HELP! going nuts over this! dozens of CDs lost!

[skipc10]

Let me just lay out what I've tried and what the problems are. I can't figure this out, it seems to be more than just a finesse problem. If you have any ideas, please let me know.

I have captured an animation using AVI_IO, which recorded as 2 AVIs. They play fine. I used VirtualDub and resplit them into 4 equal AVIs, also fine. I then used TMPGE to create 4 SVCD mpegs, which were at 1950 kbps VBR and the default settings, and with Toolame as the audio plugin. Each file plays great in PowerDVD on the PC as a file. Then, I used VCDEasy to burn 2 files at a time onto 2 CDs. Same movie, just split in half for size reasons.

The first CD plays great in both standalone DVD players. The second CD is full of artifacts, blocks, choppiness, etc, to the point of being unusable.

So, I re-encoded in TMPGE at 1600VBR and burned with VCDEasy (no PBC, just plain old defaults like disk 1). Less problem, but not watchable.

Then, I tried SVCD CBR defaults in TMPGE. Same thing. I took out TooLAME. Same thing. Different media, same thing.

Then, I took the AVI files ( the last 2 for the second CD) and brought them into Ulead Video Studio 6. Encoded as SVCD and used the DVD wizard to burn a CD. It was about as bad as the first, almost.

The MPEG files play fine in PowerDVD and Ulead VS6. I don't have anything to play the SVCD in the PC, only DVD and VCDs are recognized.

This seems to rule out media, players (both do it), and encoding (several different ways used). The first half of the movie plays fine, the second half doesn't no matter how it is made. It's the same animated characters, levels, etc. How can it not be decoded properly when the first half does? Is it a function of the content? I've tried to rule out individual software, players, and media, but the problem persists.

What can cause this sort of thing and how do I get around it?

Thanks in advance.

[scissors]

hhmmm.
Curious.

I just posted a similar problem regarding DVDr.

My mate once managed to do what you did (ie the same problem)

I decided to extract the dat off the disc and reburn it myself.

However I couldn't.

One trick i've used is to demux the dat straight of the disc using tmpeg, which always reports the bitrate etc.

His disc was 640x276 resolution. PC dvds tends to be good at playing any DVDs.

Try it and check the Res. If it's the case, i geuss Tmpeg did it's famous trick of setting it's res to that of the source. (always reload your template after selecting source)

Hope that's a pointer

[brianmertel]

I know zilch about virtualdub, but perhaps you might have better luck if you don't split your avi's at all until you're done encoding with tmpgenc. Then use the cut/join tool in tmpgenc to split into single-disc chunks and then burn. hope this helps.

[Arnnie]

Make sure all your encoded files have a SVCD header to it otherwise your standalone DVD player will not reckonise it.

Try a simple de-mux and then re-mux the files ensuring the SuperVideo-CD profile is selected in TMPG.

Arnnie out.