SVCD to DVD (small picture!)

[fazz_99]

Trying to convert old SVCD to DVD using MyDVD - Worked first time amazingly but DVD picture has black borders all round so picture is a bit small.

Tried lates Tmpgenc (so the tutorials dont make sense) and this just tells me the picture size is not supported by DVD.

Am i doing something wrong or does VCD - DVD always give a tiny picture ?

[Gurm]

SVCD is 480x480.

DVD is 704x480, 352x480, or 352x224.

I'm assuming you're in an NTSC country, otherwise these numbers are all wrong.

At any rate, this happens a lot with SVCD->DVD conversions. There are two ways around it.

The first is to use a program like SVCD2DVDMPG+, which leaves the resolution alone but fudges the headers so that the DVD player knows the correct size. The problem with this is that many (perhaps as many as 50%) of players don't support SVCD to begin with, and therefore don't work at that resolution AT ALL.

The second way is to use TMPGEnc (or some similar program) to resize the video from 480x480 to 704x480 (or 352x480, downsizing is MUCH faster). This takes, on a modern 2ghz processor, ROUGHLY double the length of the video itself. So a two-hour movie would take four hours to process.

The OTHER bad news is that unless you pick Variable Bit Rate and let TMPGEnc take multiple passes at the video... it will very likely be larger than the size of a blank DVD when you're done (I just did a 2hour4minute movie and it's about 500megs over the limit).

Then you have to squeeze it with DVD2One or something similar.

It's a HUGE pain in the rump. I'd download SVCD2DVDMPG+ (a link is available at http://www.dvdrhelp.com among other places) and see if your DVD player supports DVD's created by it.

- Gurm

[fazz_99]

Thanks for a very comprehensive answer.

To be honest I cant be bothered, it'll take too long on my 1 gig dinosaur. So i'll lhave to not be lazy and get up and swap the discs by hand.

Im from the UK by the way so PAL rules!

Thanks again