VCD / SVCD / miniDVD FAQ

This is a by no means complete collection of frequently asked questions on VCD and SVCD creation. Admittedly it's not really an FAQ since I don't like the answer, question structure but I'll just mention the problems and give an answer to it. 

If you have something that you'd like to see added please let me know.

Bitrate related

How can I fit my movie on X CDs?
How can I increase the quality in bbMPEG?
How can I increase the quality in TMPG?
How many minutes of video can I fit on a VCD / SVCD?
What bitrate should I chose for a VCD?
What bitrate should I chose for a SVCD?

Encoding related

Can I encode at 23.976fps in CCE?
CCE crashes upon loading your AVS file
CCE crashed upon starting the encoding session
CCE encoder always crashes / won't work
Flask crashes after a certain time when using Panasonic
How do I convert an MPG to AVI?
TMPG error: Can't open movie.avs.txt - file not found
TMPG freezes upon loading the source file(s)
Which program is best to make a VCD
Which program is best to make a SVCD

Editing related

How do I make a menu for my VCD?
How do I fix asynch VCDs /SVCDs?
How do I fix the reference clock error?
How can I cut my movie?
How can I cut an mps file muxed with I-Author?
How can I make I-Author write to the mpeg2 directory instead of mpegav?

Format related questions

Can I have a VCD/SVCD with AC3 sound?How do I burn a VCD that's larger than 650MB?
What's a DAT file?
What's DVCD?
What is XVCD?

Playback related

Fast pans are not fluent and/or interlacing is present
My Pioneer Player won't properly play my SVCD
How do I activate the SVCD subs on a pc?
How do I play an SVCD on my pc?
The movie plays choppy on my player
Which player can play SVCD / miniDVD?
Why does my DVD player not play miniDVDs?

Bitrate related

The key is bitrate. VCD has fixed bitrate which means you have no choice but to encode using the default settings of 1150kbit/s for video and 224kbit/s for audio, and cut to how many CDs are needed. Every other bitrate will be outside of specs and probably not play. For SVCD you can calculate the bitrate as follows: Number of CDs * CD size * 1024 * 8 / movie length in seconds = bitrate per second. Now subtract the desired audio bitrate from this value and you'll end up with the value for the video bitrate you have to set. Please not that you should encode at least at 1500kbit/s.. otherwise the quality difference to a VCD will be hardly noticeable and you can go for the faster VCD format right away.

You can increase the DC coefficient precision, increase the motion search accuracy, increase the quality settings if you're using one of the QC modes for bitrate control (QC VBR is my preference). Then you could theoretically mess around with the GOP settings but until I fully understand these I wouldn't dare to touch these.

The advanced settings allow you to mess around and make quite some noise. However.. most I don't understand what most options mean so I suggest if you're interested you'll ask in the bbMPEG usergroup. Of course DC precision, motion search vectors and such things are obvious candidates to change.

How many minutes of video can I fit on a VCD / SVCD

For VCD it's simple: CD size in Kilobit (multiply with 1024 to get from MB to KB and with 8 to get from KB to KBit) / 1374 = number of seconds. For SVCD you divide by (video bitrate + audio bitrate) to get the playlenght for a single CD. 

A normal data CD saves 2048 bytes of data per sector, the rest is used for the error correction. A video CD has no error correction, so a larger number of sectors will fit on the CD:

Data CD: CD-R with 330.000 sectors * 2048 bytes/sector = 675.840.000 bytes = 644.5 MB Video CD: CD-R with 330.000 sectors * 2352 bytes/sector = 776.160.000 bytes = 740.2 MB

Data CD: CD-R with 360.000 sectors * 2048 bytes/sector = 737.280.000 bytes = 703.1 MB Video CD: CD-R with 360.000 sectors * 2352 bytes/sector = 846.720.000 bytes = 807.5 MB

Of course all CD-R's have a few MB more to spend plus you can overburn them. Use the CDRIdentifier to find out how much your CD-R can hold. As you have seen, the limits to stay below are 740 MB for a 650MB CD-R and 807 MB for a 700MB CD-R. If you overburn your CD's than select disk at once.

