Are those VCD's on E-bay for real???

[menace]

I see lots of VCD's on E-bay for whole series to be put on 11 VCD's--that's like 2 episodes per CD, are they a scam or what? I would love to hear from someone whos seen them and tell me what kind of quality they are. The guy says 9.5/10 but considering how little info a CD-R holds I am somewhat dubious.

[mikewg]

They probably are...

If a VCD only holds 80 minutes, then that's only enough to hold three 30 minute shows (assuming commercials are cut out) or MAYBE two 60 minute shows, crunching it down quite a bit.

And if the quality is 9.5/10, assuming he's not lying, he probably taped them himself. I'm collecting series on VCD, and I'd say my quality is about that.

We can't tell you the quality of their collections though without seeing them ourselves. That's a risk you take buying from people on ebay (or anywhere really).

[Bud]

You have to be careful when you order VCD of any kind off the Net. I ordered some from a company that was posted on a very popular site (Won't release the Name) and what I received was not as good as what I can make. Yes the covers are good and the labels on the CDs are good, but the film was not so good, you can't play the cover on the DVD , so buyer be ware. The VCD cost between $5-9 or so depending on the movie, you can create your own for about $0.20 a CD, not a bad return, I just ordered 500 blank CDs (80 min) at $0.19 a CD.
Bud

[Nostradumbass]

You have to be careful when you order VCD of any kind off the Net. I ordered some from a company that was posted on a very popular site (Won't release the Name) and what I received was not as good as what I can make.
Bud

Has anyone seen SVCDs for sale? I've got a library of over 200 titles and wouldn't mind expanding it without the work if the prices were right.

[menace]

Mikewg:

You mentioned you are grabbing a series off TV and I was wondering if you could pass on your settings? I'm grabbing Stargate SG-1 right now and I'm getting 1 episode per Cd at quality I can live with. If you know of any way to get 2 on there, and keep good quality, I'd love to here it!

thanks

[mikewg]

You're probably not going to want to hear what I'm going to say.

I only record in VCD format, so I never mess with bitrates or anything else. If you want to fit two episodes on a CD, here's some options:

1. Cut out the intro video, the opening credits, and the closing credits.
2. Make sure you're using 80 minute discs.

Hmm. that's about it. If I have a movie that is 84 minutes long, I'll go through the movie and cut out 4 minutes of boring scenes just to make it fit on one disc. But if I'm preserving a TV series, I won't do that. I'd just go ahead and use one disc for each of your shows... besides, if you're doing that and making SVCDS, you could make it much much better quality than normal if you're only putting one episode per disc. And discs aren't that expensive.

[mikewg]

Just don't think this is always the case... I bought VCDs of a series I haven't seen since I was a kid, called the Mysterious Cities of Gold. The quality was much better than the old BETA tapes I had a few episodes recorded to... plus, it's in VCD format, every episode is there... all in all, it was a great deal. One day I'm going to go through, reorganize the episodes, fix a few audio sync problems on the discs, print some label covers and DVD covers, and have my computer finished final copy of the show.

[bilbogod]

Dude, where did u get that series from. I loved that as a kid and wouldn't mind getting hold of it again. Oh boy we really ought to set up a swap shop around here. I've got the complete set (98 episodes of Quantum Leap) on vhs. I thought one day there would probably be a collector interested in it.
Btw, series like the X- Files were often only 42 mins in length after you'd removed the adverts.

[menace]

well you were right, I didn't want to hear that I was hoping you might have that one holy grail technique that even Indiana Jones would covet..ah well..thanks for the input all the same. I will stick with my 1 CD per episode and burn them to DVD when the prices on those suckers comes down. Do you remember that show tales of the golden monkey? I would love to see that cheesy show again

[Devnull]

Well a one hour tv episode in the US should be 43 minutes, two upisodes = 86. With an 80 minute cd overburned to 82 minutes(can get 83 on some) with an audio bitrate at 160(I capture from tv at 172), video bitrate can be 1130 and they both fit on a single cd. If you can get your cd to overburn to 83 minutes you can use a video bitrate of 1146. I really don't see a huge difference between default vcd bitrate and a birtate of 2000-2500 at default vcd resolution. Though my 720x480 XVCDs DVD copies look great with high bitrates. It all depends on if you want to use one or two CDs. I use only cd per episode(and with a higher bitrate) most of the time though, just because I only burn tv stuff to vcd every once in a while.

[thebigguy62]

I suppose 2 one hour long shows can be put to one cdr; we don't try to overburn given the problems people have with different formats. We are able to fit 3 half hour shows to a cd; with the commercials and credits cut out most half hour shows end up being 22.5 minutes. I've noticed that some british shows we sell are longer, fitting only 2 episodes to a disk, probably fewer commercials. we only fit one buffy ep per disk, though

buying from ebay and yahoo is an iffy experience; we bought a set of robotech from a seller on yahoo, ad stated great quality, and they sucked; clearly encoded from old tapes, bad vcr, it looked as though someone was pounding on the vcr while encoding. he's back selling the sets to other poor bastards under a different name.

On the other hand, we bought some strangers with candy and invader zim, and they look great.

it's catch as catch can, and don't be too upset if you get crap when you throw it into your dvd player.