This nursing home near my house has an old Philips DVD player which plays
only DVD, VCD and Super VCDs. It can't play Xvid or DivX.

I'm trying to convert H.264 or Xvid movies for the inmates there to watch.


As my office computer has only a CD writer, I am forced to convert them to Super VCD format,
which would require 2 CDs for an average length movie and 3 CDs for movies 2 hours or more.

Converting to standard VCD would be worse, since this is restricted to video bit rates
of 1150 kbps and audio bit rates of 224 kbps.


Super VCD has the following restrictions :

MPEG-2
Frame aspect ratio of 480 x 480 (NTSC) or 480 x 576 (PAL).
Frame rates 29.97 (NTSC) or 25 (PAL)
Video bit rates variable up to 2500 kpbs
Audio bit rates from 32 to 256 kbps


Some of the movies are super wide-angle, with frame aspect ratios of 2.35.


Now, when using a freeware converter like Mediacoder, what pixel aspect ratio,
and display aspect ratio, do I set ?

HI, thanks for the good information.

They are playing on one of those 16:9 LCD TVs, I think 32 inches.

By the way, does the type of TV affect the aspect settings ? I had thought
that it was dependent on the DVD or VCD player's hardware/software, on detecting
the format of the disc - SVCD, DVD, Xvid, etc, - to stretch or shorten the height/width.


Oh, I didn't realize that Super VCD supports such a high resolution
frame aspect ratio of 720 x 576 (PAL), or 720 x 480 (NTSC), virtually
the same as DVDs ?

And MPEG-1 as well ? I have read that MPEG-1 videos looks better than
MPEG-2 at lower bitrates, say below 1,500 kbps.


That's a relief, because 480 x 576 or 480 x 480 frame aspect ratio
resolutions are a bit low and do not produce very good quality movies.


I tried converting ''Oz The Great and Powerful'', a 2.35 widescreen movie,
using Xilisoft Video Converter with the following settings. The aspect looked correct
when played on the computer with Classic Media Player and Windows Media Player,
but turned out overstretched vertically on playback in the Philips player on their LCD TV :

Frame aspect ratio - 480 x 576 (PAL)
Display Aspect ratio - 16:9
''Zoom'' setting - Full (I think this retains the original frame aspect ratio of 2.35)


I think maybe I should have set the Display Aspect Ratio to ''Auto'' above.


For the above movie, just over two hours, I tried a lower video bit rate of 1,200 kbps
and audio rate of 96 kbps, in order to squeeze it into 2 CDs. The result looked quite
good on my computer's 17-inch CRT monitor, but with the Philips player on their LCD TV, came out rather blocky and poor quality.




This post has been edited by Tham: Dec 27 2014, 09:39 AM

I will try converting to 720 x 480, 25 fps, 1,200 kbps, MPEG-1, with Bigasoft or EM video converters and see it can be burnt on Ashampoo Burner to SVCD.


I tried using Nero 6 earlier to burn to SVCD, but a message came out saying that
''Due to patent restrictions, SVCD burning is not available''. Maybe I need to turn
off ''SVCD compatibiltiy''.




This old Philips DVD player, model DVD-4050, actually used to belong to
the disabled children's home in Jalan SS 3/39.

The Indian caretaker passed it to me a few years ago without saying anything,
so I had thought they did not want it , or it was out of order. I left it in my office.

They had a normal 4:3 CRT TV at that time, but I think that went out of order at
at that time too. They may have repaired it.


I had happened to check out the player a few weeks ago, and to my surprise,
it still seemed to be working, though it can't play MPEG-4. So I took it to the
nursing home opposite my house to try out.


If I can't get the right resolution on the nursing home's LCD TV, maybe I will try
taking it back to the children's home and see if it works on their CRT TV.





This post has been edited by Tham: Dec 27 2014, 12:18 PM