Hi!

Recently got a Pioneer DV-350 DVD player, and must say I'm very happy with it. NTSC-PAL conversion on the fly, deep black levels, crystal sharp images etc - even plays my "wrongly burned" SVCDs, couldn't ask for anything more.

Well, almost couldn't.

Lately, since I've acquired a large number of SVCDs, I've started burning those files to DVDr instead. Basically I take the .bin, extract the MPEG2, demux it, remux as DVD and put 4-6 of those newly baked MPEGs in a folder, letting ifogen and then tocgen have a go at them. After only a few minutes, the _TS folders are ready for burning.

Playd great on my old player, played great on a player I recently sent back, tried 4 other players that all play them great. *But*...

When playing these back on the Pioneer DV-350, on some films (not all, but most) there is a "skipping" sensation. It appears that the player skips a frame or two about twice a second. My girlfriend says she doesn't notice it until I point it out, but I find it very noticeable and very annoying. If this were a constant thing, I'd write it off as "this player doesn't like the format", but since not all films are like that I'm intrigued...

First I thought there was some sort of PAL/NTSC error; like if the disc itself was NTSC and the film file was PAL, there might be skipping etc. No such luck. PAL and NTSC files can get along nicely on some discs, some of the skipping ones are PAL, some NTSC. Even have a disc that is all NTSC, and they ALL skip there...

My old player would often "halt" a few times per sec when playing NTSC material (I live in Sweden, a PAL country), whereas this player plays them very smoothly indeed. Perhaps this is part of the problem - that it erreneously perceives certain film files as NTSC (when indeed they are PAL) and "jumps" ahead of itself? Then again, why would *any* of the NTSC files stutter... Since some files play just fine (true of both NTSC and PAL files) it can't be a question of the player disliking the lower bitrates...

To put it bluntly: I'm puzzled. Like the DVD-SVCD format though, and would enjoy continuing with it. Any thoughts as to what these skippings is all about and how to avoid them?

Thanks

/Wizeman