VCD or SVCD encoding for fitting on one CD?

[blackjackel]

Basically i wanna cut a movie in half and fit it on TWO cd's, so im going to have to lower the bitrate of it...

The movie is originally approx 700mb AVI Divx file that i am going to convert to either VCD or SVCD....

So lets say i turn it into VCD (and not mess with its bitrate), would that be better than making an SVCD With a bitrate thats close to what the bitrate of what it would be if i made it a VCD (and not messing with bitrate?)

Any secrets on optimizing picture quality while stuffing one 700mb avi movie on two cd's?

Edit: to clarify, i have SEVERAL movie files ranging from 500 to 800 MB but most of them are around 700MB and they range from an hour and twelve minutes (1:12) to two hours and thirty minutes (2:30) even with the 700mb filesize.

My goal is to stuff each movie on two CD's, but i want to know what is the best way to do it (getting the most quality from the two cd's) assuming my player will play anything i throw at it other than the original AVI files.

Should i make the CD's SVCD and decrease bitrate close to VCD?

Should i make it VCD And up the bitrate a little bit?

[poopyhead]

https://www.videohelp.com/dvdplayers

see if your dvd player supports xVCD, SVCD, etc..

what's the length of the video you wanna fit on 1 CD-R??

SVCD is really meant for higher bitrates....so if you're gonna have to use 1150 kbit/s no matter what...then you should stick with MPEG-1.

however, if your dvd player supports non-standard xVCD, you should try using multi-pass VBR, as it allocates those precious bitrate much better than CBR, which standard VCD requires.

if you really wanna cram alot of video to 1 CD-R...i would suggest splitting to multiple CDs..but if you don't want to, you can check out www.kvcd.net

they have templates where you can fit alot of video to 1 CD...the quality isn't as good, but at least it's better than VCD. keep in mind, kVCDs are essentially xVCDs, so dvd player compatibility is the same as xVCD.

[tweedledee]

Why not convert it to SVCD and have a look at how big it is?you may be pleasantly surprised.

[poopyhead]

Why not convert it to SVCD and have a look at how big it is?you may be pleasantly surprised.

MPEG-2 (DVD and SVCD) is meant for higher bitrates...if he were to use a bitrate around standard VCD (MPEG-1) bitrate, it would be better if he stuck with MPEG-1, since it was built for lower bitrates...

i would say at least 2 mbit/s for MPEG-2...i've seen ppl go as low as 1.7 mbit/s with SVCD to fit on less CD-Rs, but that's really pushing it and the quality is bad.

[tweedledee]

I would have thought that 700mb AVI will fit on a cd after converting to mpeg 2 SVCD format ( but I stand to be corrected)

[poopyhead]

I would have thought that 700mb AVI will fit on a cd after converting to mpeg 2 SVCD format ( but I stand to be corrected)

there's no correction to be made...

it all depends on what bitrate is chosen for the SVCD....

...but what i meant was that if blackjackel needed to lower his bitrate to that of a VCD standard (i.e 1150 kbit/s) he might as well stick with MPEG-1 because it is better suited for low bitrates than MPEG-2.

however, i would advise blackjackel to see if his dvd player can accept xVCDs because then he would be able to encode with VBR, rather than VCD standard CBR. VBR is much better at allocating bitrate to higher action scenes than CBR. This is especially important if there's not gonna be much bitrate to begin with.

[blackjackel]

well, i have lets say a 700MB AVI divx file that i wanna cut in half (350MB) and turn it into either a VCD or SVCD and burn the two parts on two CD's

Turning it into SVCD directly without altering bitrates gives a huge file that would take sevral CD's to burn on, so i wanna know what is the best quality i can get

P.S: My dvd player isnt even listed on the DVD player list, i bought it at Circuit City for $70 plus tax, its a magnavox MDV453 and the closest DVD player on the list is the MDV450 and people said that it could take anything they threw at it (even regular data mpeg CD).

So i am assuming mine can handle AT LEAST that, so what do you recommend? you seem to know what you are talking about!

[poopyhead]

so, given your 700 MB .avi file..how many (S)VCD discs you want that to fit on???

[tweedledee]

Turning it into SVCD directly without altering bitrates gives a huge file that would take sevral CD's to burn on, so i wanna know what is the best quality i can get

No it won't. Go to tmpg/set up your AVI file useing the standard svcd in Wizard and go for it.

[blackjackel]

i wanna make the 700 mb file into 2 cd's but was wondering if i would get a better pic quality going with an SVCD....


should i make it SVCD and lower the bitrate close to VCD

or should i make it VCD and higher the bitrate a bit?

Was wondering what would produce the best pic for the space....

also, any cool little things like you mentioned before to improve quality i wanna know of, thanks!

[lchiu7]

Kinda hard to tell from the information you have provided. For example how long does the 700mb file run? The standard SVCD template in tmpgenc I think is 2250kb/sec which on a 80min CDR is about 38 minutes. You can get about an hour in VCD format. Apart from all the suggestions already noted, you could also look at CVD format which is described on this site in great detail. This will get you up to about 43 or so minutes.

