okey to host it.

[scott274]

Well Panasonic MPEG1 Encoder standalone 2.51 ( Thanks to buddy Derex for it ) took almost 3 hours for encoding the 770 mb video file while Mainconcept MPEG Encoder took about half an hour. Still a good output matters and lets hope Panasonic was better at it than Mainconcept.

Philips Toolkit still don't accept the encoded .mpg file as a valid video, audio or mpeg file in its assets manager. Not that this is a problem anymore but I have a feeling now that this is not due to VCD noncompliant mpeg but something else. The Philips VCDmux remultiplexed .mmd output video file is accepted by the assets manager solving the problem.

Now the only thing left to do from here is authoring the VCD in Philips Toolkit if only someone could guide me a little from where i am stuck in it (page 2). Hope vcd4ever comes around soon as he seems to be the only person here having much experience with the Toolkit.

[jman98]

DereX888 - Are you 12 years old? Geez louise. All you will get for asking for permission is that at some point, somebody will bitch slap you and tell you to take the software the hell off this website (assuming it ever gets posted here) and threaten you with legal action. Outside of maybe a couple of old games, I have never heard of a software company that ever was willing to let people access it's abandonware programs. No good at all will come of this. If you REALLY wanted to help, just put the damn thing on some free file server and put a link to it and let that be the end of it. Mark my words - NO GOOD will come of you trying to "do the right thing" here.
However, I credit Baldrick for his reply. You'll either receive no reply at all or you'll be threatened with legal action for asking permission, so we'll never see the program here.

[DereX888]

DereX888 - Are you 12 years old? Geez louise. All you will get for asking for permission is that at some point, somebody will bitch slap you and tell you to take the software the hell off this website (assuming it ever gets posted here) and threaten you with legal action. Outside of maybe a couple of old games, I have never heard of a software company that ever was willing to let people access it's abandonware programs. No good at all will come of this. If you REALLY wanted to help, just put the damn thing on some free file server and put a link to it and let that be the end of it. Mark my words - NO GOOD will come of you trying to "do the right thing" here.
However, I credit Baldrick for his reply. You'll either receive no reply at all or you'll be threatened with legal action for asking permission, so we'll never see the program here.

Yeah I'm 12.5
Of course I have no doubt none of them will agree if any of'em hold any ownership.
But in case none of them does...?
Nothing wrong in asking.
It's not like I'm asking them to reveal source code or anything.

The worst what can happen is what I also thought - if they won't reply at all.
And I'm more likely expecting "no go" from Matsushita (if the old encoding engine algorithm is theirs).
We'll see.
I'll post their replies.

Baldrick - thx!


/edit 2008.07.12/
No reply from Matsushita/Panasonic yet, so I gues it kills the whole idea.
Maybe someone else wants to try to ask them? I have sent 5 "webmails" so far, (you gotta use their webform) but none of them was answered
FWIW, at least Lead Tech. had no problem with it.

Well Panasonic MPEG1 Encoder /.../ took almost 3 hours for encoding the 770 mb video file

Quit whining
Try 3 days for a single half an hour tv episode back in the days
PanaEnc had only MMX optimization. It'll never go faster.

[vcd4ever]

Now the only thing left to do from here is authoring the VCD in Philips Toolkit if only someone could guide me a little from where i am stuck in it (page 2).

1. Opened the toolkit,
File -> New

2. Named the project "VideoCD.PJR" and clicked OK.

3. Clicked Tools -> Assets
Then imported the file "AVSEQ01.MMD" by clicking on "Add". No errors here.

4. Clicked Tools -> Menu Editor
For Menu ID, used name "LOOP_Menu".
Clicked Video button and selected the "AVSEQ01.MMD" file.
Clicked Audio button and again selected "AVSEQ01.MMD" file.
In Menu option, set "Loop" to 0 and then clicked "Create" and closed the editor.
Here is the screencap for this step..
http://i91.photobucket.com/albums/k292/abs724/Screencaps/MenuEdit ... 4932AM.jpg
Dragged the "LOOP_MENU" in Menus box to the volume entry field in Volume Manager box.

