I have tried creating mpegs of my five minute animate short to put on CD-Rs. The only thing I've gotten to successfully play is an Mpeg-1. I was happy with this until I noticed how "blocky" it looked much of the time, despite the fact that I set the video quality to high. I tried making an Mpeg 2 (I have to make these through Vegas Video, by the way) and it won't play on my quicktime player ("because a software component needed by the movie could not be found"). I'd make an AVI file or a .MOV, but I know those will be too large for a CD with high video quality. Any recommendations?

A software component is a codec, meaning the format, DivX etc. is not supported on Quicktime. Are you using the latest version of Quicktime? I think its version 6 for PC. Since I us Macs I can't be of much help on your software. Sorry.

Jeff

I thought I was. I'll have to see. Thanks anyway.

Mpeg2 is not playable by every player out there yet. Software
DVD players will though! And if you make it SVCD it will also be
playable at standalone DVD players (most of them, not all!)

Okay. I have created an Mpeg2 with the SVCD template in Vegas Video. Played it on our DVD player, and ouch does it look nasty! Every second or so everything will get real blocky, then normal, and back and forth.

Many DVD players do NOT support SVCD, most now support at least VCD. VCD is MPEG1 at 320x240 I beleive. I think SVCD increases the resolution thus you are trying to encode more with not much more bitrate. Neither SVCD or VCD will ever look as good even a low end MPEG2 DVD, it is just hard to get a good image at a low enogh bitrate that will then fit on a CD. I put events/shows that are not picture quality critical on VCD, thinsg like comedy acts and stuff where listening is more important that what you are seeing. If I want it to look good there is no getting around going to DVD where you can get a 4-6Mbs bit rate encode that will look very good. And if it is that important I runa 7-8Mbs encode for some very clean looking DVDs.

I think I should be able to fit five and a half minutes of material on a CD and have it look damn good, no?

A Video CD is basically a compact disc that contains movies and pictures instead of audio. A VCD has the capacity to hold up to 74 minutes of full-motion video on a 650 MB CD, and up to 80 minutes on a 700 MB CD. The video is compressed using the MPEG standard, which gives about the same quality as VHS movies.

Super VCD is an extended version of VCD, which uses MPEG-2 instead of MPEG-1 to compress the video. This gives better quality video, comparable to DVD, but also mean that the CD can only fit 35-60 minutes movies depending on the CD size used and the encoding rate.

A VCD can be played in standalone VCD players, and most DVD players. Some video game consoles can also play VCDs with special add-ons. A SVCD can be played on many DVD players, but not all. You can play both VCDs and SVCDs in almost all computers with the proper software.

I would guess that your problems are caused by your encoder (VV3) or your DVD player. How old is the player? Can you try it on another DVD player?

Jeff

Keep in mind that SVCD is 480x480 (for NTSC) or 480x576 (PAL)
instead of the full DVD resolution. I don't know what the max
SVCD bitrate is, but I usually use 2000 kbps CBR (constant bitrate).
Don't know if you are allowed variable bit rate.

Josh, what bitrate, resolution and encoding mode did you use?
With TMPGEnc I can create quite good looking SVCD files.

I'm not sure. I have to look into bitrate and all that tonight. I hadn't messed with it before.
Also, would I have to make a full resolution, high quality etc. AVI or QT file in Vegas Video first in order to compress with any program besides Vegas, or can they somehow create files straight from Vegas's timeline?

If you use a standalone program like TMPGEnc you will have to
create an intermediate AVI file (or whatever format the encoder
in question uses).

Good luck!

Hey Josh...

I make SVCD's and DVD's all the time that play without a hiccup in my APEX 703 DVD player. Here the proc:
1-Create avi file with VV3
2-Transcode with TMPGenc. Be sure to use a hi bitrate. I ALWAYS use 8000 kbps. At this bitrate, many of the MPEG2 files actually look better than the original avi file. Use the TMPGENc template for SVCD or DVD and modify ONLY the bitrate to the max.
3-Author SVCD or DVD with Ulead Movie Factory. I have NEVER had a failure...and they look beautiful. Movie Factory will allow you to input an auto playing company logo, as well as pausing at a chapter selection screen.
4-BTW....avoid the el cheapo discs...not all of them will play. Verbatim or Memorex seem to work fine...oh, and DVD-RW won't work...only DVD-R's work.

Thanks. I downloaded the TMPGEnc demo, and made an MPEG2 with it. Looks great!

