will vcdeasy do this...

[ssj5]

I know its a vague subject, but I couldnt think of anything else...

I love the fact that Nero 6 will accept any mpg files no matter what format, aspect ratio etc. and then will encode them properly in the burn phase. Will vcdeasy do this for me also? Or will I have to have the files already properly formated?

Thanks

[adam]

VCDEasy will accept VCD and SVCD compliant mpegs, or it will accept most non-compliant ones if you turn off the compliancy check, but then there is no guarantee it will play on any given player.

VCDEasy never re-encodes your video.

[ssj5]

now is that a good thing or a bad thing? I have read that vcdeasy will allow menus and chapters to be added to videos, which nero will not. But I also dont know alot about encoding and such. It took me almost a month just to get a 20 minute video from my vacation sent from my camcorder to my PC and then written with nero 6. It kept saying that I wasnt using a good file. Then I found the mpeg-2 encoder that I had to install for nero, and now it works. It took about 25 minutes to re-encode my video and burn to disk at 52X! But it worked, and the video looked good, so I am happy... but as always, never satisfied! lol

I cant just accept the fact that nero will do the job, now I want something that can do the job better! I hope VCDeasy will do it for me, but Im not technically inclined at all...

[adam]

The problem with Nero is that, yes it will give you compliant output, but its encoder really isn't very high quality. To get the best quality you should use an encoder for encoding, and an authoring program for authoring...makes sense. Nero is a great tool but its really a jack of all trades master of none in my opinion.

If you follow the guides on this site you should be able to get compliant output for whatever format you are shooting for. Simply choosing the appropriate template in TMPGenc should give you compliant output and still provide much better quality than Nero.

VCDeasy does allow many more features in a VCD or SVCD which Nero doesn't. Nero actually does support simple menu's, but not nearly like what these formats are capable of. Regardless of whether you even end up taking advantage of menus and chapters, I still strongly recommend you start using a dedicated encoder rather than Nero's, even if you do still end up authoring the output in Nero. You should see a big increase in quality.

[ssj5]

The problem with Nero is that, yes it will give you compliant output, but its encoder really isn't very high quality. To get the best quality you should use an encoder for encoding, and an authoring program for authoring...makes sense. Nero is a great tool but its really a jack of all trades master of none in my opinion.

That would explain why the video doesnt look as good as it could have with Nero. Now I am planning on converting all of my dvd mpeg2 files from my camcorder to a svcd format in TMPGEnc. Is there a easy-user level template to use at all? I tried configuring the settings myself in TMPGEnc, but I must have done something wrong, because when I attempted to author with Nero, it said it was a non-compliant file and re-encoded it. So, I guess what I need it to know the exact settings for a good svcd file, or a easy to click template.

[adam]

For a camcorder source, just use the NTSC SVCD template. Use 2-pass VBR and the bitrate calculator on this site to determine what avg bitrate to use to totally fill the desired number of cdrs.

[RabidDog]

but I must have done something wrong, because when I attempted to author with Nero, it said it was a non-compliant file and re-encoded it

Nope you didnt do anything wrong. Nero just insists on re-encoding the video which is why most people dont use for authoring. Any slight deviation from the spec (even slightly incorrect headers) will cause nero to re-encode. I suppose they built it in as a safety precaution. However vcd and svcd can both be out-of-spec and still look and sound great.