A Few Questions

[havash]

Hi there.
I converted the first few chapters of Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon into SVCD, to test out whether the chapters jump to the correct place.
There are chapters but when I skip to the next chapter, it goes a few seconds ahead of the original chapter position. The first time, I selected "PBC Use Selection", after that I converted them again and used "PBC Use Playlist" but it did the same thing.
I cheched the configuration files that were created by DVD2SVCD and they said something about "closest chapter location". Could you please tell me what settings I need to use to get the correct chapter locations?

Secondly, I would like to know how to make a menu for my SVCD. I know how to do one for separate MPEGs. I just open up Nero, drag the separate MPEG files and select "Enable Menu", but I want to know how to make it for a *.cue or *.bin image file. I hope you can help me with this?

Thirdly, I ripped some VOB files before I got into SVCD, and when I ripped these VOB files I had to cut some of them using a program called "DV Tool". However, when I use this program, I don't have an IFO file for the shorter or longer VOB file. Can you please tell me how to make a new IFO file or how to convert the VOB files into SVCD without IFO files?


I am quite new to DVD2SVCD, and I would really appreciate if you can help me out with these questions.

Thanks.

[gerti67]

Dear havash,

welcome to the forum. :)

Now to your questions:

1) With the chapters, it's sometimes hard to deal with. During the re-encoding of the movie the original GOP structure, the MPEG sequence headers and so the possible chapter entry points are sometimes shifted around a little bit, so the chapters sometimes can't be at the same location than before - therefore the authoring software tries to set them at the nearest possible location. That's not bad and usually those new entry points are only a few milliseconds off from the original cahpter point - so no big deal.

But it depends also on your standalone player and on how it can handle these chapter skips. There are some players around that can't do that properly and so they display not the correct chapter entry when skipping through the chapters. Usually there's not much you can do. Only thing is you could set the GOP length to 3/4 instead of 3/5 in the "Encoder" tab "Advanced settings". So the GOP length is a little bit shorter (12 pictures instead of 15) some standalones can handle this better. Another thing to try would be to check the "Close all GOPs" option also, which is usually needed if you want to author the MPEG stream with a DVD authoring tool and whenever strong random accessibility of the MPEG stream is needed. But the filesize can get slightly bigger with these options set - so be aware.

Or you play with the bbMPEG settings and you set the "Forced mux rate..." to "6972" (the original SVCD mux rate) instead of "0" (the automatic calculated maximum mux rate) - some players can handle this better. Also some players play the MPEG stream better if the options "Add SVCD scan offsets" and "Align sequence headers" are not checked - these parameters are usually not needed and some people that did quite a lot of testing (e.g. shh author of FitCD) say that there are no players around that use/need these informations.

To figure this out this means a lot of testing - or you have to live with the faulty chapter entry points on some movies. ;) Btw, are the chapters correct when using a software player?

2) I don't know of a way to do this for BIN and CUE files. You can see the menu guide done by RadicalEd on how it can be done - he has done quite a lot of testing in this.

http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=24610

3) You don't need a new IFO file, just use the original IFO from the uncut VOBs for each cutted one and pipe the VOBs through the internal routines of DVD2SVCD by re-ripping them again - or you can use a IFO file from a different movie which has the same parameters (Region, TV standard, FPS, aspect ratio, ...) - DVD2SVCD will detect the correct time of the VOBs during the re-ripping - so don't worry about the uncorrect time displayed after loading this IFO in "Conversion" tab.

Hope that helps,
Gerti