Help with converting svcd's to DVD compliant MPEG2 please

[Mnementh]

First of all I'm very sorry if this has been answered before, I have done a search but haven't come across anything which appears to be related to my specific problem (I can't be the only one can I!!!)

OK here's the background:

I have numerous SVCD's which I want to be able to play on a PS2 (I don't currently have a standalone player), as 99% of you probably know the PS2 will not play SVCD's so I need to re-encode them to DVD compliant MPEG2 streams and increase the resolution from 480x480 to 720x480, I will then author them to dvd-r.

Please excuse the length of this as I am going to try and give as much detail as possible about what I am trying to do and what I have already done.

Programs used:
tmpgenc 2.57.41.146
CCE SP 2.50
DVD2AVI 1.77.3
BeSweet 1.14
VFAPIconv 1.04
Bitrate Viewer 1.5.054

I want to be able to use CCE to create the video stream as it produces better results than tmpgenc (IMHO) but mainly because it's about 5 times faster, I have used dvd2avi to create a project and extract the audio from the svcd, which I have then converted to ac3 using BeSweet.

I then used VFAPIconv to convert the dvd2avi project into a file that CCE can open.

The above all works fine and I know how to set up CCE to do the encoding however my problem is I don't appear to be able to resize the svcd in CCE to 720x480 so the resulting stream is still not DVD compliant.

The original svcd's are NTSC 29 fps.

What I'm basically asking for is help to get CCE to resize, whether it can be done in CCE itself or whether I need to use avisynth etc first (I have no knowledge of how to use avisynth or at least I don't appear to as every time I try to use it with CCE it causes CCE to crash).

I know tmpgenc can do all of this on it's own but the resulting encodes have been awful and take over 7 hours on my admittedly poor Athlon 1GHz.

Again I'm sorry if this is posted in the wrong place or if it's been asked before but I have read loads of guides and forums and none of them seem to deal with this specific question.

TIA for any replies and help anybody can give this has been driving me nuts

[Baldrick]

CCE can't resize so you have to use avisynth, virtualdub or something to do the resizing and then frameserve to cce.

How to resize with avisynth with help of fitcd
http://www.vcdhelp.com/forum/userguides/99389.php#resize

[Mnementh]

Thanks for the quick reply, since posting I came across fitcd and attempted to use that to create the avisynth script, however when I load it into CCE the file it creates is only 548kb and takes about half a second.

the script created is as follows

# -= AviSynth script by FitCD v1.1.2 =-
#LoadPlugin("D:\PathOf\AnyPlugin.dll")
AviSource("C:\TV\reencode\filename.d2v")
BicubicResize(688,448,0,0.6,0,26,480,428)
AddBorders(16,16,16,16)
#Trim(0,-1).FadeOut(150)

I altered the path to the plugin using the mpeg2dec.dll from Gordianknot

I tried removing the #'s and with them in the result was the same every time.

I've also tried this on a PIII and an Athlon Thunderbird with exactly the same results as I know CCE sometimes has problems on an Athlon.

I'm obviously missing something and it's probably very simple but I've been at this for 2 days now and feel like banging my head against a brick wall until glorious oblivion descends upon me!!!!!!

I have also tried resizing in virtualdub but that won't load the svcd no matter what I do or what codecs/plugins etc I have loaded.

Sorry if I'm being a pain but I just can't see what I'm doing wrong.

[Airr]

I believe that what you have to do is load up the AVS script, and then save an ECL file (CCE's native script format) by doing a file/save.

Then load up the ECL file, which will load up the AVS, and encode.


Yes, a bit convoluted.


Oh, FWIW, I've used the guide here: http://www.vcdhelp.com/svcddvdr.htm and have successfully played the disks on various PS2's......it's a real time saver.

[Mnementh]

Thanks for that info, I have since discovered that the version of dvd2avi I was using would appear to have a bug in conjunction with avisynth. When I regressed back to version 1.76 on the advice of somebody else, instead of 1.77, I was able to open the .d2v in CCE using avisynth. It took many hours of trying different scripts and settings etc before we came to this conclusion, but once we did it, the file opened first time.

I am going to report this to the developer of dvd2avi once I have done some more testing to confirm the issue.

Again thanks for all the help it's been a frustrating time.