Mostly Harmless

Sad but True: it occurs to me that I cannot continue with my SVCD creation experiments until I buy a DVD player ‘cuz I don’t have any way to actually play SVCDs.

Now, VCDs I can do without too much fuss but VCD is limited to MPEG1 for compression. We all know that MPEG1 sucks ass…

SVCD lets you use MPEG2 and VBR (or is that the same damn difference?). Anywho, point is you get a much nicer picture out of MPEG2. I can play one of my SVCD MPEG2 files with VCDHelp.com.) Running the S-video out from the PowerBook gives a moderately decent picture on the TV though, even with MPEG1.

Toast Titanium lets me make just about anything QuickTime understands into a VCD but does nothing for SVCD. My computer spent 6 hours last night converting a 50 minute DivX file into a crappy MPEG1 file — I guess I’ve figured out I shouldn’t try that again (meaning divx to mpeg1, a good QuickTime movie worked just fine). The manual says it could take up to 10 minutes per minute of the original file to do the export. Mine took 7.1 minutes per minute. I shoulda got the G4/867! Regardless of that, someone needs to optimize their code a bit more.

There are ways, however, to make SVCDs with Toast but I can’t tell if I’ve got it right just yet, hence the need for a DVD player (which I hear can also play DVDs… hmmm).

VCDHelp.com has a"big ass list"of DVD players. The Pioneer DV-343 ($150 street price) seems to be highly regarded as it will play just about any disk you put in it, and any mostly-compliant VCD or SVCD you throw at it. It doesn’t do MP3s though, for that you need the DV-444 (and an extra $100).

I’m thinkin’ that tomorrow I will visit Worst Buy and if they don’t have a DV-343 in stock I’ll snag it from Amazon ($149.88 w/free shipping, woo!) since I’m boycotting Audio Dinks (WTF is up with needing an 8 hour appointment to install a car stereo? Bah!).