VCD, SVCD, XVCD. XSVCD--which do I choose?

[KSJ]

I don't understand the differences between these formats. Discussions of bitrates, blah, blah, blah mean nothing to me.

Simple question: which format allows me to get the highest quality video at the lowest possible file size?

My goal: to take hour-long tv episodes that I am planning to archive and burn them to some form of VCD at a fairly high quality. Expecting the total time to be about 42 minutes after taking out the commercials. Would LOVE to be able to do 2 eps on a single CD, but I'm not willing to sacrifice too much video quality for it.

Help!

KSJ

[insane_asylum13]

Honestly i would have to choose a basic VCd but try to add all of the highest settings, because SVCD has great quality and sound... but it takes up way too much space. But then again u could set the resolution for the standard SVCD but adjust the quality of sound or something to be able to fit more on a higher quality. You can do this with TMPGEnc and go to unlock under the templates... just goof around and u will get it TRIAL and ERROR helps better for your situation depending on your cercomstances(sorry dont know how to spell)

But if my crappy explaination didn't help try posting a few more times with more info on what u want

[Kdiddy]

well I suggest you LEARN what bitrate means...becuase it is the most ESSENTIAL component of quality....since you are so concern with quality, then you need to learn bitrate...if means that much to you, take the time and READ, its not that hard of a concept to learn.

[KSJ]

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On 2001-10-14 00:11:27, Kdiddy wrote:
well I suggest you LEARN what bitrate means...becuase it is the most ESSENTIAL component of quality....since you are so concern with quality, then you need to learn bitrate...if means that much to you, take the time and READ, its not that hard of a concept to learn.
</BLOCKQUOTE></FONT></TD></TR><TR><TD><HR size=1 color=black></TD></TR></TABLE>

Thanks ever so much. That was extremely helpful.

I have spent two weeks trying to figure this whole thing out. There are volumes upon volumes of FAQs, software recommendations, hardward recommendations, etc, etc, to wade through. Surely you can see how someone who hasn't done this before and DOESN'T know what they're looking for can be overwhelmned?

I can't seem to get a decent layman's answer from anyone. This website, which EVERYONE links back to, is so extremely *UN*intuitive I get a headache just trying to find anything here.

I have figured out, no from any help I've found on this website or any other, but just on my own, how to capture, edit, convert, and burn. I just need to know, flat out, which format I should be shooting for in the end. I don't need someone with an attitude implying I'm an idiot--I just need to know, in this mass of meaningless excess data, what should I be trying to shoot for to get the result I need.

If you can't answer that question, then why bother replying? Does it make you feel somehow superior to point out the shortcomings in my knowledge base? Then fine, go ahead and feel superior. I just want a simple, layman's answer. If you can't provide that, then please, rather than taking the opportunity to tell me how stupid I am, just let me wait for someone else to answer, okay?

Sorry if I come across cranky, but I truly am overwhelmed by the absolute lack of truly useful data I've found anywhere.

KSJ

[Vejita-sama]

It's the blah blah blah part of your post that puts people off.

Best quaility for the smallest size? That's DivX. But since you want something you can play on your standalone DVD player that's no good.

VCD are encoded MPEG1 files, SVCDs are encoded MPEG2 files. A standard VCD is a MPEP1 encoded file at 352x240, video=1150kbit/s & audio=224kbit/s. A standard SVCD is a MPEG2 encoded file at 480x480, video=2520kbit/s & audio=224kbit/s.

Change any of these settings and you'll make a non-standard VCD or SVCD, aka xVCD or xSVCD. The thing is x(S)VCD isn't better or worst than (S)VCD, just non-standard.

At the same resolution and bitrate MPEG1 and MPEG2 look the same, and are the same size. The reason MPEG2 is superior to MPEG1 is because MPEG2 supports: interlacing, muliple audio tracks, subtitles, etc. etc.

The key thing is the bitrate. The higher the bitrate the better the the quaility encode. The higher the resolution, the better the quaility of the encode.

The bitrate determines the size of the encode. The size of the source file DOES NOT matter. Just the runtime of the source and the bitrate I use. Play around with the vcdhelp.com bitrate calculator (under the Tools link to the left).

