My experience with DVD2SVCD after upgrading to Windwos XP

[ipf123]

I have been using DVD2SVCD for sometimes now and have successfully ripped and converted many DVD and Divx to SVCD. I have never experienced any CCE crashes. That was when I was running Windows 2000 Pro. Recently I have upgraded to Windows XP ( clean install after re-formatting the hard disks). There are no hardware changes - motherboard, cpu, video card, Ram etc are exactly the same as before. The only differences are the OS (XP instead of Win 2000) and I have set up a RAID 0 drive configeration.

Since the upgrade I have experienced numerous problems with DVD2SVCD 109b3. The major problems are CCE either crashes as soon as it starts or stopping before finishing. There are other crashes as well involving Besweet but the audio problems are not as common as the CCE problems. I have read and tried all the suggestions people raised in this forum with mixed results.

If I have crashes involving Besweet, I usually can fix it by converting the audio using BeSweet GUI. I don't know why Besweet would crash when it was started by DVD2SVCD but not when it was started by Besweet GUI.

When CCE crashes (as soon as it starts), the only reliable way of fixing it is to use VirtualDub as frameserver (when converting Divx). I have tried using safe mode and using different versions of AviSynch with no success.

When CCE stops before finishing encoding, I have some sucesses by simply restarting the encode with Crash Recovery. Sometimes CCE would still stop but it would be stopping at a different point. Last time when that happens, I have sucess simply by coverting the movie in two parts ie using the internal rip of DVD2SVCD and select the first halves of the chapters, then repeat the same procedures with the second halves of the chapters.

Well, now I realise how lucky I was when I was using DVD2SVCD under Win 2000 with absolutely no problems. Somehow, CCE does not like Win XP. Just wonder if other people have had similar experiences.

Just for your info, my hardware configeration:

Epox 8k3a+ Mboard, Athlon XP1800+, 512Mb PC2700 DDR SDRam, Seagate Barracuda 80Gb x2 in Raid 0, Geforce II MX400 video card.

[pacohaas]

everything's been working fine for me under XP for quite some time now...sorry to hear about your troubles.

[mevbo]

Are you using fat 32 or ntfs? I use xp with ntfs and I have little troubles.

[UltimateDBZ]

I had severe problems starting out D2S and especially CCE with WinXP. Hours and hours and hours or reading posts on hear did pay off though, now I return what I've learned to others :)

[chips144]

You claim that there are no changes to your setup but then you also claim that you added a Raid 0 drive configuration along with the XP os. I have never had a problem with DVD2SVCD when I moved from ME to XP Pro. Perhaps it is your Raid configuration. Try going back to your previous pre-Raid config with XP and see if the problem goes away.

[UltimateDBZ]

It's highly doubtful that RAID or any hard drive differences for that matter, would have an impact like this. However, OS changes are very notorious for just such difficulties.

[GregS]

I'm running XPPro , DVD2SVCD and CCe 2.5 with
no problems .

Just a stab in the dark , but I spend a lot
of time on the XP boards and XP is very picky
when it comes to ram . Ram that worked fine with
other os's can cause problems in xp . If your 512
is two chips try alternately with one at a time .

[ipf123]

Thanks for everyone's contributions. To answer some of your queries: I don't think the hard drive Raid would cause any problems for DVD2SVCD. BTW, it's formatted as NTFS partition.

I don't really want to go back to Win2k. XP has got some good features and the Raid also performs very well. I can normally finish converting one DVD movie in about 8 - 9 hours (CCE 3 passes). I just have to persevere with it and hopefully all the problems would be ironed out in due course.

I suppose there are a lot of people who's having similar problems but with Win2k as OS. It's just your luck sometimes.

[Dezoris]

I know this is dumb, but I have had problems with newer builds on my machine, with no explanation.

Are you using a raid card? Or are you using dynamic disk? Also you don't have Winxp powering off your HD's in energy saver?

If you are using dynamic disk, download HD tach 2.61 and look for any drive spikes.

Although I highly doubt that is the problem.
Are you getting errors from DVD2SVCD or does CCE and Bsweet just hang?

If you are hanging and you are sure it is not the HD, check your bios make sure all your device settings are ok. Did you install force ASPI?

If you are totally still out of luck, uninstall this version and try a previous version, as that was my ultimate fix.

I have a post about upgrading, but my belief is that if you find a stable trouble free version, there is no need to go up builds unless you want the new features. The build you have may just be bunk with your hardware, and OS install.

[DarkFORCE]

I had ALOT of problems with I first started using DVD2SVCD on my WinXP box. I installed it on my girlfriend's WinXP box and worked without any problems. The only difference between our systems is the brand of DDR Ram. I went out and got some new ram and now works fine. WinXP is bad about it's ram.

[ipf123]

Dezoris, I am using the Raid controller on the motherboard. I don't quite understand what you are referring to by dynamic disk. I have disabled XP's power saving features. The problems are not computer freezing, CCE simply stops or not starting.

DarkDORCE, I guess it's possible the problems are RAM related, I might slow down the RAM settings in the BIOS and see if the problems will go away. The RAM I am using are just generic RAM - they may not be of top quality although they did not give me any problems under Win 2k. Thanks for your suggestions.

[UltimateDBZ]

@ipf: There is almost no way (like 0.000000001% chance) that the problem is because of a RAID controller. Almost everything Dezoris posted would not affect the situation, he pretty much listed a whole bunch of useless tips (no offense to him). Hardware is most likely not an issue, but if it is, it's probably RAM-related. There's more like a 99.99999999% chance that it is simply because of WinXP.

[ipf123]

Well, I am glad to report I have success at last. The solution to all my problems with CCE etc was to upgrade XP to SP1. Since upgraded to SP1, I have converted seven movies without any problems - no more Besweet crashes, no more AviSynch access violation error, no more starting problems with CCE and no more stoppings with CCE (except one movie which I have to split the chapters into two halves and re-encode).

I don't know exactly what SP1 fixed, but it sure did fix my problems with DVD2SVCD. For those people who have similar problems and if you are running XP, I would say it's worth SP1's 133Mb download.

[UltimateDBZ]

That's good to hear, ipf, surprising that such improvement could actually come from a Microsoft product ;) I'll be making that download shortly...

[ipf123]

Good luck UltimateDBZ, please post your results here.

[Funbobby]

I tryed Xp pro and thought it was a great os... But my machine ran slower doing audio editing (acid pro, sound forge) and i couldn't get DVDtoSVCD to work ok. I'm now back with Win 2k sp3 and it all works fine (just doesn't look as pretty. shame). ;)

[ipf123]

@funbobby, Sorry to hear that you have to go back to Win2k pro. But did you try the XP SP1 upgrade?

If you want to stay with Win2K but miss the look of XP, try a program called WindowsBlind, it can make Win2K look exactly like XP.

[Dam0]

Just to add a few other issues into the XP equation, my friend has a setup using XP and he claims whenever someone boots up a pc on the lan, CCE will crash .

Otherwise he claims all works fine .

i believe he has 3 PCs on his lan and all run XPpro