vcd to dvd

[pseconds]

Hi, I edited some VCD's in Premiere and want to put them onto DVD.

When I use the Adobe mpeg encoder, do I want to have it set to export to dvd (720x480 frame size), or since the orignal file was fromna vcd and is only 352x240, do I need to re-export it as that?

[tearex]

Reencoding will only waste your time and probably decrease quality again. If you still have the MPGs you produced during making the VCD, just load those into your DVD authoring software, since 352x240 (or 352x288) MPEG-1 are perfectly legal standards for DVD. You might have to reencode the audio though as 44.1 kHz sampling rate isn't legal in DVD standards, only 48 kHz. On the other hand many (if not most) DVD players have no problem with 44.1 kHz. So to summarize:

1.) Convert the .dat file from the VCD to .mpg with e.g. VCDEasy's tools section, if necessary.

2.) Demux the mpg to video and sound, e.g. in TMPGenc's tools.

3.) If necessary, re-encode the audio to 48 kHz. You might want to produce .ac3 files instead of .mp2 if you're re-encoding anyway, since with those you can get away with a lower bitrate for the same quality. BeSweet & its GUI is ideal for those things.

4.) If your authoring software wants demuxed video and sound, simply import them. If it wants them muxed, You can probably use TMPGenc, but don't bother with MPEG-1 Video CD, use MPEG-1 system stream as target format instead.

The nice thing about this is that you can fit something like 7 hours of VCD-quality video on a standard DVD-R.