There is no need to add the avseq01.mmd to the audio, so the LOOP_MENU should look like this:

5. Clicked Tools -> Event Editor.
For Event ID, used name "AVSEQ01"
Dragged the "AVSEQ01.MMD" from Assets box to the Asset field in Event Editor Box and clicked create and then closed the editor.
Here is the screencap for this step..
http://i91.photobucket.com/albums/k292/abs724/Screencaps/EventEdi ... 5721AM.jpg
From here, didn't drag "AVSEQ01" in Events box to anywhere on Volume Manager box.

This is also not needed, so you can skip this step.

6.Clicked Tools -> Tracks
This displayed the Tracks box. Here is the screencap just before pressing, Project -> Build.
http://i91.photobucket.com/albums/k292/abs724/Screencaps/ToolkitF ... 1146AM.jpg

The tracks box should look like this:



I strongly recommend that you leave the avseq01.mmd in the tracks box, but if you want to do it exactly as in the tutorial, then remove all the tracks from the tracks box.

vcd4ever.

[scott274]

I am having trouble on step 4.

This is what I did originally..
4. Clicked Tools -> Menu Editor
For Menu ID, used name "LOOP_Menu".
Clicked Video button and selected the "AVSEQ01.MMD" file.
Clicked Audio button and again selected "AVSEQ01.MMD" file.
In Menu option, set "Loop" to 0 and then clicked "Create" and closed the editor.
Dragged the "LOOP_MENU" in Menus box to the volume entry field in Volume Manager box.
Here is the screencap for this step..
http://i91.photobucket.com/albums/k292/abs724/Screencaps/ToolkitFinal17-3-2008-11146AM.jpg

Now if I add AVSEQ01.mmd only to video and not the audio and keep the rest of the things as it is, then I get this..
http://i91.photobucket.com/albums/k292/abs724/Screencaps/ToolkitFinal27-4-2008-12842AM.jpg
Looking at tracks, I think this is still wrong.

And if I don't add AVSEQ01.mmd to video as well as audio and just do rest of the things then I get this..
http://i91.photobucket.com/albums/k292/abs724/Screencaps/ToolkitFinal27-4-2008-122127AM.jpg
But during "Building" I get this error at the very start..
Beginning project analysis.
Verifying the project...
ERROR: Some components not linked:
Menu 'LOOP_Menu'
Analysis/Build stopping.

Maybe in Menu Editor under video, the toolkit compulsary needs a still menu image instead of AVSEQ01.mmd (667 mb, 01:17:14:16)
Just a thought.. And if so what should be the size of the image still and what format. any restrictions.

And I don't see any options in the toolkit to remove tracks from the Track Box.

[vcd4ever]

And I don't see any options in the toolkit to remove tracks from the Track Box.

Click on the track that you want do remove from the track box and then press the "DELETE" key.

vcd4ever.

[Nelson37]

I'm sorry.

I thought the OP's goal was to make a working video disk, I was trying to help them acheive this goal.

I did not realize the intention was to try and make ancient, buggy, vastly over-complicated software work, and to do that using possibly corrupted files just for extra fun.

Just not my thing, but have fun.

[vcd4ever]

Now if I add AVSEQ01.mmd only to video and not the audio and keep the rest of the things as it is, then I get this..
http://i91.photobucket.com/albums/k292/abs724/Screencaps/ToolkitFinal27-4-2008-12842AM.jpg
Looking at tracks, I think this is still wrong.

The Philips VideoCD Toolkit is configured by deafult to always automaticly include mpeg files as tracks and the same mpeg file can be added many times in the tracks box.

The solution to this is to either remove the mpeg tracks that are not needed or to configure the Toolkit so it doesn't automaticly include mpeg files as tracks by going to "File/Preferences" and then unchecking the option "Auto include VCD MPEG files as tracks".

vcd4ever.

[scott274]

@ Nelson,
Well there is a bit of good news as far as VCDImager is concerned. I authored a VCD with it and burned it to a CD-R in Nero 6 (40x speed) and checked the playback at various points on my VCD Player. The audio sync and jerky video playback problems seems to be gone but there was a lot of pixsation (sorry for spelling mistakes if any but i meant that the video quality was bad).