If you're using a captured source, save it to your HD in the highest quaility you can (resolution and color depth), then encode it to 352x240, 352x480 or 480x480 at your DVD players max bitrate (normally ~2800kbit/s total).

Depending on how you spilt the video/audio you can get ~40min on an 80min CDR. To get more video on each CDR you have to lower the bitrate.

[vitualis]

<TABLE BORDER=0 ALIGN=CENTER WIDTH=85%><TR><TD><font size=-1>Quote:</font><HR size=1 color=black></TD></TR><TR><TD><FONT SIZE=-1><BLOCKQUOTE>
On 2001-10-13 22:49:54, KSJ wrote:
I don't understand the differences between these formats.</BLOCKQUOTE></FONT></TD></TR><TR><TD><HR size=1 color=black></TD></TR></TABLE>

Read "What Is" on the top left hand menu. VCDs uses MPEG-1 compression for the video. SVCDs use MPEG-2. You can fit up to 80min of video on a standard VCD on 80min/700MB media. You can fit about 50-60 min on a SVCD without compromising the video quality too much (depending on source video).

XVCD and XSVCD = non-standard S/VCD so you can do anything you want and it may or may not play depending on your player and how far out of the specs you go.

<TABLE BORDER=0 ALIGN=CENTER WIDTH=85%><TR><TD><font size=-1>Quote:</font><HR size=1 color=black></TD></TR><TR><TD><FONT SIZE=-1><BLOCKQUOTE>Simple question: which format allows me to get the highest quality video at the lowest possible file size?</BLOCKQUOTE></FONT></TD></TR><TR><TD><HR size=1 color=black></TD></TR></TABLE>

This question is not really appropriate for S/VCD formats as both use similar compression methods. For better quality, the file size will also be bigger.

<TABLE BORDER=0 ALIGN=CENTER WIDTH=85%><TR><TD><font size=-1>Quote:</font><HR size=1 color=black></TD></TR><TR><TD><FONT SIZE=-1><BLOCKQUOTE>My goal: to take hour-long tv episodes that I am planning to archive and burn them to some form of VCD at a fairly high quality. Expecting the total time to be about 42 minutes after taking out the commercials. Would LOVE to be able to do 2 eps on a single CD, but I'm not willing to sacrifice too much video quality for it.</BLOCKQUOTE></FONT></TD></TR><TR><TD><HR size=1 color=black></TD></TR></TABLE>

You will be able to fit one episode on a CD as a SVCD with very high quality results. However, it does also depend on how you are capturing your video. You should do a search in the capturing forum for more details on how to capture high quality video.

You may be able to fit two episodes on a VCD by overburning and some judicious cropping (but I doubt it).

You will be able to fit two episodes on a VCD by using 90min media (most hour long episodes are usually only 44min long).

With XVCD or XSVCD you could do anything you want but this comes at the price of compliance.

Regards.

[Kdiddy]

Well obviously your elevator doesnt go to the top, if you spent 2 weeks reading information about this process and still dont understand the importance of bitrate to quality...furthermore, all the information you seek could have EASILY been gathered by the "How To" & "What Is" sections over to your left.... any misunderstanding to those more than likely would have been cleared up by doing a simple search through posts in these forums....now ask yourself, WHY does everyone link back to here...ummmm maybe because this website IS useful, you dont like, free country, move your a$$ along....

Secondly, quality is like beauty, its in the eye of the beholder, no one can tell you what looks good to you, the best way you will learn what is right for you is through trial & error ...people will argue for days (dont believe, so a search through posts) about which of the formats you stated provide the best quality....and in the end, you will be just as clueless as you are now....since you even state "I don't understand the differences between these formats."..then you should start out in the NEWBIE forum, so someone can tell you the difference since you dont seem to comprehend what it says in the "What Is" section...

Finally, if you felt like idiot or stupid from a post of a person you don't know on the internet, then you have some serious self-esteem issues going on that more than likely have been there way before I made my post.

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Kdiddy on 2001-10-14 05:55:56 ]</font>

[KSJ]

Thank you, Vejita-sama and virtualis. *These* were helpful replies, not to mention that you were very pleasant. I appreciate your taking the time to give me a useful answer. I think I have a better idea of what I'm shooting for, now.

