The future of VCD?

[mijman]

In a year or two, when DVDRW drives are more affordable, replacing regular CDRW drives almost entirely, will people still be making VCDs? I'm wondering if the format as a whole will vanish when DVDs are as easy and cost effective to make, and should I wait til then to transfer videos and such?

[Octagon]

Will your tapes last long enough. Turn them into divx and wait then to svcd.

[adam]

The community of people who rip their own dvds and home movies to vcd, svcd and divx is relatively small. With advances in options such as dvd recordable drives, we just may give up on vcd and only use higher quality options. But vcds are used commercally on a much larger scale then what we use it for. Worldwide there are probably more vcds sold than dvds. Overseas the pre release pirating industry (movies still in theatres) is huge and pirated films are almost never high enough quality to constitute using dvd recordable media or even svcd for that matter. So vcds will be used in this way for many years to come so the format is not going anywhere for a very long time. I wouldnt be suprised if 4th or 5th generation hardware players from now still support vcds.

Also dont forget that if your transferring your vhs home movies to a digital format dvdrw would be pointless. You would get the same exact quality with vcd so you might as well just use that.

[mijman]

but, from a storage and clarity standpoint, If I record a video off my satellite dish at 640x480 then that is a, more or less, mpg2 signal. It is likely transmitted at 350x240, which gets captured at 640x480. Than gets squished again to the small size of a mpg1. (I don't make SVCDs) Wouldn't the quality be better anyway just going up to the DVD sizes for playback on a normal or hi-res TV?
Heck, even if its pre-recorded material, like a TV show.
I realize that the VCD industry in europe and Asia is immense, but not really in the US. Most people here don't even know what they are. Of course, most people here think AOL is wonderful. Of course, most people here don't think.

[adam]

I'm pretty sure satelite television is broadcast in a much higher resolution than that but your right, the home user will get much better results by using newer and better formats such as svcd and the end all solution of recordable dvd, at least for a number of years to come. That was exactly my point, those of us not in Asia mostly use these recordable formats for backing up our own material so we benefit from using every new format that comes out.

vcds are used much different in Asia and there is very little chance that is going to change any time soon. Much of the material sold on vcds in Asia would not benefit at all from being recorded on dvd because it is bootlegged and already low quality.

When recordable dvd becomes cheap those people who backup up their own material will surely switch to dvd, but the current Asian vcd manufacturers and dealers will continue to use vcds for years to come because they will continue to be profitable. So the format itself will not die out.

[ktnwin]

I totally agreed with adam's opinions.
Video enthousiasts (in US in particular) will switch to DVD when it becomes cheap enough.
People in Asia continue to stick to VCD format for a long time. Just imagine that not every home own a VCR in Asia. The one who own VCD player cannot afford to switch to DVD anytime soon. This is just a matter of living standard.

[AntnyMD]

This is a great topic.

I forsee the future of VCD to be fairly strong ... insofar as the cost of recordable DVD being as high as it is. Until DVD burners become as commonplace in computers as CD burners are now, widespread copying/piracy will continue to flourish on VCD. Its just much more cost effective to produce a 2-CD movie than it will be to produce a 2-DVD movie (remember, long movies on DVD-R General will still require two discs at full quality).

Someone may want to take it upon himself to develop VCD 4.0, which might for example include new ways to deal with VCD's shortcomings (like the various issues with entrypoints not working exactly like chapters on a DVD), and enabling the use of Dolby Digital audio as a soundtrack. A VCD 4.0 standard might also require a shorter playing time (say, 60 minutes instead of the current 74/79) to enable a slightly higher picture quality.

I'd hate to see such a strong worldwide standard format die so quickly (LP records were around for 35 years; audio cassettes have been around now for about 30 or 35 years; home VHS for about 30 years and still going) -- VCD has only been around for 9 years.

[Jeomite]

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Someone may want to take it upon himself to develop VCD 4.0, which might for example include new ways to deal with VCD's shortcomings (like the various issues with entrypoints not working exactly like chapters on a DVD), and enabling the use of Dolby Digital audio as a soundtrack. A VCD 4.0 standard might also require a shorter playing time (say, 60 minutes instead of the current 74/79) to enable a slightly higher picture quality.
</BLOCKQUOTE></FONT></TD></TR><TR><TD><HR size=1 color=black></TD></TR></TABLE>

VCD 4.0? Is there already a VCD 3.0?