[blackjackel]

well 700mb is an average, i have several files ranging from 500 to 800mb but most are around 700mb...

The files (although they are 700MB) range from an hour and twelve minutes (1:12) to two hours and thirty minutes (2:30).

I greatly appreciate what people have said so far but i went to sleep yesterday and couldnt look into somethings in detail, i will look at the KVCD site more in detail and do some research now...

Any more info is greatly appreciated, well, time for some research based on information already given!

Thanks!

[poopyhead]

should i make it SVCD and lower the bitrate close to VCD

or should i make it VCD and higher the bitrate a bit?

SVCD (MPEG-2) is meant for higher bitrates...if you need to reduce the bitrate to the lvl of a standard, VCD (1150 kbit/s) to fit your movie onto 2 discs, then i would advise you to go with VCD (MPEG-1)..as it is designed for lower bitrates.

keep in mind since there's no info about your dvd player, it's not known for sure if it can even handle SVCDs to begin with. download a sample and test on your dvd player first: https://www.videohelp.com/svcd

if you end up using MPEG-1, but raising your bitrate above standard (i.e. >1150 kbit/s CBR), then you will be making a non-standard xVCD....again, it is not know if your dvd player can handle this, so you may need to do some tests.

----------

bottom line...SVCD looks good maybe 45-50 min per SVCD max...i've been able to fit 50 min on a SVCD disc...even with CQ 75 max bitrate 2520 kbit/s.

if you wanna fit more than 50 min on a CD-R, you need to consider CVD, xVCD, and kVCD. as all those sacrifice quality (different degrees of quality) to fit more video per disc.

[lchiu7]

That's been my experience too. Also since an hour TV program is really only about 43 minutes, you can fit en episode on one CD relatively easily

[mistermickster]

Visit the bitrate calculator here.

Enter your movie length e.g. 2 hrs 30 mins
Enter the number of CD's you wish to use for the movie e.g. 2 x 80 min
Select the required format e.g. SVCD
Select the required audio bitrate e.g. 192 kbit/s

et voila, the calculated average bitrate is displayed for you, which for the above example would be 1250.

Encode at this bitrate with a min of 300 and a max of 2589 using VBR and you'll have a file that can be split to fit 2 80 min CD's.

[Umen Pich]

Visit the bitrate calculator here.

Enter your movie length e.g. 2 hrs 30 mins
Enter the number of CD's you wish to use for the movie e.g. 2 x 80 min
Select the required format e.g. SVCD
Select the required audio bitrate e.g. 192 kbit/s

et voila, the calculated average bitrate is displayed for you, which for the above example would be 1250.

First of all, one of the participants here is wrong (spice boy) insisting that MPEG-2 is worse for lower bitrates while MPEG-1 was better.
Actually the quality will be the same (with all other settings unchanged).
The important point here is that you have the same bandwidth for different number of pixels. For example if your bitrate is 1500 it will look much better on 352x480 pixels compared to 352x240, because for the latter a bitrate over 1150 is a waste. On the other hand it depends on the movie itself (more or less action scenes) -- if you use a variable bitrate the quality improves -- bandwidth saved from less action scenes goes to the scenes with more action. Also it depends om whether the movie is fullscreen or widescreen. For obvious reasons for the fullscreen you need more bandwidth. As a general rule, choose 352x240 if the average bitrate is calculated to be below 1000 and 352x480 as it is above 1200. For the range between these numbers you better make some probes.
I am not talking about VCDs here because I always encode in MPEG-2, two-pass variable bitrate. Thus even if the pixels are 320x240, actually it it is not a VCD, it is rather a XSVCD.

Also if you want to read about the "reasonable bitrate" search the forum for the POCO program, download (free) and enjoy.

[poopyhead]

First of all, one of the participants here is wrong (spice boy) insisting that MPEG-2 is worse for lower bitrates while MPEG-1 was better. Actually the quality will be the same (with all other settings unchanged).

nope....MPEG-2 was designed for higher bitrates (i.e. DVD). do a forum search and you will see. MPEG-1 VCD was designed for lower bitrate (i.e. VCD bitrate is only 1150 kbit/s CBR). so, no ... your statement is incorrect.

The important point here is that you have the same bandwidth for different number of pixels. For example if your bitrate is 1500 it will look much better on 352x480 pixels compared to 352x240, because for the latter a bitrate over 1150 is a waste.

again, this is incorrect.

1) given the same bitrate (i.e your example of 1500), having a higher resolution (i.e. 352x480) will look sharper...BUT will have more BLOCKINESS because you're spreading the same bitrate between more pixels. if you take the same bitrate (i.e. 1500), but spread it with lower pixels (i.e. resolution of 352x240), the video will be less sharp (fuzzier), but will also have less blockiness because each pixel will receive more bitrate.

2) even at res 352x240, increasing bitrate over 1150 will not be a "waste." since standard VCD bitrate is so low (resulting in an overall lower quality), you can almost see an instant improvment just by increasing the bitrate w/o changing anything else. there is no "waste" here.