I made some SVCD on CD-R, which can be played on my DVD player. Question: before I buy DVD burner, can anyone tell me if I burn my SVCD on DVD-R and I still play it on my DVD player?

Thanks in advance.

-- david (davidx58@hotmail.com), January 05, 2005

Answers

You have two choices:

If you have the raw MPG file you made the SVCD from, burn it to a DVD- R and see if the player will read it. On (most) newer players, you'll get a file menu that allows you to play a MPG file directly from the disc. The Durabrand DUR-1700 that is currently on the market is a good example of a player that does this, and many of the recent Apex players do this as well.

OR

You can upsample the audio to 48KHz, 224kbps .MP2, and make a DVD out of it with a DVD authoring program. You will need to experiment. A SVCD file is not a DVD Video file, so authoring programs may not like it, or try to re-encode it. That destroys any benefit of having the smaller SVCD file. Try to find a copy of SpruceUp! which usually would accept any MPG compatible file.

Unless you're wanting to save space by putting all of your SVCD discs onto fewer DVD-R, it's probably not worth the bother to make new discs.

-- Bryan (gryps-innocens@gryphon.zzn.com), January 05, 2005.

Bryan's answer is excellent and quite detailed, although I would add that he didn't make it clear that if you try to burn SVCD format to DVD-R, there is almost no chance it will work. You will either have to burn the files as raw MPEGs and make a data DVD-R or author them as DVDs, both of which he said. The Philips DVP-642 is another example of a player that will play raw MPEG files.

-- Root (root@yahoo.moc), January 06, 2005.

I wouldn't say that it has almost no chance of working (burning a raw MPG to a DVD-R) On the contrary, out of the 5 players I've sampled over the last 3 months, only 1 of those would not play that type of disc.

Admittedly, these were all low-end players (Apex, Durabrand, Cyberhome and Norcent) but all of them gave a file browser and would play almost anything.

The only one I could not get to play a regular MPG was an old Apex player a family member had. It was purchased shortly after Apex began offering half-height players in the USA.

But on the other hand, most of the brand name players I've tried in the past didn't play anything other than DVDs. Seeing as how those units die just as quickly as the cheap ones, I've stopped dealing with them.

-- Bryan (gryps-innocens@gryphon.zzn.com), January 06, 2005.