VCD has fixed bitrates for both audio and video: 1150KBit/s for video and 224KBit/s for audio. Anything else is non-standard and known as XVCD. Not every player that plays VCD will play XVCD.

Once again visual perception comes into play. I can't tell you.. you really have to find the best settings out on your own. SVCD can have up to 2600kbit/s video and 224kbit/s audio. You can use lower audio for SVCDs and get a higher video bitrate. To increase the quality encode at 23.976fps rather than 29.97fps and enable to 3:2 or 2:3 pulldown. When I encode I select a min bitrate of 500, a max bitrate of 2500 and an average bitrate of 1500 and at least 4 passes in CCE.

Encoding

Can I encode at 23.976fps in CCE?

Yes, however it requires that you run the pulldown.exe utility on the video file after encoding. DVD authoring tools don't like these files so this solution works only for SVCD at the moment.

CCE crashes upon loading your AVS file

Only CCE 2.5 and below can load AVS files. CCE 2.62 cannot. There are a few tricks that make it possible under some circumstances (they are sketchy) but since they all don't work on my system I won't bother. Stick to 2.5. Note that if you have an AMD processor you must disable audio in CCE and the AVS MUST have an audio track loaded.

CCE crashed upon starting the encoding session

Try disabling the audio in CCE.

CCE needs a 3rd generation Celeron (600+MHz), Athlon, Duron, Thunderbird or Pentium3. Pentium 2 and AMD K6 won't work! When running it an an AMD processor it also requires that your input file has an audio track.

Flask crashes after a certain time when using Panasonic

This is most likely an installation problem. If you have the plugin properly installed - specify the folder where FlaskMpeg resides as the Adobe plugin folder - and installed on a clean system - no previous Panasonic plugin installed or if one was on your system then you have to remove that first before installing another one - then everything should work fine. Also... stay to VCD bitrate. Panasonic has a VBV problem when you increase the bitrate above a certain number which I don't recall. For better quality I suggest you go to SVCD right away since if a player can play XVCD it most likely also plays SVCD.
Another thing you can try if the above does not help is to open the plugin in a hex editor and save it under another name.  

How do I convert an MPG to AVI?

Please check out the conversion guide.

You clearly didn't read my guide good enough... the error message betrays you! You tried to load a .avs.txt file which won't work. Your file must end with .avs nothing else. Rename the file to movie.avs.

TMPG freezes upon loading the source file(s)

You have to deactivate the DirectShow reader. In order to do so select Options, Environmental properties, click on the VFAPI-plugin tab and uncheck DirectShow Multimedia Reader.

Which program is best to make a VCD

I prefer TMPEGEnc. However that's a personal preference... according to my eyes TMPEGEnc is less blurry than Panasonic and less blocky than bbMPEG.. hence the choice.

CCE or TMPG. CCE is better when you do at least 3 passes and it's also the fastest of the bunch if you do the same amount of passes as in the other tools. TMPG is very slow but the quality is also pretty good, and lately LSX has made some sort of comeback, even though I still think its quality is below the other two tools I mentioned. The easiest way to use CCE is to use DVD2SVCD. The only drawback is that CCE SP which is needed (the light edition doesn't allow multipass encoding) is pretty expensive so if price matters TMPG is your first choice and LSX your second.

Editing

How do I fix asynch VCDs /SVCDs?

If the audio is asynch by a constant amount use an offset for the audio when muxing in bbMPEG (that is explained in almost every guide). If it gets progressively asynch please refer to the VCD synching guide, the procedures described in there can be used for SVCD as well.

How do I make a menu for my VCD?

You can proceed according to the I-Author guide but select VCD as project type and the menus have to match the resolution of the VCD... that is 352x288/240.

First of all stick to the appropriate guide. The method described there is the best working and least painful. Alternatives are TMPG's MPEG tools. If they fail you'll have to use a commercial alternative as M1/2-Edit or Vitec's Video Clip Pro. Other programs may not be specs compliant and you'll run into synch problems or choppy playback.