TMPGEnc is great... And cheap! There are also plugins
available for it (for example a QuickTime file reader!!). Also you
can find loads of tutorials and whatnot on the application.

Good luck!

Okay, this may sound stupid, but what do you mean by "software DVD players? I would assume it means the software used to play DVDs in a DVD ROM drive, yet I can't get it to work on my computer or anyone elses.

Josh,

Are you burning this to DVD to play in your computer's DVD player, or are you burning it to CD?

I encode MPEG-1 to CD all the time... because it will play in nearly everyones computer. But it won't always play smoothly, as not all CD players deliver the stream at a fast enough rate (if you have selected to encode at a high quality).

I instruct my viewers that, if the play is choppy, they download the video to their hard drive... and play it from there.

MPEG 2 will ALWAYS be considerably higher quality that MPEG1. MPEG1 standard sets the default bitrate at 1850 kbps(max). This produces absolutely horrible videos.

burned it to CD-R, Mpeg2 encoded as SVCD, as per everyone's recommendations. Plays in my dinkly little portable DVD player, but not my girlfriend's fancy shmancy not so portable player! I want something that could be both the submission and playback version for film festivals.

If you want maximum playback compatability then DVD-R is the way to go. It's supported on the largest majority of DVD players. But even DVD-R 's that are burned at home will not play on every machine. This is usually due to the age of the DVD player. Older players seems to have the most problems playing back certain brands of DVD's. You might try a differnet brand of CD for your project. Pick a very HQ brand, try Verbatum, Fuji, TDK, Maxell, etc. in your girlfriends machine.

Jeff

<<<-- Originally posted by Josh Bass : burned it to CD-R, Mpeg2 encoded as SVCD, as per everyone's recommendations. Plays in my dinkly little portable DVD player, but not my girlfriend's fancy shmancy not so portable player! I want something that could be both the submission and playback version for film festivals. -->>>

How did the copy of the one we burned at my shop work?

That one works real well, unfortunately, I noticed some glitches in the movie that I needed to fix.

So come on back over and let's burn a few? This time bring the appropriate DVD format. :)

Josh,

Yes, I meant software that allows you to play a DVD with a
DVD-rom player. It might require some special measures to work
with Windows 2000 or XP though! Most used programs at the
moment seem to be WinDVD or PowerDVD. They are included
in most laptops with DVD-rom players in them (with my DELL
laptop I got WinDVD).

Hope this explains some.

Most DVD houses seem to use DVD software players to test
their DVD's BEFORE they are even burned with something like
a Pioneer DVD burner. After it passes the DVD software player
test they burn one with a consumer DVD burner and test hardware
DVD players to see if any thing comes up. Then they press a
test disc at a replication plant to test that one and if all this
passes they give the green light to have the rest pressed.

Paul, too much money! I want numerous copies cheaply!

Rob: My computer (or its original components, anyway) is from 1998 or 1999. It came with a DVD ROM drive, but as I've said, no luck getting it to play my SVCD encoded CD-R

What OS and player software are you using Josh?

Its a matter of the right file format for the distribution mode and target audience. for display on computer monitors with the largest compatibilty in terms of OS version, MPG1 is an excellent choice...it will play on practically on any computer, Mac, PC, Linux, without need for loading a plugin or codec, and it looks way better than most of the old codecs , like Cinepac. For display on NTSC monitors, MPG2 is the way to go.

OS is Win 98 (yes I live in a cave). DVD software? HMM. I'll have to check.

Josh, the most common players on the PC are WinDVD and
PowerDVD. I myself have WinDVD and this program has a bug
while playing SVCD. It doesn't play them (at least not most of
the time it seems). What I do is I insert the disc and then click
on playlist icon, make sure you select File on the right (default
is Disc) and navigate to your CD. In the directory Data (if I'm
not mistaken, otherwise just check all the directories on the CD,
which won't be much) there will be an .MPG or a .DAT file. Select
that and WinDVD will start playing it fine!

Most normal standalone players should do SVCD as well now
a days.

And no, win98 isn't really stone age. I have it too on one of my
machines. Mostly for playing games though. I do like Windows
2000 Professional for my video work though!

Can you download WinDVD? Whatever the hell I have doesn't have a "File" tab or anything else. I open DVD player from Start/programs/accessories/entertainment/DVD player, and it just brings a tab for playing the DVD, and FF and Rewind and so forth.

Josh,

Check www.intervideo.com, they'll probably have an
url there!

If you can't find anything let me know and I'll look around a bit
for you!

Good luck.

Thanks. Will look into it.