playback on standalone choppy..

[windsolp]

Greetings all,

I am having problems playing back dvd-r's which I have created from my xvid rips using the following to convert them into a dvd-r format:

Redhat9
Kavi2svcd (transcode, mplex, etc!)
dvdauthor

Here is a quick 'once over' on the process I currently use.

I load the avi into kavi2svcd and then select the import mod's as xvid and mp3.

I then select svcd format to increase the aspect ratio, but then change the option to generic mpeg2 (as I don't want kavi2svcd to include svcd headers (is that right). I also check options swap red/blue and upside down to get the proper results.

I then go out for the rest of the day :p

This results in one .m2v and one .mpa (which is actually mp2)

Heres the interesting part. If I mux this using tcmplex with the "-m d" flag for dvd it gives me warnings about playback on standalone players due to the bitrate being to great, wheresas with mplex I dont. When I create my dvd structure with dvd-author and burn the dvd my standalone player begins playing the movie, but the audio quickly goes out of sync and then everything gets choppy.

I dropped the bitrates right down after seeing the warnings when using tcmplex to mux the files, and sure enough the warnings dissapeared when muxing, but the resulting dvd-r had exactly the same results on the standalone.

I also noticed that if I paused the movie on my dvd player for a while and then pressed play that the sound and video would be okay for < 5 seconds before starting to lose sync and getting choppy.

If I mount the .iso files created to burn the dvd-rs and play them on a hardware player (i.e mplayer) then it works fine.

Can anyone help me with this I have been creating lots of expensive coasters!!!

Many thanks in advance

[jggimi]

Hello, windsolp, and welcome to Doom9's forum.

I can't help you technically (as I don't author DVDs), but you may just want to check your standalone's capabilities at www.dvdrhelp.com/dvdplayers to see if others have reported problems with specific media. From what little I know about DVD-R, there are many standalones with compatibility issues with certain media brands.

[windsolp]

Thanks for the info have checked the url - it confirmed a few things which I had already discovered through trial and error (mainly error!).

I don't think its a problem with the media as I have successfully backed up dvd -> dvd using same media, the video plays fine it really must be something to do with the muxing of my mp2 track.

I am going to try this with ac3 instead of mp2, but I can not find an ac3 encoder, especially a linux one...:devil: :devil: :devil:

[ultimatebilly]

Isn't ffmpeg able to do that?
I never tried it though...
Alternatively, you should be able to use BeSweet with wine (no real Linux solution, I know :( )
I would give ffmpeg a try...

[mats.hogberg]

I then select svcd format
The SVCD resolution isn't a valid DVD resolution. Don't know if that has anything to do with your specific problem, but...

/Mats

[windsolp]

Well... many hours and several dvd-r coasters later I have a solution. Basically the playback is fine if I use ac3 rather than mp2.

This is most probably a problem with my standalone player than anything technical worth reporting on here. The only good thing I can say is that I now have a very good way of converting xvid to dvd-format all in linux :D

I converted the the mp3 into ac3 using ffmpeg, the command line I used was this:

ffmpeg -i backup.avi -vn -acodec ac3 -ab 192 -o backup.ac3

as I already had the mpeg2 file from the command line generated from kavi2svcd:

transcode -i backup.avi -z -x xvid,null -y mpeg2enc,null -E 44100 -F3. -S650 -Z 480x576 -j 100 -k -o backup

the quality is great although when comparing there is some color loss on the mpeg2 file.

I could also probably get ffmpeg to encode the video as well as audio, but I am unsure as to whether I would see an improvement in quality of video, as I am re-encoding after all.

Hopefully this will help out people if they are having problems like this, but I would reccomend people try out linux for this sort of stuff - as there is alot happening on sourceforge in this area (for example, check out lve).


Many thanks for the comments posted they have helped me get through this rather than just give up!!!