Just a brief summary of what I had done till VCDImager authoring:
1) Unwrapped the original DAT video file to Mpeg (770 mb, 1:17:14) with VCDGear (fix errors checked).
2) Demuxed and Remuxed the Mpeg in TMPGenc (using option "MPEG-1 System Stream (Video-CD)")
3) Got a wave audio output from the new Mpeg file with TMPGenc (uncompressed PCM). Converted the .wav audio file to .mp2 with FFMpegGUI (224 kbps, 44100 Hz). Demuxed the step 2 Mpeg again in TMPGenc and remuxed it with the new .mp2 audio file.
4) Encoded the Mpeg file in Mainconcept MPEG Encoder (could have also used Panasonic Encoder). Options used in mainconcept were VCD PAL 352 x 288 pixel, 25 FPS, 1150 kbps, audio mode Layer 2.
Encoding Logs:
NOTE: Mux rate may be too low for data rate, watch for PTS/DTS underflows.
Frame 21825: Underflow possible!!!, bits_to_use=84152, in_picture=94616
5) Demuxed and Remuxed the encoded Mpeg again in TMPGenc (using option "MPEG-1 System Stream (Video-CD)") before authoring.

Also I checked the cue file by VCDImager in InZeCue and it gave me a "AVSEQ01.cue => bad" report. Can bad authoring cause those bad video quality problems.

Authoring in VCDEasy v3.1.0 also doesn't work still, as the DAT file produced by it won't even play on my PC. Windows media player gives a class factory error and it doesn't play even on VLC Player.

Any ideas how to get rid of the excess pixsation in VCD playback.

And I was presisting with Philips VCD Toolkit because it's authored "testvcd" by vcd4ever played without any problems on my VCD Player.

@ vcd4ever,
Ok, so in step 4 from start..
Clicked Tools -> Menu Editor
For Menu ID, used name "LOOP_Menu".
Clicked Video button and selected the "AVSEQ01.MMD" file.
In Menu option, set "Loop" to 0 and then clicked "Create" and closed the editor.
Dragged the "LOOP_MENU" in Menus box to the volume entry field in Volume Manager box.
This was the screencap upto this step..
http://i91.photobucket.com/albums/k292/abs724/Screencaps/ToolkitFinal27-4-2008-12842AM.jpg
In Track box, selected the upper track and hit delete. So it looked like this..
http://i91.photobucket.com/albums/k292/abs724/Screencaps/ToolkitFinal27-4-2008-122127AM.jpg

Then selected Project -> Build, set a build and output folder and pressed "Build".
Build completed with 0 errors and 1 warnings.
[Warning]
selection_list "LOOP_Menu_1" never referenced.

Converted the .CD file to Cue-Bin by opening the .CD file in Isobuster, right clicking CD (Top level node in left pane) and selecting "Extract CD <Image> => Raw (.iso, .bin).

The DAT file in the VCD image played fine on my PC but what about the one warning and have I done everything right in the toolkit so far as you had in the "testvcd".

[Nelson37]

Lots of unnecessary work.

Demux video only. Create WAV file and re-encode to mp2. Remux NEW mp2 and original video. "author" with VCDimager. Burn at a lower speed. test.

Forgot whatever you had to do to fix the audio, but IMO that was the only original problem you had. Other than getting a fix for the audio, all the other crap was totally unnecessary. Sure, with lots of work, the toolkit will make a compatible disk. So will much simpler, faster methods.

The audio problem alone tells you that the original file was corrupt. That such a file has pixelisatoin is not at all surprising. If you want to learn a new method, or jsut confirm validity of current process, start with a file that does not already have major problems.

Pixelisation comes with the territory with VCD. RE-encoding makes it worse. Smoothing filters can help, but IMO not worth the effort. Authoring does NOT cause this. Bad media can, burning too fast can, but typically it is inherent in the source.

[scott274]

Actually I think the problem was in audio as well as video. So re-encoding was necessary i guess. Any tweaks I could do in Mainconcept (or Panasonic) to make any difference in the video quality. So far I had kept all the other options default while encoding. And next time I will burn at 4x speed instead of 40x.

Also can making a NTSC VCD (29.97 FPS 352 x 240 pixels) instead of PAL which I have been doing so far make any difference in the VCD quality.

VCD Qualitywise which is better by the way..
PAL 25 FPS 352x288 pixels
NTSC 29.97 FPS non drop-frame rate 352x240 pixels
NTSC 23.97 FPS film rate 352x240 pixels
All are VCD compliant isn't it..