I *did* look at the "What Is" sections, but it just contained a lot of data that went over my head, especially the side by side comparison chart. The problem is, this site seems to be geered toward people who are familiar with working with this sort of thing, and I'm not. I'm just feeling my way, and I'm frustrated because most of the data I've found assumes a knowledge level that I don't possess. Software incompatibilities (something doesn't read my video capture card, something new I've installed cause something else I had installed that I needed to stop working, etc) have also contributed to the problem.

So thank you very much. I appreciate your help.

KSJ

[BlackWinterDay]

I don't see how you will be able to fit 2 episodes on one 80 minute CDR. I capture hour long TV shows to MPEG-1, de-multiplex, and then re-encode the two streams in TMPGEnc using 352 x 240, Automatic VBR with a minimum setting of 0 and a maximum setting of 2 million bits per second, and an audio bit rate of 192 thousand bits per second. After editing out commercials and such, I'm usually left with about 42 minutes of video that average around 685 megs. These are pretty good quality VCD's, but they're not perfect. I'm not entirely sure what your expectations are, but you might have to settle for a little less quality than you expect while getting only one episode per CDR, or a lot less quality getting two.

With 800 meg CDR's though, you can push the maximum variable bitrate up to 2.5 million bits per second and the episode should still fit.

[KSJ]

<TABLE BORDER=0 ALIGN=CENTER WIDTH=85%><TR><TD><font size=-1>Quote:</font><HR size=1 color=black></TD></TR><TR><TD><FONT SIZE=-1><BLOCKQUOTE>
On 2001-10-14 16:15:14, BlackWinterDay wrote:

I don't see how you will be able to fit 2 episodes on one 80 minute CDR. I capture hour long TV shows to MPEG-1, de-multiplex, and then re-encode the two streams in TMPGEnc using 352 x 240, Automatic VBR with a minimum setting of 0 and a maximum setting of 2 million bits per second, and an audio bit rate of 192 thousand bits per second. After editing out commercials and such, I'm usually left with about 42 minutes of video that average around 685 megs. These are pretty good quality VCD's, but they're not perfect. I'm not entirely sure what your expectations are, but you might have to settle for a little less quality than you expect while getting only one episode per CDR, or a lot less quality getting two.

With 800 meg CDR's though, you can push the maximum variable bitrate up to 2.5 million bits per second and the episode should still fit.
</BLOCKQUOTE></FONT></TD></TR><TR><TD><HR size=1 color=black></TD></TR></TABLE>

Unfortunately, my CD-Rom is old enough that it won't overburn, so it won't do me any good to buy 800meg CDRs. I just have to find a way to fit it all on a 74 minute CDR.

KSJ

[vitualis]

@ BlackWinterDay: VCDs use a very strict set of specifications (e.g., video bitrate 1150 kbit/sec CBR ONLY). I think you are talking about XVCD...

On a 80 min disc, you can fit 80 min of video on a VCD. This isn't some glib fact... I've done it plenty of times without overburning. I can prove it with maths too but I don't feel like it right now.

Most 1 hours TV shows are actually only 44 min max. Thus, if you could get each episode down to an average of 40 min each, you could fit both on one 80 min CD-R as a standard compliant VCD. Obviously if you start changing the bitrate, you could do it easily but then it won't be a real VCD anymore.

However, 44min --> 40min is not an easy thing to do, even if you cut out the title and credits. It may be possible on some TV shows (especially if captured from TV as the TV stations sometimes crop some scenes as well).

However, as each episode is usually only 44min max, then obvious two episodes can easy fit on on 90 min disc.

@ KSJ: It would be impossible to fit two episodes on 1 74min disc as a standard VCD.

Regards.

_________________
Michael Tam

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: vitualis on 2001-10-14 22:08:26 ]</font>

[KSJ]

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On 2001-10-14 22:07:29, vitualis wrote:
@ BlackWinterDay: VCDs use a very strict set of specifications (e.g., video bitrate 1150 kbit/sec CBR ONLY). I think you are talking about XVCD...

On a 80 min disc, you can fit 80 min of video on a VCD. This isn't some glib fact... I've done it plenty of times without overburning. I can prove it with maths too but I don't feel like it right now.

