SVCD, VCD, DVD editing
 

Thanks in advance to all those who read this.

I am trying to figure out how to make decent quality SVCD's that won't glitch in my DVD player. I have spent a couple of months reading up on the subject. I have found very little in the way of good documentation that I am able to understand.

I have read that the problem I face may have more to do with my stand alone DVD player buffer than with SVCD itself. I can tolerate some reduced quality, but when my children's head's look like blocks I can't.

I want to utilize SVCD because most of my home vids are between 10-40 minutes which is ideal for inexpensive CDR's

Under windows I am able to make decent SVCD's, but have graduated from the introductory OS

Under linux I can either make SVCD's that glitch in a stand alone DVD player or SVCD's that won't glitch, but are not worth watching.

I am using DVgrab to capture the Video off the Camera. Working great even better than windozes client

I edit with Cinelerra. Works Great and I believe I like it is better than Premiere 6.5 windozes client for functionality.

I use part of transcode to mux back together to create the mpeg II file. works great and is really fast. I did try a couple of things under transcode to create the mpeg II file, but was extremely pixelated and thus I did not even waste the disk to burn it.

VCDimager works great

CDrdao works great.

I have tried several methodologies:

Using the quantizer in Cinelerra either creates glitchy or pixelated SVCD's in the stand alone DVD player. I will say this it does not glitch unless the video has a lot of movement on the screen. Increasing the effect of the quantizer reduces the glitching, but increases the pixelation.

Using transcode to create MPEG II is extremely pixelated in the SVCD mode.

Either of them do a great job creating DVD quality mpeg II home movies.

questions:

1) Do I just need a better stand alone DVD player, because it worked ok with reasonable quality from the windozes solution?

2) Does another methodology exist to improve these processes under linux?

3) Does step by step documentation for idiots exist for what I seek?:study:

I hate to tell you this, but what you've already done with dvgrab, cinelerra, transcode etc. probably would qualify you as a Linux video editing guru, not an "idiot" or newbie...

Have you tried mencoder instead of transcode?

It seems that mencoder is rigged for MAC OS X not linux. I did find the binaries that I could possibly compile from those.

Thanks for the encouragement.

rigged? the mac port of mencoder is just an offshoot. http://mplayerhq.hu

Thank you for the response and link. Seems my googling needed some improvement. I searched only for mencoder.:D

You arn't even told you have it when you compile mplayer unless you read the man pages on it.
mencoder is a bit tricky for getting audio to match video if you don't go with the default settings, which suck for quality. I have only used it to rip dvds though.

It appears that I have not choice, but to upgrade to a DVD Burner. Unfortunately, the documentation is vague or non existant. I am going to see if another stand alone DVD player is what I need. I will test this by taking several SVCD's with varying quality and see if they glitch in a new machine. if they don't then I will get that machine. If they all glitch then I am relegated to the fact that I will have to get a DVD burner.

You were just looking for an excuse to get a new DVD burner anyway.:p




:D

I may have stumble on to something. I let cinelerra rip muxed the file back together then let TC rip to create a 2nd generation mpeg II. The quality was reasonable, but it turned the Video upside down.


Question:

1) Any ideas on how to correct this?

ffmpeg -i $FNAME.avi -me full -title $FNAME -r 29.97 -s 352X240 -ab 224 -ar 44100 -b 1150 -f vcd -vcodec mpeg1video -acodec mp2 $FNAME.mpg

i have a post about this too. i can make home movies from the above command ok but "other" avi's will not transform into vcd compliant video...

Thanks for the nfo!!! I will try this when I return home

From what I read on the doc site to create an SVCD would look something like this:

ffmpeg -i myfile.avi -target svcd svcd.mpeg

OR:

ffmpeg -i myvid.avi -me full -title Summer.Vacation -r 29.97 -s 480X480 -ab 224 -ar 44100 -b 1150 -f svcd -vcodec mpeg2video -acodec mp2 SVCD.mpeg

awesome asalford,
 

thanks for doing most of the research.

what kind of video capture card your are using, i am leaning towards ATI 9600 A-I-W.

Does anyone have any experience with Hauppage or Pinnacle? If so,
which ones are best suited for converting home videos to dvd?

thx a bunch.

Try this link http://www.linuxtv.org/

they will recommend Hauppage. It seems that most of the work has been around that particular card.

I am using a generic 1394 firewire device which my Camcorder supports. My friend has a video capture card that runs in linux. I will ask him to post what he knows about the subject.

The video card, although supported on a direct install may still need to have the opengl drivers installed. This same friend has either a 9000 or 9600 and I can't remember which.

I have finally figured it out.

Transcode and Cinelerra are the tools to use.

Output your editing to one file using mpeg video II of double the recommendation in Cinelerra file ==> render

Seems this is the magical line for me:

transcode -i /***/***/video/test/ -y mpeg -F s,2,xsvcd.prof -E 44100 -b 128 -o svcd.mpeg

where the file xsvcd.prof which you must VI or something = the following.

#(S)VCD profile for improved quality
fixed_vbv_delay = 1
vbv_buffer_size = 230
cbr = 1
cbr_bitrate = 2100000.0 <<=========== I have put it up to 4000000.0
quant_value = 2
qscale_type = 0
vbr_mux = 0
video_buf_size = 230
use_comp_bitrate = 1

This value 2100000.0 yields about 47m of video, but is a little pixelated. 4000000.0 yields about 1/2 that, but DVD quality. Gives some flex whether you need the space or can afford the quality.

I found a great little site on how to use Transcode:

http://zebra.fh-weingarten.de/~transcode/

Came across this tutorial: DVD Editing/Authoring/Burning with Linux. It features the kino video editor, and a program called dvdauthor.