Best settings for a 1-disc VCD?

[ptcg]

I've been making 1-disc VCDs for a while now, and just started experimenting with different settings. I use TMPGenc, and just change the bitrate to allow the VCD to fit on one CD (quality is not THAT important to me obviously). My question is, if YOU were to make only 1-disc VCDs, what settings would you use?

I've been making everything MPEG-1, 352x240, CBR (adjusted sometimes as low as 500kbps), and usually 224kbps audio (sometimes as low as 128kbps)

I've fit movies as large as 2 1/2hrs on one CD.. Granted, the quality of the video is lacking, but it's bearable.

I'm now trying VBR settings instead. I'm making one now with a VBR setting as follows: 0kbps Min., 1150kbps Max., 840kbps Ave. (the movie is 102Min. long), 224kbps audio.

If I'm understanding this right, this setting SHOULD give me much higher quality than an 840kbps CBR setting would, no?

Just looking for some feedback to try and get a little better quality out of these VCDs.. Thanks in advance.

[Gazorgan]

There are no adjustments. VCD standard is fixed. You are working on xVCD's. As long as your player will play it, experiment away. You may be better off with 128 kbps audio, and putting the bits into the video. Max of 1500, min of 300 and average as needed to fit. Don't expect it to look very good, vcd is marginal at best.

[ptcg]

Right.. XVCDs.. Sorry 'bout that.. Anyway, I just finished making one as I said earlier, 0Min, 1150Max, 224audio.. I have to say, it looked awesome! Compared to the CBR videos I've been making, this looks great! Took twice as long to make, but the quality is worth it! I just bought one of those Mintek DVD-1600 players everyone's been raving about. It plays XVCDs perfect.. no skipping audio/video, no pausing, and the clarity of the video is amazing! The CBR videos I've made in the past all had the blockiness, and blurring during any action. This VBR one had NONE! I'll definitely be making my XVCDs this way from now on.. Think I might re-do a few older ones as well.

I'll have to try upping the video bitrate & dropping the audio as you suggested.. Thanks for the advice!

[K2]

The gain in quality is due to VBR. One of the reasons for SVCDs. As stated before VCD is CBR only. A SVCD with VBR would be even better on 2 discs, try it out.

[ptcg]

I've made some SVCDs before, but I'm really trying to save on CDs and keep all my movies each on only 1 cd. That's why I've been messing around with the XVCDs and the VBR encoding.

I agree that the quality is far better on 2 SVCDs than 1 XVCD, but I'd rather have 1 good CD, then 2 great ones.

[edsmith77]

ptcg,
I have been doing some experimenting with 1 disc vcds and for the most part the quality is as expected lower. I would like to suggest that since quality is not a large driver, that you investigate the KVCD tmpgenc templates. Basically, kwag plays around with the gop structure in order to get the mpegs to fit on 1 disc. And surprisingly enough the quality is not all that bad.
Now what is bad. As a relative term in cannot be described in exact terms. But if you start with a good source the result is still viewable. Starting with a bad source, well........
I thought I would mention another source to use for creating 1 disc vcds that has reasonably good results and reasonable quality (all else being constant).

Ed

[ptcg]

I saw those templates before, but it seems to have poor compatibility with standalone DVD players.. (I think mine is on the list for NOT working). I'll make one with it & see what happens.. couldn't hurt..

[kwag]

I saw those templates before, but it seems to have poor compatibility with standalone DVD players.. (I think mine is on the list for NOT working). I'll make one with it & see what happens.. couldn't hurt..

Hi ptcg,

Try this http://www.kvcd.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2464

-kwag

[gmatov]

kwag,
How the heck do I DL your program? Everywhere I go it says"not authorized", "security", DL manager" etc. I've turned them all off, will have to remember to reset, but, as of now, can't get it. Can you advise?
Thanks,
George
BTW, when I tried to DL your sampler .nrg, I got a bunch of pages as, what, source code? What am I doing wrong? Hope this isn't too out of place.

[gmatov]

kwag,
please ignore my last. I found it on another forum. 213KB? How the hell do you do it? Will try it tomorrow. Too late tonight.
Thanks for your gift.

[ptcg]

Kwag.. I tried that test CD of yours & every test video played perfectly on my DVD player (Mintek DVD-1600)

Thanks! I'll give your templates a try.