I hope someone here can give me some ideas on how to fix a problem that has arisen. I just started making my own xVCD's from VHS tapes and have been very happy with the results. Something happened to my system though that now I can no longer create working discs for my player. WinDVD will display them properly but my standalone will play only a few seconds w/o sound, screen blanks to play sound and then playback resumes in a jerky fashion. The quality of the display has dropped as well. Previously, everything worked fine and I can play other xVCD in the standalone. I have tried to rule out things by keeping as many constants as possible: using same media, software and mpg files that worked previously. I've even tried switching to vcdimagereasy for burning and found the same problem. I can't even duplicate a working VCD. The main changes made that I can remember are the addition of a USB printer, addition of parallel port scanner and a replacement of the power supply. I've tried burning at slower speeds and different media. I even loaded a Ghost image of the machines initial setup from 6 months ago and it had the same problem. Please give me a clue.

Athlon 1400, Epox 8kha+, 512 ddrram, 7200rpm drives, HP 9100 CDRW
Nero 5.5
Panasonic CV-51

Thanks

got to be the media i had the same type of problems, you may not have switched brands but the maker mave have changed the content of the media, i have found that the lighter the colored media works the best, silver on silver, just a thought, try memorex i usually have very little fail using this brand good luck.

(in reply to Jaberwok)

G'Day Jaberwok,

Failing the advice given to you by thunderburn, I would drop around to my friendly local DVD Player retailer and make out that I was interested in the purchase of a new standalone player. Testing my works of art in several units would hopefully confirm that my own player was not at fault. If that be so, I would then get myself a Bitrate Viewer from here: http://www.tecoltd.com/bitratev.htm and compare the mpegs bitrate for any irregularities.

I would be paying attention to the minimum and maximum bitrates, as my guess, is that your problem lies in the encoding process. By rights an XVCD is actually a non compliant SVCD. Therefore, for video you should be looking at nothing in excess of a maximum 2500 kbits/sec and audio at a max of 324 kbits/sec giving a combined max total for video/audio of 2,824 kbits/sec.

Not knowing any of the steps you have taken to create your XVCD or the capture card and software used, is nearly an impossibility for anyone to come up with a suitable solution for you, first go.

Therefore if you don't mind, I will share with you the process I use to create perfect XVCD/SVCD's. I might add that this method is completely home brewn as far as I'm concerned, but in my environment has proven to create hassle free first rate SVCD/XVCD's from VHS tapes. I use Pinnacles DV500 capture card and Premiere6 to capture analogue VHS into an AVI file in realtime. I export the video component of the AVI in Premiere6 using CCE2.50SP's encoder plugin, to create an mpv file. My settings are packet size = 2048 VBR 3 passes with Bitrate kbits/sec set at a Min of 500 and Max at 2000 for PAL 480x576. I then export the audio component with a samplerate of 48000 and 192000 Bytes/Sec in Premiere to create a WAV file. I use TMPGenc to encode the WAV file to create the mp2 file. I mux the two files video/audio into an mps file using i-Author's Multiplexing utility. When complete, I use i-Author to author a CIF image file for burning onto CDR's by using EZCD4 on a WIN98 machine. I am currently experimenting with XP but am finding that I'm having to re-invent the wheel all over.

In closing, I would highly recommend to anyone to rip a few DVD's before the creation of your own home made movies. I say this as you will learn the process of encoding and see how time consuming this all is. Better still, rip a few audio CD's first. Do not progress to the next stage until you have fully mastered the items outline above. In the meantime...

Keep smiling!

SiD

æ

Edited by - sid on 05/04/2002 09:03:45

(in reply to Jaberwok)

if you are trying to make svcd then i have a great program for ya its a freeware except for the cinemacraft encoder. dvd2svcd http://212.88.77.140/ this is the easiest way to make a svcd after the initial setup, i can start the program within one minute of my time and the compter will run the extent of the other programs and in a few hours (im on an athalon1700) will have a mpg file ready to burn to a svcd, i love it

(in reply to Jaberwok)

Round 2:

Ok kids, thanks for the replies. Let me start with thunderburn - I have tried other media and even CDRW discs. They don't work either. Now for SiD - these files I'm testing have not been altered since I made the original discs just a few months ago. The original discs still work in my standalone but I can't even copy them now. That is what has me so frustrated, everything used to work fine.

I moved the suspect burner to another machine which never had a burner in it before. I installed and updated Nero to the same version as the original machine. I brought across the known good mpg and burned my disc. The problem followed the burner. I then purchased a new burner figuring the problem was that hardware. The new burner fails as well. I then suspected the VIA drivers but I'm using the latest except for the miniport which I installed. I tried my media and the media that came with the drive. I even updated Nero to the most current version.
I am at a dead end. Are there some dll's or other Windows 2000 drivers I should be looking for? (BTW the second machine is running Win98SE)

Thanks for the advice so far.

(in reply to Jaberwok)

In case anyone is following this thread, I've had a breakthrough. The problem is with my mpeg files. It seems I forgot that I modified my working originals by removing and few seconds from the beginning and end of the files to clean them up a bit. This caused me to loose the proper timings in the files. Nero dutifully converted the files to DAT but brought along the timing problem as well. I am in the process of recapturing my video.

I found this problem by downloading a Nero image which burned fine and played fine.

Thanks

(in reply to Jaberwok)