I tried the KVCDx3 MPEG-2 template last night and could not get the resulting CD-R to work in my Koss portable DVD player. The audio seemed to tbe ok but the video was nothing but a few garbled blocks that changed every couple of seconds.

I used TMPGEnc to create the mpg file and then VCDEasy to create the bin and cue set for a SVCD. I also used VCDEasy to burn the CD.

The CD played just fine in my computer using PowerDVD but unfortunately it would not work in the Koss player.

Any ideas on how to get this to work?

Did you burn one of the samples on this web site as a "non-standard" VCD ?
Not as SVCD.

-kwag

I did not try the samples but instead created a small SVCD sample of my own. I will try one of your samples and burn a "non-standard" VCD.

BTW, is there anything that has to be done in VCDEasy other then uncheck "Perform some MPEG compliance checks" to create a "non-standard" VCD?

No, just be sure to check "vcd 2.0", and not SVCD

-kwag

I downloaded the Matrix demo for the KVCDx3 template and burned a VCD with VCDEasy last night. Unfortunately I pretty much got the same result: the audio seemed to play ok but the picture was bad.

The lower third of the screen was flashing blue and the upper two thirds was a bunch of garbled blocks. You could kind of make out the characters in the movie but definitely not watchable.

Any ideas?

Burn the sample as SVCD. If that doesn't work, make a small clip, but change the output resolution on the template from 528 to 544.

-kwag

Ok i tried burning as SVCD. This disc would not even play at all in the Koss. Again it was fine in the computer but no good in the DVD player.

So you want me to change the template from 528 x 480 to 544 x 480? Or does the 480 need to change as well?

I went ahead and changed the setting to 544 x 480 and guess what?



IT WORKED!

Yes the picture quality looked very nice! I'm very impressed with this template. Thanks so much!

But now of course I have another question.

When making VCDs and SVCDs before I have relied on TMPGEnc to help me decide where to set the start and stop source points to fit the movie on a couple of 80 min CD-R's. With this template, it no longer gives me any estimates on the output file size.

I saw some discussions about FitCD and I took a look at it, but I couldn't see how I could use this to determine what my output file size would be either. What am I missing? Sorry if this question has been answered else where.

Thanks

As with any other KVCD template, you can't exactly predict the final output size, because of the CQ encoding mode. That's why there are "estimated" file sizes for each template. The new KVCDx3 is rated to produce an average of 60 minutes on a 80 minute CD-R. That's average, and considering that the material is "Wide Screen" and encoded at 23.976fps NTSC or 25fps PAL.

-kwag

Ok I understand now that since this template doesn't use a constant bit rate then we can't exactly predict the output file size.

So what do you suggest as the correct method of making SVCD's with this template? Should I just encode the full length movie and then use some other tool, BBMpeg perhaps, to split the large MPEG file to fit over multiple CD's?

Sorry to be a pain but I'm just trying to understand the best way to use this template. Thanks.

Hi white_furby,
Just encode your video stream first, then depending on the size created, encode your audio at the best bit rate to fit. Use headac3he to encode your audio. Then mux and split your streams with BBMpeg.

-kwag