I agree that DVDs will take over VCD after a (long) while when DVD+RW discs and drives become cheap (just like how CD-R discs and drives became cheaper over time). But VCD won't become extinct (has VHS become extinct? Nope.) I seen people using VHS all the time, especially @ Rental Stores.

[lhorwinkle]

I agree that VCDs have a purpose. But I question whether they're good enough. I convert VHS tapes to VCD, and the quality is not good. The original tape has a "live" feel. But the VCDs are flat and lifeless, lacking in detail, and have motion artifacts.

SVCDs are a bit less lifeless, but I get worse motion artifacts.

The claims that VCD is "almost VHS" quality, and SVCD is "better than VHS" just doesn't hold water ... at least with the current crop of cheap encoders. (I use TMPGEnc.)

I've not yet tried DVD +/- RW. I'll wait until the price drops. But I expect that I'll need to go that route. (S)VCD just doesn't cut it for me.

[lhorwinkle]

What satellite transmissions do you mean? Whether you receive stuff over the air, on cable, or on satellite, the original source is NTSC (in America). Broadcast resolution is 340x240. It doesn't get any better for analog transmission. The current standard won't accept anything different.
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On 2001-10-02 11:12:54, adam wrote:
I'm pretty sure satelite television is broadcast in a much higher resolution than that ...
</BLOCKQUOTE></FONT></TD></TR><TR><TD><HR size=1 color=black></TD></TR></TABLE>

Bootlegs are not necessarily poor quality. The kind where someone videotapes a movie in a movie theater will be poor quality. But a ripped version should be much better, even on VCD.
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Much of the material sold on vcds in Asia would not benefit at all from being recorded on dvd because it is bootlegged and already low quality.
</BLOCKQUOTE></FONT></TD></TR><TR><TD><HR size=1 color=black></TD></TR></TABLE>

[DiViNeLeFT]

i think dvdr might help the vcd format in some ways... look at it this way... wont it be nice to be able to rip 3 dvds at very high bitrate to SVCD and be able to fit them on 1 dvd.

shit... i think i just seen lights goin off in peoples head

[AntnyMD]

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On 2001-10-02 12:13:01, Jeomite wrote:
VCD 4.0? Is there already a VCD 3.0?
</BLOCKQUOTE></FONT></TD></TR><TR><TD><HR size=1 color=black></TD></TR></TABLE>

Yes ... apparently VCD 3.0 focuses on multimedia enhancements to VCD 2.0 for use by the Chinese government in education. Set-top VCD players continue to focus on VCD 1.1 and 2.0 support only.

[danny7239]

For the time being now,VCD still got higher quality
than VHS.Having stuff like movies,family activities etc...on VCD still better than VHS.My thought is VCD is
stand by a while. Until DVDR-RW Recorder and DVDR-RW Disc
cheap like CD Compact Disc this time.

[thxkid]

