SVCD on Apex AD-800 player not working

[BarryMurphy]

Hi,

I am using DVD2SVCD to encode movies and the SVCD's come out fine, as long as I use my PC to play the resulting video. If I try to play them in my APEX AD-800 DVD player, I get screwy results. Usually nothing happens other than the encoded time for the SVCD is shown briefly on the panel. One SVCD i did showed the smiley face opening picture, immediately skipped to the "Change CD" picture, and I could use the Skip button to back into the encoded movie. For this particular player, this is the best results I have found. I am using the standard settings on SVCD and I apologize for a lack of more detailed information.

I have seen SVCDs and regular VCD's display properly on this machine, and after looking it up on the internet it seems to be a well-known machine for playback of SVCD and VCD disks.

So my question boils down to: What special setting in DVD2SVCD do I need to get SVCD's to work in this machine? I'm hoping one of the readers out there has some experience with this particular machine and it's quirks with DVD2SVCD movies.

Thanks,

Barry

Here's the info file from the SVCD I made:

(SVCDINFO.TXT from the INFO folder on the SVCD:)

GENERAL INFO
- Source: DVD (NTSC)
- Movie Offset: 2 sec
- CD Overlap seconds: Yes, 2 sec
- Startup delays: Video: 180 ms Audio 1: 180 msAudio 2: 180 ms
- Video format: NTSC
- Length: 02:18:06
- CD Images:

IMDB INFO:
Movie title:
User rating:
Directed by:
Writing credits:
Genre:
Tagline:
Plot outline:

VIDEO INFO:
- Encoder: Cinema Craft Encoder 2.50.1.0
- Encoding mode: Multipass VBR
- Passes: 4
- Max. bitrate: 2530
- Avg. bitrate: 2022
- Min. bitrate: 300
- Bias: 20
- Image Quality Prio: 17
- Antinoise filter: No
- Linear quant. scale: Yes
- Zigzag scan order: Yes
- Upper field first: No
- Progressive frames: Yes
- iDCT Algorithm: 32-bit SSE MMX
- NTSC Field Operation: Force Film On
- Deinterlace: None
- Pulldown: Yes
- Width: 480
- Height: 480
- Matrix:
Intra:
8 16 19 22 26 27 29 34
16 16 22 24 27 29 34 37
19 22 26 27 29 34 34 38
22 22 26 27 29 34 37 40
22 26 27 29 32 35 40 48
26 27 29 32 35 40 48 58
26 27 29 34 38 46 56 69
27 29 35 38 46 56 69 83
Non-Intra:
16 16 16 16 16 16 16 16
16 16 16 16 16 16 16 16
16 16 16 16 16 16 16 16
16 16 16 16 16 16 16 16
16 16 16 16 16 16 16 16
16 16 16 16 16 16 16 16
16 16 16 16 16 16 16 16
16 16 16 16 16 16 16 16


AVISYNTH SCRIPT:
LoadPlugin("D:\PROGRA~1\DVD2SVCD\MPEG2Dec\mpeg2dec.dll")
mpeg2source("D:\K19PRO~1\DVD2AV~1.D2V")
BicubicResize(480,360,0.0,0.6)
AddBorders(0,60,0,60)
ResampleAudio(44100)


AUDIO INFO:
- Audiostreams: 1
- Audio 1 Language: English
- Audio 1 Bitrate: 160
- Audio 1 Sample freq: 48000
- Audio 1 Mode: Stereo
- Audio 1 Besweet: "D:\Program Files\DVD2SVCD\BeSweet\BeSweet.exe" -core( -input "D:\K19Project\Extracted_audio_1.ac3" -output "D:\K19PRO~1\Encoded_audio_1.mp2" -logfile "D:\K19PRO~1\Encoded_audio_1.log" ) -azid( -L -3db -c normal -s surround -g max ) -2lame( -e -b 160 -m s )

SUBTITLE INFO:
- Subtitlestreams: 0
- Type:
- Sub. 1 Language:
- Sub. 2 Language:
- Sub. 3 Language:
- Sub. 4 Language:

AUTHORING INFO:
- CD Image program: VCDXBuild
- Entrysvd: No

[UltimateDBZ]

http://www.vcdhelp.com

See what they have to say about your standalone.

[BarryMurphy]

Thanks for your response. After messing around with several test burns, I finally ended up setting "Don't Make Images" on the CD Image tab, and running the MPG file through Nero to create the layout of the SVCD.

This worked on smaller test runs, however doing a complete project of a full movie created images that were too big for a 700MB CD-R.

I poked around a bit more, and ended up with the workaround of creating a standard DVD2SVCD bin/cue, loading the image in Daemon, and extracting the MPG out of \MPEGAV on the SVCD image, and finally letting Nero analyze and burn a video CD from the MPG.

Even though I got this working, I'm having the problems that others have reported for this player (e.g., freeze-ups and audio squealing when the bitrate drops low.)

I do think I will get a new DVD player, but I've learned alot by trying to get this going.

[tankd0g]

I had nothing but trouble until I started using Blindwrite to burn my images and doing it at 4x. Try that. Also try both CD and a CDRW, sometimes a player works better with one than the other.