Best (smallest) format for movie burning

Choppa · Member Joined: 13 Jun 2007 Location: New Zealand

Hi, I posted before about the smallest mpg1 I could get but I decided to put it onto two discs as everyone was saying the quality would be very poor.
But I was wondering if there are other formats that could be used to put onto 1 CD-R 80mins, Like KVCD or anything like that or any other formats?

Thank you.

thecoalman · Member Joined: 25 Feb 2004 Location: Pennsylvania

WMV -

Pro:
Compatible on just about any windows machine.
About 1/4 the file size for same quality compared to MPEG1

Con:
Requires a computer or WMV device for playback

Divx -

Pro:
Plays on some standalone DVD players
About 1/4 the file size for same quality compared to MPEG1

Con:
Requires divx codec installed for computer playback

KVCD-

Pro:
None

Con:
Everything.

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If your target is for playback of CD's on a DVD player VCD is your only choice if you want to make discs for the widest audience.
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Choppa · Member Joined: 13 Jun 2007 Location: New Zealand

Oh sorry I forgot to mention I would like to play these on my DVD player.

EDIT:
Oh I just read what you said under your post.
Hmm... Ok thank you.

jman98 · Member Joined: 08 Oct 2004 Location: Freedonia

Most DVD players don't support Divx and those that do are often fussy about what encode options they will support for playback. Divx offers a real good trade off of file size and quality (much higher quality video than VCD at lower file sizes), but every DVD player can't play them. For best compatibility you should avoid:
1) GMC
2) QPel (Quarter Pixel)
3) Resolutions greater than 720x576
4) Packed bitstream
5) Don't go above a bit rate of 2000 Kbps. Lower bit rates offer greater playback compatibility.

I remember your other post. Basically, if you just want to jam everything on one CD-R, either go with Divx or live with low quality video in either VCD or SVCD. VCD 2.0 should support lower bit rates in CBR video, but the quality will get worse the lower your bit rate. If I remember your other post has some responses with good guidelines.

tomlee59 · Posted: Jun 17, 2007 23:17

Since quality is somewhat a matter of individual taste, you may wish to experiment a little bit to discover what is acceptable to you. As I mentioned in my response to your earlier post, getting 99 minutes of near-VCD quality video on a single CD is doable (I routinely squeeze 2 hours, but I am not seeking or expecting DVD quality). The bigger issue for me was compatibility with DVD players. I discovered quickly, as have others on this site, that the dirt-cheap players from China tend to have fewer problems playing these non-standard XVCDs (and I include KVCDs as a subset of XVCD). So, if VCD quality is acceptable to you, then a slightly degraded VCD may also be acceptable to you, particularly if you deem a single-disc version to be important. Some people deem all VCDs, no matter how expertly created, to be unalloyed crap. Others are not as fussy. Try an experiment or two and determine for yourself what you do or don't like.

DereX888 · Member Joined: 24 Aug 2002 Location: beautiful

Many many more standalone players support SVCD format than any "divx" format.
I haven't seen player not supporting VCD/SVCD playback for years (but still majority of players manufactured and sold DON'T support "divx" and its variants).
So
If youre looking for best possible quality to fit a movie-length content (90-120min) on a single CD-R disc, your only option is SVCD - SuperVCD (Super VideoCD).

SVCD format
pro:
Variable MPEG-2 compression (same as DVD)
chaptering, possibility of multiple audio tracks, simple menus
best quality (next to DVD and dvd-ripped divx, way better than VCD, KVCD, XVCD etc)
cons:
only MPEG audio tracks (no AC3 or DTS)
older standalones (from before 2005/2004) may not support it

BUT
if you really want to have it as widely supported as possible, you can use
CVD format
which is basically SVCD with slightly smaller but fully DVD-Video-compliant video resolution (thus it is playable on virtually any standalone dvd player, and has another bonus: such files can be used to make standard DVD-Video without any additional work needed)
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tomlee59 · Posted: Jun 18, 2007 20:39

SVCD certainly produces better-looking results than VCD, but at a tradeoff in filesize. Since the OP was initially looking to squeeze 99 minutes onto a single CDR, SVCD might not produce acceptable output (motion artifacts will be much worse). But it's worth experimenting with it, I agree. Who knows? Maybe a minor tweak, to produce an XSVCD, might get him to 99min on a single disc with ok results.

DereX888 · Member Joined: 24 Aug 2002 Location: beautiful

tomlee59 · Posted: Jun 18, 2007 23:00

Thanks for the careful analysis -- I agree that SVCD produces superior results; mpeg2 is indeed superior to mpeg1, particularly for interlaced source material and at higher bitrates. However, the differences diminish for progressive material at low bitrates. Basically, MPEG1 is crappier to start off with, but doesn't degrade as quickly as bitrates go down. MPEG2 is tuned to provide "virtually" visually lossless results at higher bitrates, but exhibits a faster quality rolloff at low bitrates. For the OP's task, VBR Mpeg1 (I won't call it KVCD, for fear of kicking off another round of heated posts) might not do as poorly as one would ordinarily think. And in my experience, it seems to be better supported (by cheapo players, at least) than SVCD, so I guess it depends on what equipment you happen to own. For me, SVCD seems to have more compatibility issues (the header hack creates as many problems as it solves -- it just changes which players choke). But I endorse your suggestion that the OP give SVCD/CVD a try, to see what works best with his equipment, eyeballs, and taste.