[Cornucopia]

Qualitywise, PAL 25 ~= NTSC 29.97, and NTSC 23.97 is slightly better than both (because both framerate AND rez is less so bits at same rate are doing less compressing= more efficient).

BUT...
You shouldn't be changing your material from one to another without a better reason than that. You should be keeping it the same as either:
A. Your source footage, -or-
B. Your destination display system.

You're going to be losing something already if you end up having to re-encode; don't want to compound the problem.

Scott

[Nelson37]

Depending on your player you can try VBR up to 1250 I think it was, see if Sefy's xvcd templates are still up.

PAL to NTSC conversions are something to really, really avoid at this point. Walk before running, or in this case before trying to run an obstacle course. First just get to the point where you don't fall down quite so often.

I gave up on VCD very, very early, in fact never really messed with it much as I started with SVCD. VCD quality just didn't do it for me, also I start with capture sources rather than DVD.

[scott274]

In the encoding step, I just tried encoding in TMPGEnc (standard VCD mpeg template) instead of Mainconcept. The good news is that the video quality was fine when played in my VCD player but bad news, the jerky video playback problem is back. While in mainconcept, audio sync & jerky video problems are conquered but video quality is decresed considerably. Haven't they invented the perfect encoder yet

Does anyone know why TMPGEnc and Mainconcept are behaving like this..

I guess there are only two things i can try now. Either remove the error(s) in the video stream first and then feed it to TMPGEnc or change some advanced options in Mainconcept (of which i know nothing) so that there is possibly not much loss in the output video quality. (part reason why i was asking those NTSC-PAL questions)

Also some questions regarding Mainconcept. Can someone explain what is "Motion search pixel movement" in its advance video settings. It is disabled by default. Any good it will do me enabling it. If yes what horizontal & vertical values should i input in my case (VCD PAL). There are several other video setting there apart from this for which i might need guidance if required & possible.
And what is the meaning of this which i get in Mainconcept encoding logs in red:
Frame 21825: Underflow possible!!!, bits_to_use=84152, in_picture=94616

@ Nelson,
Is 1250 VBR better that 1150 CBR (which is VCD standard isn't it).

[Cornucopia]

Does anyone know why TMPGEnc and Mainconcept are behaving like this..

Yes, as has already been more than hinted at before--your source file(s) are F**Ked up. Make do with the best you can get out of them, and next time get better source files.

There is no such thing as a perfect encoder, just like there's no such thing as infinite compression. It's all compromise. Hopefully, you are in charge of determining the choices available in the compromise.

Scott

[scott274]

Video quality problem (ie. surplus macroblocking) solved.

In the encoding step, encoded the source mpeg video to NTSC Film 23.976 FPS in Mainconcept MPEG Encoder. Further in detailed settings, checked "Enable Line Filtering" option. And in advanced options checked "Motion Pixel Search Movement" and set its value to horizontal 11 & vertical 11. Also set "Motion Search Mode" to 10 and manually changed the quantization sub-matrix by checking "User Quant Matrices" to..

08 16 19 22 26 27 29 34        16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23
16 16 22 24 27 29 34 37        17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24
19 22 26 27 29 34 34 38        18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25
22 22 26 27 29 34 37 40        19 20 21 22 23 24 26 27
22 26 27 29 32 35 40 48        20 21 22 23 25 26 27 28
26 27 29 32 35 40 48 58        21 22 23 24 26 27 28 30
26 27 29 34 38 46 56 69        22 23 24 26 27 28 30 31
27 29 35 38 46 56 69 83        23 24 25 27 28 30 31 33

For audio advance settings checked, "Set private bit", "Set copyright bit", "Set original bit and "Enable CRC". Used VCDgear for authoring the VCD image and Nero 6 to burn the image at 4x speed.

The VCD had fine quality and no jerky playback. Audio sync problem was already dealth with earlier. So that solves almost all the problems.

Lets hope from now on I have no problems creating VCDs out of the rest of my DAT and AVI files on my harddisk following the same procedure.

Special thanks to all the experts who helped me..
Cornucopia
Nelson37
Midzuki
vcd4ever
Derex
Jman98
and Baldrick