SVCD Problem

[marcus]

Hiyas,

On my work PC, when I play a SVCD file, the aspect ratio is all wrong - basically the vertical length is longer than the horizontal, at home its fine and fills the screen perfectly, on my work XP box I get large borders left and right, with a thin video. Ive installed an SVCD codec, also put on DIVX5. Must be missing something else..

Additionally Im using Windows Media Player 9, this works fine for me at home, I know people will say use Power DVD but I want to use the windows media player toolbar option.

To add to my whoes, full screen the files play very badly, even when minimised they stutter and jerk along. Im guessing perhaps its the GFX card which I beleive is a TNT2 is the limiting factor, the PC has 512MB Ram, and is about 600Mhz. I recall my older PC struggling with newer media files in a similar way.

[jezzace]

This isn't going to be much help but you should try and play it with another player, like power dvd because that might make it clearer whether its a codec issue or just the player. You could try BS player, thats quite a good one IMO. Also, on your other problem, I used to have slight problems playing vcds with a TNT2 and 700mhz, 128mb ram, and they were watchable and rarely only slowed down ever so slightly. They did take a why to actually get to fullscreens, but again that might be a codec problem.

[Commander Marklar]

Just sounds like someone may have resized the window maybe? IIRC, it remembers settings for various files so it may be "stretching the movie to match window size" and just generally playing badly, 'cos it has to work it out.

Just a random stab in the dark...

[Lyris]

SVCD is stored horizontally squashed. You shouldn't need an "SVCD codec", it's MPEG-2, so DivX won't have anything to do with it (that's an AVI codec). All versions of PowerDVD I've tried display it properly - if they don't, right click, uncheck "Keep Aspect Ratio" and stretch it out to the right size.

I don't think Windows Media Player ever properly supported SVCD so that'll give the half-width video.

I used to have slight problems playing vcds with a TNT2 and 700mhz, 128mb ram, and they were watchable and rarely only slowed down ever so slightly. They did take a why to actually get to fullscreens, but again that might be a codec problem.

SVCD is MPEG-2 and at 480x480 (NTSC) and 480x576 (PAL) and supports up to I think 2.5mbps, compared to VCD's MPEG-1 at 352x240 (NTSC) and 352x288 (PAL) at a fixed rate of 1.5mbps so system requirements will be higher for SVCD. I'm surprised that doesn't work, my Pentium 2 500mhz with a 16mb Voodoo Banshee could play SVCD. It's possible that the video overlay is disabled? One way to tell to look at the file resized to full screen - is it very pixelly or smoothed?

[tuvok3of11]

I also had this problem, the only way i ever found of solving it was installing either Sonic Cineplayer or Intervideo WinDVD 4. By installing this it gives you the correct MPEG-2 codec and the video should display correctly in Media Player.

[Baroque]

I watch all my SVCD's in VLC

http://www.videolan.org/

Not sure if it'll solve your problem, but none the less there it is.