Improving the quality of VCD playback on DVD machine

[chrisc]

I have just created my FIRST VCD and was not very impressed with the quality of the video.

I have a very good source recording taken from a professional DV camera. Here is what l did:

Capture from source DV camera with firewire cable to my PC using Pinnacle Studio DV Plus card.

In Studio DV Plus, l :Make movie" with the selections:
"rendered" VCD, 352x288, 1150 kbits/sec to produce {movie}.mpg file.

I then used Nero 5.5 to burn the CD (as per instructions on this site).

My questions are: given that storage is not aproblem, how can l get the best output for playing the CD on my DVD player (NOT on the PC)?

Can l encode with a format other than VCD (MPEG1?), eg. MPEG2, and still be able to burn and play on the DVD?

Advice and suggestions welcome.
BTW, the source is of very high quality

Thanks in advance.

[T-rad]

if the dvd player supports svcd u can do 480x480 mpeg2 just make svcd's or u can try xvcd's witch is a vcd modified (bigger sizes or higher bitrate etc.)

I also found the Pinnacle encoder was poor quality, use TMPEnc to encode your movie to MPG, the software is free and this site has got all the guides to tell you how to produce quality VCDs

[digvid]

I agree, the StudioDV encoder is really bad. TMPGEnc should create a VCD that looks much, much better. I saw a post on this board yesterday that told how to get a good-looking VCD from DV material. It said to:

1) Load the VCD (NTSC or PAL) template in TMPGEnc
2) Load the "unlock" template in TMPGEnc
3) In the "Advanced" tab, check the "Deinterlace" box, double-click on the "Deinterlace" text, and choose "Double (field, adaptive)" option.
4) Encode

This may not make sense to you now, but if you download TMPGEnc (www.tmpgenc.com) and run it you will see what I am talking about. Good luck!

- digvid

[wcb4]

You can even eliminate step 2, no need to unlock the template, the advanced tab is accessible even from a locked template