MPEG1 VCD ON DVD

[weejames]

Hi there,

My girlfriend recently got a new superdrive equipped iMac. I have a bunch of mpeg1 clips in vcd format. I understand that the dvd standard supports mpeg1. Does anyone know what programs will allow me to burn mpeg1 onto dvd-r in mac osx. I want to keep them as mpeg1 so i can fir more on a dvd. They are already of low quality so there is no point in increasing it.

Cheer

James

[AntnyMD]

Your MPEG1 files for VCD, in order to be accepted by a DVD authoring program (such as DVD Studio Pro) would have had to have been encoded with future transfer to DVD in mind. Chances are, yours are not. The DVD spec requires the GOPs to be closed, and the GOP cannot be very large. Homebrew VCDs are probably encoded with an overly large GOP, so you wouldn't be able to author the DVD correctly. My suggest would be to just bite the bullet and re-encode your VCD clips to MPEG2 files at the same resolution and bitrate. Use an encoder that produces DVD compliant MPEG2 files. If you use a rez of 352x240 or 352x288, this will fall within the DVD spec. If you use a higher resolution (*x480/576), you video will not improve -- and in fact may get dramatically worse.