Newbie Q about Sefy's Templates

[Abe Froman]

Hi, I wanted to fit a 92 minute VCD on an 80 minute CD so I tried Sefy's SeVCD templates. I notice that there is a SeVCD for NTSC Basic template and also a SeVCD for NTSC Enhanced template. What I am trying to understand is what the effectual differences are between these two templates and what situations might dictate using one over the other.

The only explanations available from the guide.txt that accompanied the templates regarding this question that I could find is that the Video Rate Control mode settings for basic is 50 and for enhanced is 100, and that Audio Channel Mode for basic is Joint-Stereo and for enhanced is Dual channel. I don't quite understand exactly what these things mean or what real-world differences they make. I tried using each template on the same mpg with no changes as a test to see if I could tell any differences in the results, but I can't seem to detect anything. Even the file sizes are about the same with the basic version actually coming out approximately 2.3 megs larger.

So could anyone explain to me in simple layman's terms what the actual differences produced by the basic and enhanced templates are and why I might want to use one over the other?

[Sefy]

the VBR quality determines how good your Video will look, the higher, means more Bitrate would be used, so therefor, the more improved playback quality.
Joint-Stereo and Dual-Stereo are for the Audio, joint-stereo will distort the surround effect, Dual-Stereo will keep the channels seperated and give higher quality audio.

because of those, and other minor changes, the Enhanced will give you higher quality, but also a larger file size, the Basic is based exactly on the default Templates and will give you the same quality as the basic VideoCD, but with a (sometime) drasticly small file size.

[Abe Froman]

Thanks for the info, Sefy. I guess to the untrained eye like mine it's hard to see these differences. Both templates produced quality results that I couldn't tell apart. They also worked quite well in reducing the file size and keeping the quality, just as advertised. Thanks!

[Sefy]

Glad to be of help, sometimes, they do preduce what would be for you and me the same results, but the file size will be the truth for how much of a good job each did, sometimes it's an obvious thing, sometimes it's not, depends on the movie.