Most 1 hours TV shows are actually only 44 min max. Thus, if you could get each episode down to an average of 40 min each, you could fit both on one 80 min CD-R as a standard compliant VCD. Obviously if you start changing the bitrate, you could do it easily but then it won't be a real VCD anymore.

However, 44min --> 40min is not an easy thing to do, even if you cut out the title and credits. It may be possible on some TV shows (especially if captured from TV as the TV stations sometimes crop some scenes as well).

However, as each episode is usually only 44min max, then obvious two episodes can easy fit on on 90 min disc.

@ KSJ: It would be impossible to fit two episodes on 1 74min disc as a standard VCD.

Regards.

_________________
Michael Tam

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: vitualis on 2001-10-14 22:08:26 ]</font>
</BLOCKQUOTE></FONT></TD></TR><TR><TD><HR size=1 color=black></TD></TR></TABLE>

vitualis:

I'll be happy just to get *one* episode on a 74 minute CD at this point. I'm running up against any number of problems which aren't appropriate discussion for this forum, and nothing that I have tried that has been suggested on this website has worked the way it's supposed to. I'm at a complete loss, and very frustrated. Please feel free to email me offline at kristeljohns@yahoo.com if you have any suggestions or would like more information on that I'm trying to do in order to make a suggestion.

[barnsey]

I would use a cbr (constant bitrate) svcd, you could have settings of

video: 1040kbps/1137kbps with 80min cd-r
audio: 128kbps

For 84minutes of video ^

I have used these sorts of settings very often and the quality will come out very nicely if you do it right...

Using 80 minute cds isnt overburning as far as i know, i have a old(ish) 4X recoreder and it does 80min cds fine... In case you didnt know you can fit 800mb of video on a 80min cd (normally 700mb capacity) when its burnt as VCD/sVCD, without overburning.

You could also make a xVCD with the same settings but svcd comes out better.

My question is tho, is there any reason you want vcd because if you are only playing it on your computer i would go for DiVX.

[vitualis]

barnsey, at 1040 kbit/s CBR for 480x480/576 MPEG-2 video, I would suggest that the quality would be VERY VERY poor. If you use 352x240/288, for SVCD, then this IS NOT a standard SVCD --> it is xSVCD.

Regards.

[KSJ]

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On 2001-10-14 22:34:51, barnsey wrote:
I would use a cbr (constant bitrate) svcd, you could have settings of

video: 1040kbps/1137kbps with 80min cd-r
audio: 128kbps

For 84minutes of video ^

I have used these sorts of settings very often and the quality will come out very nicely if you do it right...

</BLOCKQUOTE></FONT></TD></TR><TR><TD><HR size=1 color=black></TD></TR></TABLE>

So how would I go about doing this? Where do I put in these settings? When I capture? When I convert? When I burn? I'm SO very lost at this point, I'm about to pitch the whole project and just resign myself to good ole' VHS. Like I've said before, nothing I have tried that has been recommended on this site has worked the way it's supposed to. Here's what I've got so far:

I'm using an AverTV USB capture device that will capture at 640x480. I was trying to use an AVI All in Wonder but it wouldn't capture at greater than 3??x240, whatever the number was, so I got the new device.

I can capture using any number of programs at this point. VirtualDub works sporatically at best, but seems to drop more frames and the resulting picture isn't that great. The software that came with the Aver device seems to work fairly well, but it gives me a lot few tweaking options. Basically, I can choose 3??x240 or 640x480, compressed or uncompressed .avi and that's about it. I have ULead MediaPro, which has a capture option, but it's rather complicated and the files it captures seem to be *huge*, so I'm running up against the 2Gig .avi restriction. I also have attempted to register Capturix, but haven't gotten my key to unlock it yet, so while it seems to work, I haven't been able to put it to the test.

I am trying to edit out the commercials from the show I am attempting to record using ULead again, if I can ever figure out how. My problems seem to be that ULead won't use the D: drive I have partitioned off for handling this stuff, and my C: partition doesn't have enough memory to handle the files I'm dealing with. For example, I can do a 2 minute segment at full, uncompressed .avi no problem, but the teaser segment for an episode of one of the shows, including credits, was about 5 minutes. It would get maybe a little over halfway through rendering that one for editing and would tell me I was out of disk space. I have tryed to go in through the Ulead preferences and get it to default to the D drive AND I've tried tweaking the autoexec.bat to no avail, so I'm stuck on the editing front. Any recommendations for a better editing software that will let me trim out the commercials will be greatly appreciated.