You can't. I suggest you multiplex the video and audio using bbMPEG or TMPG's MPEG tools, then cut at the appropriate position and demux again using MPEG tools, vstrip or bbdmux - for more information on how to use these tools please read the SVCD guides.

How can I make I-Author write to the mpeg2 directory instead of mpegav?

After creating your project, just before you make the CIF file, select View - Preference - Project preference. At the bottom you have 2 choices. If you chose SVCD I-Author will write to mpegav, if you select the other one it'll write to mpeg2.

Format related

Can I have a VCD/SVCD with AC3 sound?

No. VCD only support 2 channel mp2. SVCD theoretically supports MPEG-2 multichannel, however there's no Windows software to make these kind of audio tracks. There's some Linux software but before you install Linux I suggest you read the my thoughts on the format.

How do I burn a VCD that's larger than 650MB?

Burn it as normal.. as long as it's not longer than 74minutes. You don't have to overburn or use 80 minute CDs.

Dat files are slightly modified mpg files that are present on VCDs. To edit them you have to convert them using VCDGear.

Double Video CD is a more advanced VCD in terms of playlength. You can store about 90-100 minutes of video on it. These VCDs use special CDs that can contain more data than regular CDs (99 minute CDs).

eXtended VCD. VCD at higher bitrates or non standard solutions. Most major brand players won't play them, however far eastern players usually play them.

Playback

This should be a SVCD problem only. I've tried movies that have incorrect rff flags and in VCD format no interlacing was visible. If you used FlaskMpeg (make sure you use 0.6x) you must resort to another program (everything that starts out with DVD2AVI is good). Follow the DVD2AVI guides properly and don't be afraid to IVTC if I say you should.

Start the TMPG's MPEG tools, go to Optimize VBV, load your file and save it again. You may have to download an old TMPG version from the inofficial English TMPG site.

Both WinDVD and DVD Station (which is the software for the Hollywood plus) can play SVCDs. PowerDVD is not SVCD capable (it works in file mode but that's NOT SVCD compatibility.. that would require that it recognizes the disc as a SVCD and supports stuff like menus and multiple languages). PowerDVD XP on the other hand (also known as PowerDVD 4.0) can play SVCDs in disc mode.

You can't. Apparently only standalones can use SVCD subs.

My Pioneer Player won't properly play my SVCD

Apparently some older Pioneer players can't deal with a movie that has a horizontal resolution of 480. Therefore if you have such a player you have to reduce the horizontal resolution to 352. Most newer models shouldn't have these kind of problems though.

The movie plays choppy on my player

Most likely you have a non specs-compliant (S)VCD. If a program bitches (for instance bbMPEG reports errors after muxing, Nero says the file is not compliant) or if you simply went beyond the bitrate limits - 1150kbit/s video & 224kbit/s audio for VCD, 2600kbit/s total for SVCD - then it's highly likely that although the file might play perfectly on your pc your standalone will choke on this files since it was not meant to play such files. Another explanation could be that you used the wrong program to cut the files or set the wrong format in the cutting program. Some programs claim that they are VCD compliant but in fact they are not and the resulting files will either not play at all or play very choppy. Some people also have problems with discs burned in Nero. In this case try VCDImager and a .bin/.cue capable burning program (yuo'll find the necessary instructions in the guide at the appropriate position).

For VCDs you can process the movie in iFilmEdit's record mode. You'll first have to convert your VCD back from DAT to MPG format using vcdgear2.0. Thanks to chris for pointing that out.

For miniDVD the answer is easy: Affrey SD 2060 if you replace it's drive with a pc drive (otherwise you'll still have a bitrate limit that's equivalent to the SVCD bitrate limit). For SVCD take a look at the player list at VCDHelp.

Most DVD players will load their player software according to the media type detected and they will load VCD / SVCD software if they detect a CD-R/W. Another problem is that DVD players are slow reading CDs. They can only read CDs at 1x or 2x speed.. 1x is enough for audio CDs and VCDs, 2x is enough for SVCDs. This is the reason why VCD and SVCD have a bitrate limit.. this is due to physical limitations. Only few DVD players have a DVD drive that is capable of the speeds your CD have to turn in case of the high bitrates of a miniDVD.