Newbie, needs help in burning vcd

[dongsese]

I have a problem burning vcd. I was able to convert my sony digicam movies to digital format using pyro firewire and windows movie maker. Next thing I did was burn the movie to vcd using nero55914. It took nero more than 1 hour to encode the file then started burning it to a blank cd. However, after burning was complete, I tried to play the cd but my CD-ROM and CD-R RW drives could not read it. Tried also to play on a VCD standalone player ang I gor the same result. I tried to burn a couple more and I got the same result. I even tried using RecordMax4.0 but still got the same result. What could be the problem? What am I doing wrong?
Thanks. [/b]

[nuB]

go here
http://www.doom9.org
http://www.angelfire.com/clone/dvdcomplete/
http://www.geocities.com/backupdvd2002/
http://www.doom9.org
http://www.vcdhelp.com
http://www.dgital-digest.com

[dongsese]

Thank NuB. But the links you suggested pertain to making DVD. Anyway, there was a development. I tried to encode the windows movie maker file myself to MPEG1 using TMPEnc and burned it again using Nero. It worked! or so it seemed. When I played it using Windows Media Player, the movie was garbled. Where do you think the problem is?

[ya_jai]

I have a problem burning vcd. I was able to convert my sony digicam movies to digital format using pyro firewire and windows movie maker. Next thing I did was burn the movie to vcd using nero55914. It took nero more than 1 hour to encode the file then started burning it to a blank cd. However, after burning was complete, I tried to play the cd but my CD-ROM and CD-R RW drives could not read it. Tried also to play on a VCD standalone player ang I gor the same result. I tried to burn a couple more and I got the same result. I even tried using RecordMax4.0 but still got the same result. What could be the problem? What am I doing wrong?
Thanks. [/b]

First the problem might be NERO. As we all know, Nero not such a good video encoder (of course it is good for burning only). But you already mention that you used TMPGEnc to encode your file and quality is not so good.

That lead me to think about how you capture/transfer from your sony digicam. Did you capture/trasfer into uncompress avi type 1(this will result a very large filesize about 2 GB for 10 mins) or real time mpeg1/mpeg2. How good for quality if you play the file before encode?
How did you encode or what setting you use in TMPGEnc?.

[dongsese]

to ya_jai,

i finally was able to burn the vcd properly using nero but with the lowest possible burning rate (4x). That solve my previous problem about not being able to burn it
But I still found out that the quality was not good. So I reviewed my pre-encoded file, did not looked good either. I used windows movie maker to capture the file and found out that it was captured at video for broadcast NTSC(256kbps) 320x240 at 30fps. So I changed the setting to the best possible resolution which is DV-AVI 720x480pixels, 30fps but found out that it was very memory intensive. So i settled for NTSC(768kbps) 320x240 at 30fps, and the resolution improved a bit. I'm quite satisfied but would also want to improve the quality of my movies. I'm using windows movie maker for capturing and editing because its the only one I have and its the only one I use. Are there better, user friendly video capture programs available or is WMM enough?

[ya_jai]

from what you say, you are capturing in real time mpeg format which you won't be able to get the best quality possible. I'm not sure what capturing software is the best for real time encoder. I'm using Ulead video studio6 but I only capture/transfer in digital format (avi) which like you said memory and cpu intensive. Instead of mpeg why don't you try to capture to 320x240 avi with V-dub then encode to mpeg with TMPGEnc, or you can try this guides http://www.vcdhelp.com/mjpeg.htm

You can do some search under capture section to see other's methods too.