Encoding for the future SVCD2DVD

[ux-3]

Lately I have wondered how long it will be, till I'll buy a DVD-burner. When I was young, I was an "early adaptor", but with growing age and income, I don't feel as hard pressed for the latest stuff anymore. I've basically switched to "Gamma tester", I'll buy what many others have found to be the best solution. By that time its proven, reliable and affordable. So in the long run, the DVD burner will be inevidable. And the media prices will be about as low as they are now for CD-r. So eventually, I might want to get rid of the piles, stop swapping CDs etc, by moving the stuff onto DVD.

Now this does raise some questions, since the SVCD standard ist afaik not quite compatible to DVD. I just run a few searches on this topic, but I did only find misspellings of DVD2SVCD.

My intention is to develop guidelines how to prepare for the moment when the conversions are to be made. I'll just list a few points that have crossed my mind, and perhaps someone else will share their thoughts or links. I am not sure of any of these, so any feedback would be welcome. Basically, I want to do encodes that work now and will convert without much fuzz later. This is my thinking:

- keep 48 kHz (Stereo?, doesn't matter?)
- use CVD or DVD size (what about SVCD?)
- activate DVD compliance when using DVD (CVD?) size
- chapter structure (keep the ifos for future reference)
- subtitles (hard encode aliens, krauts, commies, texans :p )
- split by chapter (without overlap:: better two mpgs than repeating)
- title and changeCDpicture will be in avseq01.mpg, so better not?

Anything that I missed?

[UltimateDBZ]

Your list is pretty much all-inclusive of the best way to prepare if you decide to go down that path. But the whole idea somewhat defeats itself in quality terms. Going from DVD>SVCD>DVD cuts down quality all-around by a good factor, even at the highest bitrates. It's sorta like having a final goal of digital files, but you record to VHS before you move those to digital. The proper method would be skipping the lesser-quality step and going from digital input to digital output. This is the same situation, your idea will work, but quality will suffer. Going straight from DVD to DVD would be your best bet (obviously), but that wouldn't help you out as far as all the SVCDs you may have already created.

BTW - Was the intent of this topic mainly for information? I didn't see a real question anywhere...

[Jason28]

@ux-3
I have to agree with UltimateDBZ about the conversion process. What I would reccomend doing if you are when/if you get a DVD burner is copying the SVCDs to a DVD. That way you can keep 1 DVD in the drive and still watch the whole movie. Also if you wanted to you can put more the 1 movie on the DVD (ie if the movie had a sequl MIB, MIB 2 and so on). This is what I plan on doing when I get a DVD.

[RadicalEd]

Guys he isn't talking about re-encoding, he means creating SVCDs now that will be archivable on DVD without re-encoding. Good idea for a discussion, even if its a bit premature we'll need to know how to do this in the future. The only things that we can do to make our SVCDs both DVD and SVCD compatible are encoding at CVD/half-D1 res and using 48 khz audio. Then again, the actual encoded video/audio is the only crucial part anyway. Oh yea, don't use those evil KVCD or whatever templates either because DVD has a set GOP structure of 15 frames to a GOP. I dunno what the DVD compliant box in CCE actually does, although I'd like to. You can also store the ifo in the SVCD as an extra file. Now, thats all great but what I'm interested in is what you'll have to do when you actually want to turn these into a DVD.
Extract the mpeg, demux and remux as a DVD stream
convert subtitles to DVD format
re-author using the IFO as a basis
n burn

mm.. thats pretty simple actually. neat. If I forgot anything, say so.

[ux-3]

Originally posted by RadicalEd
Guys he isn't talking about re-encoding, he means creating SVCDs now that will be archivable on DVD without re-encoding. Good idea for a discussion, even if its a bit premature we'll need to know how to do this in the future.

Exactly!
Why not use DVD resolution? If your current player supports it, why should you not use it? Shouldn't that work in the future?

By the way, as far as I read it, DVD compliant means that DVD resolution is used and the picture is inserted in the middle - plenty of border usually... never tried...

So there is no way to mux it right? Just for curiosity, what settings would I have to use to mux DVD compatible? Perhaps my current plaer takes it? Would save plenty of work in a year or two!

[UltimateDBZ]

I wasn't talking about DVD resolution, I'm talking about the loss of overall quality in going from DVD to SVCD, and then back to DVD. My point is simply that it would make better sense to go straight from DVD to DVD, despite the extra work it might entail.

[SatStorm]

Once again the same subject...

Why don't use 720 X 480/576 is your DVD can play xSVCDs that way?
That is miniDVD in a way. But that way you end up with huge files you can watch it only yourself. It is not practical, but some people find it OK. For decent quality, you need average bitrates about 4000kb/s, which is FAR more any CD based media!

The whole question, is like asking for LP and SP VCR options. SP is the standard, like the full DVD-Video resolution. It gives you the best quality. But you can do your job excellent with LP too, and so with the 1/2 D1 resolution of DVD and CVD. Expecially in the digital world, with mainstream media, the quality loss of 1/2 D1 is not that huge!. Most people find it acceptable, as they do with LP on VCRs!

Anyway, back to your question:
You have 2 solutions the way I see it:
1. You go for miniDVD. That way you are OK with the future, with the best possible quality, but you have limited compatibility with the present
2. You go for CVD. That way you are also ok with the future,also with the present, but you have quality loss. Not that much, but you have!
Also, let me remind you that this format(CVD) ain't that good for NTSC. Works (and looks!) much better with PAL.

Both solutions, needs much work. There are no automatic way to do it, except probably DVD2SVCD, which you are limited with DVD backup (and DVB also, but not that easy..). Checking CVD creation with DVD2SVCD can make your Cds future easy for DVD-R, but don't imagine that the proccess is that easy as it looks like! That proccess includes CD ripping, de-muxxing the CVD files to m2v and mp2, Author them as DVD ones and then burn them as DVD-Rs. It doesn't need re-encoding (so, you don't have any kind of quality loss) but it takes time, believe me! Much time to tell you the true!

I hope I helped you a bit, if not sorry!

[ux-3]

Well, I did SVCDs manually, before I came across DVD2SVCD, so I realize how much time we talk about. To minimize this time, I try to think ahead.

I have done a couple of encodes at DVD resolution in PAL. Some of them were even 4:3 full screen. I was expecting to get a lot less quality. I posted my findings but there was little resonance. I found that the loss of quality was by far not as much as I expected. I wasn't doing any high action movies, mainly TV Series with set camera angles, which should compress quite well due to the constant background. I can only recommend to give this a try when your video bitrate is at 2000+. Just see yourself. As I stated in the other thread, I ran three encodes of the same material at the same bitrate, at CVD, SVCD and DVD resolution, and tried to make up my mind which looks best. It wasn't easy. Finally, I was stuck between SVCD and DVD.

I sort of have this rule of thumb: If I compress by just about 50%, DVD will likely be OK. If compression is higher, I try something else...