Then, I am using Nero to convert to SVCD MPEG2, write my menus, and burn to disc. Theoretically. I have been able to burn a two minute sample AVI to SVCD, but people say the quality is supposed to be better than VHS, and what has resulted HAS NOT been better than VHS. The picture may be a little less grainy (but not by much) but the picture was sort of jumpy and the motion very choppy. And when I tried to burn to files to a disc and put a menu in, the menu screen came up, but all the text has a line through it, as though it had been crossed out, and I couldn't navigate through it. I would try to up arrow, down arrow, and select, and all I would get was the circle with the line through it that's basically the DVD player's way of telling you, "not a chance I'm letting you do that."

Soooo...

In short, I'm having issues at just about every step of the process. I have been ALL OVER this site for two weeks, and as I've said before, nothing I've found here has worked the way it's supposed to. My questions are, to sum up:

1) I've been told you can't edit in MPEG or MPEG2, so I've been trying to capture to .avi, edit out the commercials, and then convert. Is there a way to circumvent this? Can I capture to MPEG2 and then edit out the commercials? What software should I use for this? Hell, what *hardware* should I use for this? Will what I have suffice, or do I need to be looking elsewhere?

2) If I have to edit in .avi, anyone know what should be doing in ULead that I'm not? I'm a newbie, and it's not very intuitive. How do I just select a portion of what's there (like a commercial) and take it out? And what about this whole 2 or 4 (which is it, I've seen both?) gig file size restriction? How does one circumvent that. When I tried to capture the teaser of an episode, I got about as far as the credits before it told me the file was too large and may be corrupt. That was in the "uncompressed" avi format using the AverTV USB software. The compressed version of the same ended up being ~222,000KB, and didn't look nearly as easy to edit when I tried to open it ULead and gave me the aforementioned issues with getting about halfway through the rendering process before telling me I was out of disk space. And that was just the teaser of an episode--the actual acts are going to be much longer. Am I going to have to save those in single-scene segments?

3) Kind of a repeat of question 1. Do I capture to AVI THEN convert to MPEG2 after editing?

See why I'm frustrated? This is barely the tip of the iceberg.

[quote]
Using 80 minute cds isnt overburning as far as i know, i have a old(ish) 4X recoreder and it does 80min cds fine... In case you didnt know you can fit 800mb of video on a 80min cd (normally 700mb capacity) when its burnt as VCD/sVCD, without overburning. [quote]

I'll have to keep that in mind. When I captured a 2 minute sample to the compressed .avi using the Aver software, it came out to be 36MB while I burned a trial SVCD. By my calculations, that would mean that 42 minutes would be about 756MB (and who knows, it could wind up being 43 or 44 minutes) which caused much wailing and gnashing of teeth on my part, given that the disc is only 700MB.

<TABLE BORDER=0 ALIGN=CENTER WIDTH=85%><TR><TD><font size=-1>Quote:</font><HR size=1 color=black></TD></TR><TR><TD><FONT SIZE=-1><BLOCKQUOTE>
You could also make a xVCD with the same settings but svcd comes out better.</BLOCKQUOTE></FONT></TD></TR><TR><TD><HR size=1 color=black></TD></TR></TABLE>

Not to mention, I would need to ask all these questions all over again as applies to creating an XVCD. Actually, my DVD player doesn't play XVCD, though it will play XSVCD.

<TABLE BORDER=0 ALIGN=CENTER WIDTH=85%><TR><TD><font size=-1>Quote:</font><HR size=1 color=black></TD></TR><TR><TD><FONT SIZE=-1><BLOCKQUOTE>
My question is tho, is there any reason you want vcd because if you are only playing it on your computer i would go for DiVX.
</BLOCKQUOTE></FONT></TD></TR><TR><TD><HR size=1 color=black></TD></TR></TABLE>

Sorry, no, I'm planning to play them on a DVD player.

Thanks for your help, and please feel free to email me if you feel my questions or your responses aren't appropriate for this forum.

Thanks again!

KSJ