AfterDawn: Glossary

DVD-SVCD

A term that means a hacked, non-standard DVD-Video disc that has SVCD-compatible content on it.

Because DVD-Video specs don't allow using the SVCD resolution (480x480/576), SVCD material is basically impossible to transfer to a DVD-Video disc without re-encoding the material and therefor lowering the quality.

But some people have found a way to "hack" their way beyond this limitation. This process basically involves modifying the SVCD's MPEG-2 headers so that the material stays the same, but the MPEG-2 header lies about the resolution and claims that it is the same as in CVD (352x480/576 -- which IS one of the specified DVD-Video resolutions) resolution. This "trick" allows importing SVCD material into DVD authoring tools and burning the SVCD material on recordable DVD media. The problem is that some, more accurate, DVD players refuse to play such discs, because they're not within the DVD standards.

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