SVCD conversion to MPEG leaves me with unseekable movie.

[Rooster6975]

Hello,

I have an SVCD I am trying to convert to normal MPEG. The SVCD is in what I would call standard format. The layout of the directories is:
EXT
MPEG2
SEGMENT
SVCD

If I play this movie using PowerDVD, it works just fine. I can skip forward to any part. However, if I run this movie through any of VCDEasy, IsoBuster, or a little prog called Dat2file.exe, it always comes out as an unsearchable MPEG. It works, but I cannot FF, or click anywhere on the search bar. The bar never moves from 00:00:00 even though the movie is playing. Playing the SVCD, the counter moves normally.

How can I convert this SVCD to a normal MPEG, but still retain searching capability? I have a few other SVCDs (actually XCDs) in *.dat format, and they convert just fine with VCDEasy using one of the tools. However, no matter how I try it, this particular movie never comes up searchable. I presume the counter is held in a secondary file that is not being taken into account during the conversion. In the SVCD directory, there are a bunch of SVD files (entires.svd, info.svd, lot.svd, psd.svd, tracks.svd) and Search.dat. In the EXT dir, there is a file called Scandata.dat. The movie itself is in the MPEG2 dir and is called the standard AVSEQ01.MPG.

Any ideas?

Thanks,
R.

[jshumate]

I think your problem is that you have made some assumptions that are not accurate. First of all, SVCD does not use .DAT format, so whatever your other videos are, they are not SVCDs. As you stated, the SVCD video is AVISEQ01.MPG, which is normal for SVCD. A DAT file is MPEG-1 video, not MPEG-2 like for SVCD, with a special header on it. People convert DAT files because certain programs don't like to work with DAT files. I think your problem is that you are trying to use programs to convert MPEG-1 DAT files to MPEG-1 files and your header info is getting messed up, which is causing the problem. I don't understand why you think you need to convert the SVCD file. You should be able to use it, as is, without conversion. I think your other conversion attempts worked because you were converting true DAT files. Those discs are probably XVCD and XVCD/VCD are not the same as SVCD.

[Rooster6975]

You are correct, I had assumed bin/cue files that were *.dat files were SVCDs. Those ones convert without a problem. The reason I am trying to convert is that I am moving my film library to DVD-R and will place in storage all my VCDs, SVCDs, XCDs, DVDs, and any other movie in whatever format. Most of my friends have HTPC systems with either projectors or large-screen TV-out. If I go to a movie night and forget my DVD-R at the hosts house, not a big deal since I have all the originals stored away at home.

I can fit six 700 MB movies per DVD-R or four 1.07 GB AC3 films which is my conversion option of choice. I only have a few non-DIVX/XVID movies that are in either *.dat format, or true SVCD. Most of my collection is DVD and I have encoded them all into mostly XVID format 1GB files. This particular movie works just fine as is, if I leave it in its original SVCD format. Howver, I would like to convert it into a format that is supported on a DVD-R. I can then play it back on my HTPC system without having to use the SVCD playback method, I can make use of my DVD menu system that launches a single file per film (*.avi, *.mpg, *.ogm, *.mkv, etc..), and I don't have to bring the original 2-CD SVCD set if I go to someone's house. I suppose I could burn the SVCD as is and then mount it with Daemon tools directly from the DVD-R (would that work??), but I would like to simplify it. If I can get it in normal MPEG format just like the other *.dat files I converted, then I can play it by burning it to DVD-R along with all my other MPEGs and AVI files.

It seems to convert properly every time, it is just not seekable. You cannot jump forward or pick up where you left off. It is basically watch it all in one go or don't bother. When I fire it up with PowerDVD or WinDVD, or in my DVD settop player, it is seekable either by chapter or by time. I would just like to figure out how to get it onto a DVD-R in MPEG format (or any other format, but I understand it is already in some sort of MPEG format).

Thanks for responding,
R.

[jshumate]

I stand by my earlier response that your header is getting messed up by your coversion and that is causing the problems. Do a web search on DVD Lab. Check out http://www.mediachance.com/dvdlab. It can be used to make DVDs out of SVCD videos. SVCD resolutions are not valid for DVD, so you either have to re-encode to a valid resolution and lose some quality doing so, or you can use DVD Lab to author it. DVD Lab will allow you to make DVDs out of SVCD resolution video. It's not really allowed by the DVD specifications, but it does seem to work in most standalone DVD players. You will also have to convert your audio from 44 MHz to 48 MHz for DVD, but you can do that with something like BeSweet GUI here at the Doom9 downloads section. I think DVD Lab may be what you really are looking for if all you want to do is make SVCD video playable as a DVD. http://www.dvdrhelp.com has some info on doing this as well I think.

[Rooster6975]

Apologies for not responding earlier, got called unexpectedly to a customer site for a 2-week out-of-town stint. Too bad my job got in the way of my encoding!

At any rate, will give DVD Lab and see if it does what I want. Thanks for the tip.

R.

[mudda_t]

Rewrite the gop timecode (lab has a tool that will do it) after that you should be able to seek.
.
Or
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With tmpgenc plus go to the add/merge function load the mpeg and click ok/run. The function is ment to merge clips, but if you only load your single mpeg it will write the same file with a corrected header.
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I learned the trick in this forum, I forgot who posted, props to you.