DereX888 · Member Joined: 24 Aug 2002 Location: beautiful

Choppa · Member Joined: 13 Jun 2007 Location: New Zealand

jman98 · Member Joined: 08 Oct 2004 Location: Freedonia

If you go to the "What Is" section at the top left and look at SVCD, you will see a link to some information on CVD. It's basically an SVCD with a resolution of 352x480 (NTSC) or 352x576 (PAL) instead of the normal SVCD 480x480 or 480x576.
Note that CVD uses 44.1 Khz audio just like SVCD, which is invalid for DVD. In the past I've read about people who have created SVCDs or CVDs with 48 Khz audio and been able to play them on DVD players, but technically this violates the standards of both formats. It may or may not work for you, but if it does, at least you would not have to upconvert the audio from 44.1 Khz to 48 Khz in the future if you want to put the video on DVD or some other futuristic format like HD-DVD and BluRay.

The HC Encoder is free and does an excellent job, but you need to give it either a d2v file or an Avisynth script as input. You can do some web searching to get info on how to do that or perhaps some of the guides at this site will tell you how to do that.

Abond · Member Joined: 05 May 2004

DereX888 · Member Joined: 24 Aug 2002 Location: beautiful

EddyH · Posted: Jun 29, 2007 19:36

Dunno what the problem is with KVCD if you're trying to get single disc MPG1 encodes on a regular CD... worked fine for me and my player, even up to 2 hours (for letterboxed material at least). I rather expect it to be an encoder or user problem instead

(I used CQ and 2-pass VBR in TMPGEnc at max quality, with a disc customised to min/max of 250 and 2500kbit - if you're stuck to CBR, or VBR with a max of 1150k, you'll almost inevitably get blocking at some point, or the custom matrix/the encoder smoothing things out drastically to try and prevent it)

if you're happy going to a multi-disc setup you may as well try CVD or SVCD to improve the resolution somewhat.

these days i would seriously suggest trying DVD instead though, which ends a lot of the messing about. the money you spend on CDRs to test different methods could outstrip the price of a new multi-format DVD burner of really quite exceptional quality, and the media isn't so much more expensive than CDR (certainly comparing getting one or two titles on a single disc, as opposed to splitting one title over two discs)
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Midzuki · RETIRED Joined: 25 Jun 2007 Location: Outside of VH.com

:: Choppa wrote:

> Hi, I posted before about the smallest mpg1 I could get but
> I decided to put it onto two discs as everyone was saying
> the quality would be very poor. But I was wondering if there
> are other formats that could be used to put onto
> 1 CD-R 80mins, Like KVCD or anything like that or
> any other formats? Thank you.

Well, mpeg files encoded with high-compression quantization
matrices(that is to say, kvcd, bdvd, pvcd, mvcd, whatever)
can be used to author mini-DVDs as well. My cheap&dirty
SAP made in Asia plays SVCDs, but not very well(for example,
fast-motion playback is limited to 8X, and subtitles are not
displayed at all). On the other hand, it plays miniDVDs exactly
as if it was playing an actual DVD. Because miniDVDs cannot
contain more than 703 MB of data, and I always and only
use the Constant-Quality method to encode, the final video resolution
depends on the "compressibility" of the source --- so one movie
is encoded in 512x384, the other in 528x400, the third one in
544x480, the next one in mere 352x480, and so on;
Blade Runner could not exceed 576x432;
The V... Monologues managed to use 100% DVD-compliant 704x480,
whereas The Animatrix was encoded in 640x480 and did require 2 CDs.
And yes, this all is mainly a matter of trial-and-error.
If you SAP can playback miniDVD, I think it wouldn't hurt
to give it a try ^_~

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DereX888 · Member Joined: 24 Aug 2002 Location: beautiful

thecoalman · Member Joined: 25 Feb 2004 Location: Pennsylvania

Midzuki · RETIRED Joined: 25 Jun 2007 Location: Outside of VH.com

:: thecoalman wrote:

> What about when your player dies and
> the next one you purchase doesn't play KVCD?

Well, I do not believe any minimally-intelligent DVD-player manufacturer
will keep producing devices that do not support(even if partially only)
as many video and audio formats as possible.
Well, I'm talking about places ouside of the U.S.A., naturally.

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thecoalman · Member Joined: 25 Feb 2004 Location: Pennsylvania

DereX888 · Member Joined: 24 Aug 2002 Location: beautiful

Can we have for once "Kwaq VCD"-free discussion?
PLEASE!

Midzuki, its been proven on many sites that less players support KVCDs than SVCD or CVD.
Yes, sometimes using f'd-up matrices may give better results than using standard ones, and KVCD may be handy in such cases, but then - why not use XVID or even DIVX? After all chances of playback compatibility on standalones are about the same, while MPEG-4 obviously gives better result than Kwaq's MPEG-1 matrice for VCD...
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Choppa · Member Joined: 13 Jun 2007 Location: New Zealand

I decided to use KVCD, I use the programs VideoCalc, TMPGEnc and Nero. The quality is good, it's not DVD quality but it's good enough, I guess the quality is the same as a long-play video. That's on my computer, for some reason (I'm not saying it's a miracle, I just don't know why) it's alot better quality on my TV, the size of my TV screen is alot bigger then my monitor, at least 2 and a half times bigger but the quality on it is alot better. I just use the calculator to calculate the size of the bitrate I should choose with TMPGEnc, then convert it and burn with Nero. It's good

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