Search for SVCD converter

[bobesch]

I have a few shoe-boxes with SVCDs coming from the the late 90ies.
I've captured footage with Fast-DVD-Master Video-Card on an old Win98-PC, that was too slow to cope with MPEP2-DVDs (DVDs seemed to be out of my budged at that time anyway - alas, there's a lot of truth is the saying "Buy cheap, pay twice")
Some clever guy at that time coded a tiny prog called "TWNH", to shedule automatic video-capture.
The name TWNH was the answer to a request for sheduled video-capturing, that had been responded by support with "This Will Never Happen")
At that time I was quite happy to have a digital-video-recorder, while mainstream was still dying VHS.
Well, now I've got that old SVCDs left and I'd like to convert them to anything survivable.
I've already been able to rescue footage of my favorite film "Pelle der Eroberer" by playing the SVCD-movie in full-screen-mode on Powerbook while capturing footage through display-out and an old version of eyeTV-hardware with another PPC.
Since that was a bit cumbersome I am still looking for a way to either view or batch-convert SVCD on an intel-Mac.
Any hints?

 

[Amethyst1]

VLC should be able to open and re-encode SVCD video.

 

[Hughmac]

Assuming your SVCD is the same as mine (called Video CD or VCD here), the files in the MPEGAV folder on the disk are named something like AVSEQ04.DAT, which is the main film file on mine, it will open and play in VLC.

Handbrake would not open the file, but VLC offers an option to export to other formats.

I also found that MPEG Streamclip opens and plays the files, and has export capabilities, but I couldn't get very good quality of output. However there are loads of settings to play with if you want to have a go.

Hope this helps,

Cheers

Hugh

 

[Amethyst1]

Assuming your SVCD is the same as mine (called Video CD or VCD here),

They're not the same. VCDs use MPEG-1 encoding whereas SVCDs use MPEG-2 and have higher resolution. They were sort of like a "DVD light" but never really caught on.

 

[bobesch]

Hi folks, thanks for your suggestions, but unfortunately nothing did work.
I cannot even make copy the mpeg2 file from the SVCDs to the hard drive.
So far I've tried VLC, MPEG Streamclip, MPlayer OSX Extended, Mireth MacVCD X, Elgato eyeTV3 etc. without any success.
Only eyeTV2 on PPC was able to play the MPEG-file from the SVCD's MPEG2-folder but I finally managed to break that function too after I tinkered some time with some settings.
I guess the only way is keeping some old Win-Notebook or PPC with eyeTV2 alive in order to view any SVCD and/or capture footage through video/audio-out while it's playing in full-screen-mode.

 

[Amethyst1]

I cannot even make copy the mpeg2 file from the SVCDs to the hard drive.

Can you make an ISO image from the disc and extract the file from that? Use something like IsoBuster if necessary. It can also read discs directly.

 

[Hughmac]

The only other thing I can think of is if the film plays through a DVD player onto a TV, you can film the screen with a camera on a tripod.

Cheers

Hugh

 

[Amethyst1]

The only other thing I can think of is if the film plays through a DVD player onto a TV, you can film the screen with a camera on a tripod.

That's the worst way of making a copy isn't it? If it plays on a DVD player you can hook up its outputs to a capture device and... capture it.

 

[bobesch]

Eureka!
Thanks @Hughmac, Your hint about MPEG Streamclip had been the clue!
Even if MPEG Streamclip wasn't able to play my SVCDs, at the bottom of that page within the link-section I found this information:
"you can look at Matti Haveri's "SVCD on a Macintosh" (www.sjoki.uta.fi/~shmhav/SVCD_on_a_Macintosh.html). In the same page you will also find: how to extract MPEG files from a VCD or SVCD; how to extract a frame from a DVD; and many more MPEG facts."
The link to Matti Haveri's homepage "www.sjoki.uta.fi" didn't work, but I was able to find an archived copy through the Wayback-Machine:

DV, DVD and (XS)VCD on a Macintosh

About extracting the content of an SVCD Matti Haveri tells this:
"How can I retrieve MPEG2 from a SVCD?
Q: OK, I have now successfully burned SVCDs. But how can I retrieve the MPEG2s back from the SVCDs if I want to use them later in other projects?
- Ripping is fast and easy with Toast Titanium: insert the (XS)VCD and choose Recorder/Disc Info... A list of tracks will appear. Select the Video track and save the MPEG from there."
I happen to have an old version of Toast 11 that is still working with Mojave and I was able to extract the video-file from the SVCD successfully.
With Elgato Turbo.264HD software using the iPad-MP4-template the video-file could be converted from .mov_mpeg2_480 × 576 to .mp4_768 × 576 without loosing any quality (which is, BTW really poor on SVCD anyway).
(Using the Elgato Turbo.264HD hardware made no improvements on speed or CPU-usage - I 'm not sure, if it's Mojave-compliant anyway ...)

 

[bobesch]

Can you make an ISO image from the disc and extract the file from that? Use something like IsoBuster if necessary. It can also read discs directly.

Thanks for this suggestion, but I unfortunately that didn't work. Those SVCDs are quite a tomb ...
It's a miracle and quite strange, that two Apps I do own since my earliest days as a Mac user, are the ones, that could finally solve this SVCD-puzzle.