VCD quality?

[Jetboy55]

I recently borrowed a Dazzle Digital Video Creator USB from a friend. Im trying to decide on a analog capture solution for capturing home movies to VCD or SVCD. I've read here that VCD has inherent blockiness especially in high motion scenes. Indeed that seems to be my biggest problem with the DVC product. However, I just downloaded a sample vcd compliant mpg1 clip from this site and burned it to a vcd. It looks very good on my stand alone DVD player. Way better than anything Ive been able to do with the Dazzle so far even after following advice in guides at this site. Is VCD just prone to look very blocky all the time, or am I indeed having problems with my software/hardware? Thanks.

[Anonymous65]

Hardware encoding to VCD cannot compete with software encoding. To get high quality VCD you need a very good source, like a DVD. Then, you need to capture uncompressed at a high bit rate, and then software compress to VCD standard using Tmpeg or other mpeg-1 compression software.
Dazzle can be used to capture at high bit rate, and then software compress to VCD later. The best hardware capture device directly to VCD that I have used is PV-231, sold by Trueblue, Grand, and other vendors. It has a newer and better mpeg-1 compression chip than the Dazzle, and comes close to Tmpeg encoding.

[ejai]

I tried software encoders and wasn't pleased with the results, I must admit they were better than the hardware encoders at that time. Recently I found a crop of new hardware standalone VCD/SVCD recorders that encoded (on the fly) just as good if not better than the software encoders.

I purchased the Terapin encoder and with a good signal encodes better than almost any software encoder I've ever used. Also my friend purchase the Malata VDR and it beats the software encoders in almost any area.

The downside to encoding using hardware is the cost, The Terapin is around $450 - and the Malata $600. I only use the software encoders for editing.

[ktnwin]

Granted, software encoders may only be equal (in quality) to Terapin or Malata in creating VCD/SVCD. However, I believed hardware MPEG recorder can only to constant bit rate.

Using VBR with software encoder (like TMPGEnc) produces much better result without wasting space on CD (play time). The precious bitrate are used optimally at high motion scene.

[Anonymous65]

The PV-231 uses the same mpeg-1 chip as in the Terrapin recorder. This is a PCI card that can be ordered from Singapore for less than $100. I don't know of a capture card that uses the chip used in the Malata recorder (perhaps the chip found on the PC-256 card?).