SVCD questions

[dilshan]

I am new to this world so please bear with me if my questions are all too
familiar to you. I have downloaded a lot of music video clips using KaZaa.
Now I want to convert them to VCD or SVCD and burn so that I can watch
them with my standalone DVD player. Questions:

1) I believe most of the video files I downloaded are NTSC VCDs (mpeg1
filter and 352x240 resolution). Is filter type and resolution enough
evidence to conclude video format (ex. SVCD ==> mpeg2 filter and
480x480 resolution)?

2) I can understand that people prefer SVCD to VCD when ripping
a DVD for quality purposes. But is there any point in converting
a VCD file to SVCD for quality reasons? I have done just that
but didn't notice any difference at all apart from the fact the
file got almost twice the size of the original one.

3) I have several DVDs with music. I have converted some of the
songs to both VCD and SVCD using TMPGEnc. Both turned
out to be pretty good quality. But since a couple of days back
after converting a DVD song to SVCD and play it with powerdvd
or zoomplayer I have noticed the picture is much brighter than
normal (otherwise ok). But if converted to VCD this problem is
not there! Any suggestion why?

4) I use TMPGEnc to convert files from one video format to other
since this site VCDHELP recommends it and also very easy
to use it. Is there any other better tools? I also use default
settings of TMPGEnc wizard. For instance I don't change the
average video bitrate for fear of losing video quality (TMPGEnc
wizard set it to around 2500 kbits/sec for SVCD which I believe is
the max value). Is it possible to reduce the average video bitrate
to a lower value without compromising video quality that much?
The file size of a SVCD is almost doubled the size of a VCD. Is
there any other default parameters that can be changed for
the better.

All suggestions are most welcome. Thanks in advance.

Regards,
Tilak (writing from Sweden)

[sterno]

1) Usually, though I would also check the frame rate. If resolution, codec, and frame rate all match you're pretty safe. If nothing matches it's probably made for computer playback, so you'd use a 1:1 pixel aspect ratio in tmpgenc.

2) No. VCD and SVCD can never be better than the source material, so an SVCD made from VCD will still be VCD quality.

3) I have not encountered this problem myself.

4) tmpgenc is fine, and lots of people use it so you can get lots of help. You should definitely learn to use it without the wizard, though. I don't even see why there is a wizard, tmpgenc is very easy to use because of its template system and there are several guides to it on this site. Encoding an SVCD with CQ or 2-pass VBR will usually give you good quality with a smaller file size than 2500k CBR.