Sorry to hear none of the suggestions here seemed to work for you Ryo.
I'm just curious...did you try encoding your problematic bright scene and/or credits using CBR instead of CQ like bman suggested? Understand, I'm not recommending that you encode your KVCDs this way, but simply as a test to see whether or not the VBR encoding is the source of your (and other peoples') problem. If the problem remains even with CBR, then it would seem that the problem is
probably due to some kind of hardware or firmware (software) limitation of your dvd player.
While I don't think this is the answer to your problem, I found this vaguely similar article about luminosity problems on cyberhome's site:
http://www.cyberhome.com/tech_issues.asp?ID=24 . I figured someone may find it of interest.
More likely, your player is just fussy with non-standard mpeg-1 streams. Have you checked online for any firmware upgrades (official or non-official) for your player? If any exist, that may help. Also,
some dvd players use a standard IDE-based PC DVD-ROM drive inside. If you are comfortable and competent working with electronics (and don't mind possibly voiding your warranty by opening it), you might consider opening your dvd player (
unplug it first!) and carefully replacing the DVD-Rom drive with another one to see if it might help any. Some people do this trick to allow their older dvd players to play the newer media types, such as dvd+-R/RW or 99-minute CDRs. Newer Lite-On dvd drives are a pretty good choice because they tend to support most formats, but any drive would probably be okay for simple testing purposes. I'm definetly no expert in this area, but I would
guess that your problem is probably more likely due to the software that runs your dvd player rather than the dvd-rom drive itself, but it still might be worth a shot if you've tried everything else and you like to experiment.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ryo
Is there anything special I have to know about mpeg-2? Are there any options that put the quality closer to mpeg-1?
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Well, mpeg-2 looks/works better at higher bitrates, so splitting your movie onto more than 1 disc and increasing your CQ level would help (or else dropping to 352x576 for 1-disc encodes would give you a higher CQ, but less sharpness). If your movies are short and you have enough space on your discs, you also might want to try mpeg-2 @ 528/544/704x576 resolutions if those will work for you, but PAL resolution + PAL framerate + mpeg-2 all create larger filesizes than NTSC mpeg-1, so larger resolutions may not be an option for you unless you want to use 2 or 3 discs. I'm sure some PAL users can give you some better advice about what resolutions and CQ levels you can expect to be able to use for your PAL encodes of various lengths.
You might consider taking your problematic KVCD (and a copy of the compatibilty Test CD) to your local electronics stores and finding yourself a nice KVCD-compliant replacement player! It sure would be easier than all of this!
GOLDEN RULE: If it doesn't play KVCD, DON'T BUY IT! (boy, it sure would be great to see a player that boasts of KVCD-compliancy someday!...even any general mention of "X"vcd/svcd compatibility would be a nice change.....Kwag, if you could ever manage to work a deal with some manufacturer/s to specifically tailor a player to KVCD specifications, I'd be first in line
).
Good luck,
-d&c