Interesting DV-444 SVCD Audio finding..

[JoeB]

I've been testing my DV-444 (as well as DV-343) with different SVCD settings.. trying to max the bit rate without going over..

Here's what I found so far, and wanted to know if anyone else noticed this as well..

- The DVD players only support SVCD speed. Anything else gets blocky and doesn't play. The DV-444 gets blocky faster than the DV-343.. For example, the test SVCD that's found everywhere actually fails on the DV-444!

- Both drives don't support subtitles (disable feature and save yourself some CD space!)

- I must do the 48 -> 44.1 conversion! If I don't.. there are a few spots (especially in the beginning of the video) that clicks are heard! They are not there when the audio is converted down.

- The drives crops a few pixels all around the image.. but not to the point where one can notice it. Only noticable if your title screen has text close to the edge.

Cheers.

JoeB

[mrbass]

default DVD2SVCD max bitrate is 2530..I have a pioneer 434 and never had a problem ever with stuttering. Also some friends/family have a 343, 321 and they've never had problems. The more I read about Pioneers hitting bitrate limitations it also seems to point towards the 444. I've never downsampled...you only save 2KB on your CD but I save 10 minutes on an AMD 1700 by skipping it.

[smiller667]

Regarding the cropping you observed, this is most likely due to the setup of your TV set ...

[EntAlex]

Hi,

I also have a Pio-444 and I made a few tests on my own some month ago.
The Pio-444 has no problems playing svcd as long as you do not go over 2756kbit/s (Audio+Video).
It is not true that u have to downsample to 44,1 khz.
I think the reason for the clicks is a high fluctuation in the bitrate of the video stream.
I also noticed them but only on some svcds during the first 2 or 3 seconds of the movie.
The Player has a problem with high bitrate jumps. When u first have an absolute black picture and the next pictures are very complex u can see some blocks for a second.
But this happens very rarely. I watched a lot of svcds so far and there haven't been much movies where this happens.

Your cropping problem is a little bit strange. But I'm pretty sure that it belongs to your TV or your encoding.

Alex