I disagree with ihorwinkle, yes VCD is not that great but is good and better than some cheap VHS I have seen, But SVCD I have fantastic results, they look almost as goos as a SVHS tape and much better than the Crap VHS.
Hey you all forgot about beta, may be dead here but in Japan and the The Philipense its still a huge market, it was the only format of tape recording in Indonesia when my Cousin lived there 2 years ago.
DVD recorders adn the blanks have got to really jump down in price before I would switch over, I don't see $2-3 DVD-R blanks in the next year.
I may use VCD and SVCD differently than most of the others here. I just wanted a Formay that you could play over and over again without any picture quality drop, VHS, 8mm is horrible after 30-40 plays, if you get that far.
I have no use in ripping DVD's to CD-R's, DVD's are way to cheap to spend 12-20 hours for a sub par DVD quality picture.
I like this format for saving Family video's, editing family video's, maybe some music video's off sat.
I hate searching tapes to find a certain scene to watch, pop in the VCD/SVCD type in your chapter number and your there. Its easier and faster to edit using Media studio Pro 6 onto a VCD than using 2 SVHS editing(analog) video machines to produce the same results.
2 generation edit on video tape looks a heck of a lot worse than video tape to VCD or SVCD computer edit.
VCD and SVCD is not an easy foramt to just get right the 1st time out.
I make perfect VCD's and SVCD's now, BUT, its taken me over 2 years with playing around with these formats to get it right. I am sure I can improve even more by getting suggestions from here and other advances in these formats.
I see in the furture that more slight improvemnts with VCD and SVCD.
VHS is maxed out, analog in general is maxed out and dead, Digital recording and editing is the only furture here.
Excuse me but if tomorrow you could buy a 2 hour CD-RW home recorder at $99, you could not give VHS decks away.
Thats not even gonna happen in the future until those decks improve in quality and drop way down in price, $399 is way to much for a CD-R recoder and $1200 for pioneer's stand alone DVD-R recorder please!!
Price is the issue here, come on, everyone on this forum would go out tonight and buy a stand alone DVD recorder if they could for $200 and the blanks for $3.

[Branroyal]

with the CS2 CD ive developed for the music industry, bet on the VCD format to really stay strong for many many years to come. The CS2 CD is a consumer friendly VCD2.0 with CDDA tracks where the common problem with playing mode2 data in older CD players is cleared.

Your not going to belive how good the CD is about to be
Will Smash
Consumer Surround Sound Inc.
CS2

[mijman]

Branroyal, are you saying that you have developed a format to combine CD audio tracks and VCD stuff on a single disk? How is this done? I just got done telling someone that it couldn't be done.

[Anonymous65]

Is there any technical reason why a DVD burner and blank DVD disks should cost any more than CD burners and disks cost today? Aren't they both the same technology?

The nice part with DVD's is they don't only support 720x480 resolutions, but they support lower resolutions all the way down to VCD resolutions. It would be a waste to capture a VHS tape at 720x480 resolution, but 352x480 or 480x480 would capture all there is to capture from a VHS tape. You could then put 4 hours or more on a single DVD disk! Off-air video and even digital satellites use so much compression today that full NTSC resolution is hard to find. DISH network now use 480x480 for all their channels. When local stations to to digital servers, the compression will drop quality even more. So, 480x480 might be the best quality video you will find on a cable system, over the air, or even satellite transmissions. DVD recorded movies might stand alone in full NTSC quality until HDTV comes along... Now, if every TV station was broadcasting with full NTSC quality, we would not need HDTV at all!

[TIbrO]

mijman, I don't think he's going to tell you unless you pay him more money than the music companies are going to pay him for it.

You missed his first thread. It was good, you should search for it. I foget what it was called, but I think the title had MPAA in the title. Not sure, though.

[DiViNeLeFT]

yeah, that first thread was good... i still say give it a week and it will be pirated

[adam]

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On 2001-10-02 12:47:14, lhorwinkle wrote:

Bootlegs are not necessarily poor quality. The kind where someone videotapes a movie in a movie theater will be poor quality. But a ripped version should be much better, even on VCD.
</BLOCKQUOTE></FONT></TD></TR><TR><TD><HR size=1 color=black></TD></TR></TABLE>

There are two types of bootlegs, prerelease meaning its only out in theatres and post release meaning that a vhs, laserdisk, dvd or official vcd has been released.

The best quality prerelease you will ever get is a screener. There have been a very small number of screeners released on dvd but even these werent much better than vhs quality so dvd recordable formats wont help at all. As long as the quality of prerelease movies stays the same they will continue to be released on vcd.

Post release movies, specifically those out on dvd, will NEVER be released on a large scale on dvd-r/w or even dvd+rw. Compatibility reasons are one factor but time and money are the main factors. You know how long it would take to burn 10,000 dvd-r disks even on a fast burner and even with hundreds of expensive burners? The companys that do the majority of bootlegging in Asia already have duplication plants which they invested millions of dollars in. They can produce thousands of dvds in a day. Dvd burners would only slow them down and cost them more money. Post release movies will continue to be released as dvd silvers indefinitely.

