Problems using Cleaner 6 to output SVCD mpeg file....

[Falcon500]

Has anyone used Cleaner 6 to convert QT to muxed SVCD mpeg. Using cleaners built in SVCD setting (only changing it to CBR instead of 2-VBR). I can't play the output using VLC. If I use ffmpegX to encode SVCD format I can play the SVCD mpeg using VLC. I haven't yet tried bunring the cleaner mpeg to SVCD format and playing it on a standalone DVD player to see if it works.

Has anyone used the new cleaner to output SVCD mpeg files?

[bilestyle]

here's your problem: cleaner 6 SUCKS. just like cleaner 5... waste of time money and anything else it could waste. Its only marginally faster (if faster at all) than other FREE programs. Other than its cookie-cutter user friendlyness there isnt a single good thing about it... maybe discreet will pull their heads out of their asses and make cleaner a quality affordable product one day... wait no they won't. Everytime i've used it its been an abysmal failure, i haven't used it mov->svcd yet, but i have attempted a vob to svcd and it choked on the ac3 file, what a crock, doesnt even accept AC3!! i mean that is just unacceptable.

[phoney]

I agree cleaner6 sucks in many ways, like it that it has no built-in support for vob files but uses QT for that. QT is buggy when reading a mpeg or vob that consists of many parts; the timecode (duration) of the last segment will be applied to the first segment. (Did that make sense?)
That is, if you have a vob of a dvd with 10 chapters and the last chapter is the titles, with a duration of 5 minutes, QT reads the first 5 minutes of the movie. Not always, but at least I've never been able to play a whole vob in it's correct length.
Using QT for vob support also means that it can't handle AC3 :(

But when it comes to encoding the video, from a mov or m2v source, I found cleaner 6 to give noticeably better quality in scenes that are difficult to compress and slightly smaller files, although about half as fast, ~6 fps, as ffmpeg or mediapipe which gives me about 11fps on my dual1GHz. And if I enable 2-pass vbr in cleaner I get 3 fps...

Be sure to deselect the audio option if you are just encoding video, otherwise it processes everything fine but doesn't write any files (that one took me a while to figure out!)

Why are you using CBR?! That sucks as far as I know...
I didn't try playing my tests videos in VLC, but in QT they played fine.

[Falcon500]

Thanks for the info. I haven't tried using VOB files with cleaner but by the sounds of it I will give it a miss.

I'm using a G3 imac 600Mhz so I can't use quicktime to play mpeg 2 files as this is only supported with a G4.

The reason why I set the encoding option to CBR was that it halves the time to encode. As you said 2pass-VBR was 3fps and 6fps for CBR. There only seems to be two options. I thought they could at least have a single pass VBR in the program. Also my QT movie was only 27mins so it will easily fit on a CDR using CBR. To my understanding CBR keeps the bit rate at 2400kbits/sec (can be changed) in cleaner and VBR will vary the bit rate upto the max of 2400kbits/sec. In theory CBR would be better quality as the bit rate doesn't drop.

[apt]

I'm using a G3 imac 600Mhz so I can't use quicktime to play mpeg 2 files as this is only supported with a G4.

not true... i am using a g3 400mhz and i can PLAY mpeg 2 from within qt6 using the mpeg2 plugin. I think you are referring to native mpeg 2 encoding (idvd/dvdsp) which does indeed require a g4.