Archive to VCD now or wait 'til I buy a DVD-RW drive?

[pizzaguy]

Hey everyone.

I recently started archiving TV shows that I've downloaded off the internet. Most of the files I've downloaded are high quality episodes of recent cartoons. I've been fairly pleased with the few VCDs I have made, but do you think it would be smarter to just wait until I buy a DVD-RW later down the line? Instead of converting to VCD, maybe I should burn my avi source files onto a CD-R and then save them until I buy a DVD burner (which will probably be in a few years or whenever burners are cheaper).

I understand that I won't be able to watch any of these episodes if I just burn the avi files straight onto cd. But I've also heard that I will lose some quality if I have to convert my VCDs to DVD later. And in the long term, I'm worried that some of the VCDs I make may not be compatible with future DVD players.

I'm pretty new at VCD authoring, so there may be a few factors that I overlooked. What do you guys think? Any valuable insight? Thanks.

[El Torro]

No man, keep burning the VCDs!

[geek rock]

it depends on your source material.

if you're downloading, say, 320x240 divx files and converting them to VCD format, there isn't really much point encoding to DVD later on because you won't end up with much better quality than your VCD files.

as a general rule, though.. converting from divx > vcd > dvd is a fairly pointless process because you're re-compressing an already compressed file. think of it in audio terms as this..

your original file - 64kbps MP3
re-encode to 128kbps MP3
re-encode yet again to 256kbps MP3

=

pointless

you can't ever make the quality any better than your source material.

so anyway.. yes, if you DO want to encode them as DVD mpegs later on, keep the original downloaded files on a CD somewhere.



-Mark

[pizzaguy]

Thanks for the input....so you're pretty certain that most dvd players down the line will continue to support the VCD format? I heard that newer Apex players don't play VCD. Hopefully, that's just Apex being stupid...

[KingJohn]

Hey everyone.

I recently started archiving TV shows that I've downloaded off the internet. Most of the files I've downloaded are high quality episodes.

I think most people are putting off converting large collections until they buy a DVD writer, same goes for transferring the VHS tapes People are waiting..

You can get more on a DVD writer, including the files you already converted to VCD , Apart from changing the audio from 44.1Khz to 48Khz, you probably not want to convert the video, but store it as it is (And get more on a DVD disk)

If you have a lot of AVI's it may well be worth you waiting, if your prepared to convert them for DVD later !.