So dvd recordable drives really have no effect on the bootlegging industry as a whole. Vcds will continue to be released as long as they are still comercially viable. Until the movie industry itself changes and starts using high quality screeners and switches all theatres to digital (been threating this for a while now) then prerelease bootlegs will continue to be released on vcd.

"SVCDs are a bit less lifeless, but I get worse motion artifacts.

The claims that VCD is "almost VHS" quality, and SVCD is "better than VHS" just doesn't hold water ... at least with the current crop of cheap encoders. (I use TMPGEnc.)"

If you use a high quality source than you will not get motion artifacts in your svcds, ever. Svcd really does rival dvd to the untrained eye. Also vcd can certainly surpass vhs in quality but again only if you have a high quality source. TMPGenc can easily produce vcds that blow away vhs.

[AntnyMD]

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You missed his first thread. It was good, you should search for it. I foget what it was called, but I think the title had MPAA in the title. Not sure, though.
</BLOCKQUOTE></FONT></TD></TR><TR><TD><HR size=1 color=black></TD></TR></TABLE>

It was a thread I started about the ramping up of anti-piracy on CDDA disks, and asking if the CDDA option in the VideoCD 2.0 spec may be a way of making it "harder" to rip CDs while keeping the discs free of copy-protection. Branroyal took the opportunity to inform us about his CS2 product -- and got a LOT of flak about it.

[Branroyal]

[nfl2k2]

I'm getting rid of my vcd's once they get replaced with svcds

[pacmania_2001]

The best bootleg of a movie I have ever seen before it came out in cinemas was a laserdisc version of Titanic that my friend had because he had worked on the special effects. He had it about a month before it came out. It was a workprint however because it was edited slightly differently.

[tuan711]

my 2 cents,

I got into VCD about 6 months ago. It was fun making my first VCD, but I moved on to SVCD because VCD quality simply is not good enough, especially when we are so used to DVD quality video.
SVCD was good, but with limited storage. I then moved to DVD-R.
DVD-R is also good when I made my first successful home DVD movie.
After a while, I found that it is too much work. I still like making SVCD and DVD-R, but I don't think the average consumer would have the patient or know how.

Please tell me if this isn't a better idea:

A DVD player/recorder with a large storage device built in (like a large HD). This DVD player/recorder should be able to rip/capture/convert/store from your DVD movies or any external video sources for later playing. This DVD player should be able to recorder to blank DVDs or allow users to access the stored video with their PC for editing.

I think something like this is not too difficult with current technology. Pretty much all of these functions are available in serveral existing products. The only thing is the price tag.

But we are talking about the future here aren't we.

[ps6f]

VCDs will be around for awhile. Reason being, the price, and the availability. Mostly the price. SVCD is great, but I refuse to get up and change disks three times unless I'm watching The Godfather. I also don't want any format I can't use on my home dvd player for the simple reason that watching movies on a pc screen aint no fun.

[adam]

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On 2001-10-05 01:58:51, ps6f wrote:
SVCD is great, but I refuse to get up and change disks three times unless I'm watching The Godfather. </BLOCKQUOTE></FONT></TD></TR><TR><TD><HR size=1 color=black></TD></TR></TABLE>

You mean change the disk twice right? Because unless you ARE watching the Godfather than the most you will ever need to do is change the disk twice.

[SatStorm]

The future of VCD?
Well, for the western world, VCD ends in about a year.
There is one specific reason for this: Mpeg 1.
You see, there is a way to create "XDVD", playing with Bitrates and resolutions, but you need Mpeg 2.
This is the only reason VCD ain't have future, and it has nothing to do with quality.
Just imagine that LP videotapes. Quality? What's that? Storage is the point...

