VCD with subtitles - Encoder help needed

[Mouseanony]

Hey all,

I'm planning to rip Lord of the Rings Extended to VCD (not SVCD or (x)VCD). I was planning to use TMPGenc most people think it is best quality for VCD (and perhaps MPEG1 in general). Trouble is, it appears I can't do subtitles with it. So my two other main options appear to be DVDx, Cinemacraft and Panasonic. I'm guessing Cinemacraft would be the better of the three since it's newer and been updated and is commercial (I'm not saying all commercial products are better then freeware products but in this case I believe it is for various reasons) but of course, perhaps they mostly ignored MPEG1.

Basically I have two questions.
1) What encoder should I use? If possible, give more info then a specific name, explain why that is your choice, e.g. any comparisons you have done. It will give a lot more weight to you suggestion. Ignore price issues for now though. It's fine if you have done with VCD bit rates or even CBR but please mention that. However, given the extreme differences, it's no use telling me which ones does MPEG2 better.

2) How much worse will it be compared to if I were to use TMPGenc? I'm aware of course the very fact I'm including subtitles which in VCD have to be part of the video will mean the quality will be less. So compare apples to apples i.e. all without subtitles.

Also, please note that I am creating a standard compliant VCD. No VBR, no funny birates, no nothing.

Thanks for all your help.

[Mouseanony]

Sorry but I just discovered VCD 2.0 actually supports closed captioning. Anyone know of a way to get the DVD subtitles to the closed captioning? Although I'll probably still use the static subtitles since not many stand-alone VCD players support closed captioning I think so it may not be much use...

Thanks again

[sterno]

I was planning to use TMPGenc most people think it is best quality for VCD (and perhaps MPEG1 in general). Trouble is, it appears I can't do subtitles with it.

Why do you think you can't do subtitles with tmpgenc? You can use avisynth or virtualdub with the appropriate plugin and frameserve to tmpgenc, just the same as you would have to do with any other encoder.

[kschang]

I was able to convert several DVDs with subtitles, including The Matrix and Run Silent Run Deep, into VCDs with subtitles. The subtitles are PERMANENT (i.e. part of the frame) and cannot be turned off. Also, the resolution of the subtitles needs a bit of help (the words are legible but looks really lousy).

I used DVDX with AVISYNTH as frameserver, and TMPGenc doing the encoding. Takes a long time, but works fine, don't even need 3 gigs of space to do it...

[poopyhead]

flaskmpeg/avisynth

http://www.vcdhelp.com/dvdtovcdflask.htm

vobsob/vdub

http://www.doom9.org/index.html?/subtitle_guide.htm