SVCD or VCD

[glenn71x]

Is SVCD ALWAYS better quality than a VCD? I have a 50 min Divx file i am converting. I am just wondering if a VCD with the bitrate turned up as high as possible is still worse than an SVCD with a lower bitrate? Im still a newbie and just trying to figure out what is usually the best route to go. Also with Tmpg how can you turn up the bitrate with a VCD? I see with SVCD I can easily, but with VCDs the option is greyed out.

Thanks everyone!

[Conquest10]

well, standard compliant svcd is always going to be better than compliant vcd. the reason for it is the higher resolution and higher bitrate of svcds. if you make a vcd with the same resolution and bitrate as an svcd, it will look the same as the svcd. but what you have now is not a vcd, it is now called an xvcd. some dvd players won't play them.

[ZippyP.]

The SVCD standard resolution is much higher than VCD, so the quality is much better. That's assuming that the source is the same and the bitrate is high enough when encoding.

The SVCD standard allows for variable bitrates, while VCD is fixed at 1150. That's why the bitrate settings in VCD are locked. If you go out of the standards you create XVCD's or XSVCD's, which may or may not play on your DVD player. All of the greyed out settings can be unlocked by loading the Unlock template. It's not available if you're using the wizard, however.

8)

[glenn71x]

My DVD Player will play XVCDs and XSVCDs I have made them using Easy VCD. So knowing that, would there be any advantage to making an XVCD with very high bitrate over making an XSVCD with lower bitrate?

[Conquest10]

the xvcd with a higher bitrate than a xsvcd will look better.

[ZippyP.]

I think it depends. Beyond a certain point, cranking up the bitrate on an XVCD will make no difference at all in quality. Dropping the bitrate on an SVCD will start to look very poor once you start to get below a minimum threshold. What those thresholds are depends on the movie (action, animation, etc.) and the encoding method, CBR vs. VBR.

Given a decent source, SVCD resolution will always look better than VCD resolution, unless the bitrate is so limited as to make the SVCD starved for bits. Use more disks and go for SVCD, it's always worth it.

There is a compromise, which is CVD at a 352 X 480 resolution. It is encoded as an mpeg2 and burned as an SVCD. It plays on most DVD players and is a valid DVD resolution. It needs more bits than VCD to look good, but not as much as SVCD. If you're really trying to save space it might be worth a try.

8)

[glenn71x]

Well since i was not so impressed with my SVCD copy, now i tried making a DVDr out of it to see how that compares. When using TMPg for a DVD, it is only allowing me to rase the bit rate to approx 2500kbits, which leaves the DVD only 1 gig full.

Why? Why can't I crank up the bit rate to 4-5000? It it only because of the source recording or something? The 2500 kbits Id get out of this probably wont be that much better than the 2000 I got out of my SVCD right? Since they are both mpg2? What am I missing here?

Thanks Everyone!

[Conquest10]

dvd can go up to 8-9 mb. are you sure you're doing it right?