The future is SVCD or CVD files, on DVD-R (or +R) disks.
The resolution of 352X480 or 576, I believe is the best you can take from VHS and S-VHS. With a bitrate about 2600, you get almost perfect picture, depending your encoder.
One great problem is the encoders. They do not handle prety much the interlace problems, that is number one problem today.
Most of the European Satellite transmissions, are 480X576 resolution. In a way, those transmissions are like xSVCD, with bitrates about 2500 - 6000. Always VBR.
There are Quality (on Pay Per View services) transmissions with 522 X 576 resolution and some (not much) with full Pal (720 X 576).
In a way, we don't need those resolutions and those bitrates.
On a 4.7 DVD - R, you can have almost 1 movie with full DVD quality, or 3 - 4 movies with SVCD (or, even better, CVD) quality, don't mention 7 - 8 movies in low resolution XSVCD (352 X 28

Some people will claim standards. 'DVD is 720 X 576, 224 Audio/ 48000", etc
Well, this is not true.
I can say one thing for sure: DVD Video has only one standard: The Vertical Lines must be 576 for PAL or 480 for NTSC. The Horizontal lines can change, with no problems. Maybe, there is a minimum on this (like 352 lines, Half DVD resolution) as there is a knonw maximum (720 lines). But the truth is that DVD has only one standard for sure. Vertical Lines....

On other mpeg 2 technologies, like DVB (Digital Cable, Satellite and terestial transmissions), that is a reality. The resolutions ain't one standard, and the receiver (DVB /cable, DVB /satellite or DVB /terestial) has to "Pan and Scan" the picture most of the times, just to fill your TV. That Also happens with CVD and SVCD...

Today, we know that on resolutions like 352 X 576 and a Variable bitrate about 2600, we can get acceptable High Quality Video, near HDTV. So, give me a reason to use Higher resolutions/bitrates with movies. OK, let say some fast scenes need bitrate about 3000. But never faster!
So, why not to use svcd settings on DVD media?

One other thing: What really is the difference between a CVD, SVCD and a DVD file? The answer: The header.
Just demux to video and audio any of them, and them re - multiplexx them as DVD. You get DVD...
I do this all the time with satellite transmissions (I grabb direct stream, not capture picture with a card, there is no card included in the proccess). Then I demux the mpeg 2 files to DVD or SVCD, and I get xDVD or xSVCD.

So, in the question "what is the future of VCD", the answer is "there is no future".
But I see great future to SVCD/XSVCD/CVD formats, on DVD - R (+ R) media

[adam]

You are correct in saying that vcd has no future in the western world but that could not be farther from the truth in Asian countries. Vcds are extremely cheap and extremely popular there and bootlegging is rampant. The movies are already limited to vhs quality anyway so vcd is all you need to distribute copies. Its been like that for years and as long as the sources for those bootlegs stay the same there is no reason to switch any time soon. Bootleggers will never start selling 4, 5, even 10 vcd quality movies on a single dvd recordable disk. its more expensive to manufacture and they wont sell as well. Plus Asian bootleggers release the movies on the streets as soon as they get pirated. They are not going to wait til the 10 most wanted films come out to make a compilation dvd-r.

Asian bootleggers have had dvd duplication plants for years. No not dvd-r/w but the actual million dollar duplication hardware to press their own dvds. The recent advances in home recording have absolutely no effect on the commercial pirating industry. There is no way you will ever see bootlegged dvd-r/w or dvd+rw being distributed widely in Asia. It would take forever to burn 10,000 copies even with a room full of burners. With a duplication plant they can spend a day making the master and then burn 10,000 copies a day if they want to. Bootlegging companies have been selling dvd silvers for years but vcd continues to be the format of choice in Asia, not because there isnt a better format but because vcd is a niche format. Its all that is needed for the low quality bootlegs. As soon as the dvd or laserdisk is released they come out on high quality dvd silver but until that happens the vcd is as good as it gets anyway. Never underestimate the effect of pirating. Trust me vcd still has a LONG life ahead of it.



<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: adam on 2001-10-05 03:18:46 ]</font>

[mvdude2001]

All i know is Im going to be using VCDs till I start to lose my memory (55 years old). VCD 4.0, good idea, pretty soon they'll be able to sell VCDs in America as a replacement for VHS. You never know, when something gets old, something new just gets digital. Just like paper, everybody who has posted in this forum, sent an e-mail, or has their ownwebsite has turned their back on good old papyrus (Latin for paper). Think about it...