SVCD sizing for Extras?

[Sharc]

I made an experimental clip with resizing to SVCD, ie 480x576 (PAL) instead of using Half D1, by editing the *.avs and rebuilder.ecl.
The movie played flawlessly and in correct aspect ratio, subtitles were however not visible for some reason.
I found the "SVCD format" an excellent compromise between resolution and low bitrate, for the bitrate of 2400 with action scenes in my test case. Encoder was CCE 2.70.

I wonder if it would make sense to include "SVCD" as an option in DVD-RB, similar to Half D1, and perhaps add "SVCD and 33% reduction for Extras" to the RB menu?

[Sir Didymus]

DVD-VIDEO only admit 720, 704 and 352 pixels as horizontal resolutions for accepted formats [and the 352, only for contents with 4:3 AR]...

Please do not take my reply in the wrong way: I don't want to appear rigid, and I am fully happy to play with my standalone, that accepts a lot of not compliant features; however the reasons for building standards (and for obeying to them, IMHO) is also to avoid provoking problems to many by trying to implement benefits to fews...

The problem is that there is no guarantee about the behaviour (and the acceptance) of such content, INSIDE A DVD-VIDEO title, on all standalones...

The troubles to face may be of little relevance (as the ones related to the subpictures, as pointed out by yourself), but they may be also worse...

Edit: hem... clarily, for many users, the proper playback of the subtitles is NOT a feature of "little relevance"...

[Sharc]

I fully agree with your concern about non-compliance with standards (SVCD within DVD), and in fact I have no clue about possible incompatibilities with players, I just thought since virtually all DVD players accept native SVCDs they would be tolerant to accepting SVCD-sized *.vob's. Maybe I am wrong. The quality improvement between Half-D1 and SVCD was just too tempting .......

Btw. the subtitle issue was my mistake. I did not tick subtitles in DVD-RB (!). I re-made the test DVD with 2 titlesets (one title encoded as standard DVD, the other titel resized to "SVCD") , 2 languages including 4 subtitles and everything plays perfectly on MY (I have only one) standalone. As I said, very tempting .....

[blutach]

Isn't this something users can already do themselves with the Filter Editor?

I mean, if you wanna play around and ignore the specs, DVD Rebuilder (http://dvd-rb.dvd2go.org/) already gives you the ability to do so. But I'm with SD on this, to have an menu option of DVDRB that is off spec would be incorrect IMHO and inviting trouble.

Regards

[Sharc]

Agree, introducing a non-compliant setting in the RB menu is not a good idea.

But thanks for the hint with the FilterEditor. Would for PAL look like
e:BilinearResize(480,576)
for the resizing of the Extras.

Works fine for the *.avs scripts. However, one still has to manually edit the rebuilder.ecl for all applicable segments:
width=480

Hmmm...... it would be interesting to know on how many player this works/fails. I tried with 2 only so far, both low cost/no brand => no problem .....