number of disk?

[walrus108]

I have just begun to back up some of my dvd's to svcd. I ripped a 146min movie using dvd2svcd. It turned out fine but I was wondering if I'm getting the quality I could. I had always heard that vdc used 1 or 2 disk and svcd used 4 or more with much better quality. Is there a way to increase the quality and number of disk? I suppose to a certian extent they would go hand in hand. Can't you break a dvd down and put it on many cdr's and lose basically no quality? Anyone with an answer please be through and don't be scared to ask follow ups to get to what i want to know. I am a newbie but don't plan on being one for long so anything you can tell me now, that you wished you'd known then, will be highly appreciated. Thanks

[markrb]

Is there a way to increase the quality and number of disk? Just change the number of cd's to use on the cd tab to the number you want. If you put in a high number then your limitor will be the bitrate used. SVCD spec calls for 2530 Video bitrate. That is why it's set in the MAX section on the bottom.
If your DVD player is capable of playing out of spec SVCD's (rare) then you can raise that to whatever it can handle, but if your DVD player can't handle them then it will cause problems. If you look up your player on www.vcdhelp.com players list often there will be a section that says XSVCD and a number. That number is the MAX bitrate that your DVD player can handle.

Can't you break a dvd down and put it on many cdr's and lose basically no quality? Yes you can, but it's called a mini DVD and not a SVCD. However very few DVD players can actually play these and DVD2SVCD does not make them, at least not completely. There are guides on Doom9 about this. IMO it's not worth the effort.

Mark

[winxi]

There has been released a plugin for dvd2svcd to author mini DVDs:
http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=45504

But i suggest to get more informed before using such stuff.

winxi

[walrus108]

Hey Mark, when you say cd tab what do you mean? Do you mean cd image? If so I can't find a cd # box anywhere. the closest is the bitrate tab has alot of cd # boxes for various sizes. I tried to change just the cd # in there and ended up with 3 cd's although the last one only had 16 mins worth on it. Not quite what I had in mind. Thanks to all for your help.

[hoozdapimp]

Yes that is the correct tab. You should really read the guide here on doom9 for dvd2svcd, as this is explained in there. If you have the correct settings and are still getting problems, it is probably because you are using TMPGEnc to encode your videos.

Post your logfile please.

Scott

[walrus108]

yup I was. i recently switched to cinemacraft but havent messed with the settings since. I'll try it now. thanks for the ghelp.

[markrb]

Keep in mind that bits = size.

The limitors on the bottom (2530, 300, etc...) set what the absolute max, max AVG and min values can be. Since most DVD players cannot go above these settings it's best left at default unless you know for sure you can go higher.

Then using the MAX and MIN as a guide DVD2SVCD takes the movie length and the number of cd's you have set on the bitrate tab and decides what the AVG bitrate will be. If your movie is not long enough to fit the number of cd's you set it to use considering that DVD2SVCD is not being allowed to use a higher bitrate (see limitors) then it will not fill all the cd's.

Now TMPG and DVD2SVCD don't always work well together, especially in CQ mode. This may also be what is causing the strange size, but usually TMPG makes discs too big and not too small.

If you need more info I suggest you read the stickies and try a search as this has been discussed in great detail before.

In my first post I accidently wrote CD TAB. I actually meant CD number on the Bitrate TAB. It's right next to the USE. Sorry for the confusion.

Mark