vcd and xvcd

[asdf]

from what i've read around here you can fit a full movie on xvcd with better quality than vcd, so i'm wondering whats the point with vcd

[Conquest10]

i don't know. i don't many people make straight compliant vcds. those that do probably do it cuz their dvd players only take compliant vcds.

[asdf]

no one knows?

[mats.hogberg]

That really depends! VCD is a standard. XVCD isn't. An XVCD is just an out of specs VCD, so to say that it's better is to overly sipmplify matters.
If you got a 40 minutes movie and do a VCD, you'll end up with a VCD that's only half filled. By raising the video bit rate to 2300 (thus creating a XVCD) you'll fill the CD and get better video quality.
If you have a 110 min movie and encode VCD compliant, you'll have one full and one half full CD. By lowering the bitrate to ~700 kbps, (again creating a XVCD) you'll get the full movie on one CD, but with lesser quality.
If you have a 78 min movie, you will fill a CD. By using VBR (instead of CBR, once again creating an XVCD) with avg bitrate at 1150 you may end up with a better looking video, while still keeping within 1 CD.
The down side of XVCD is that not many, if any, stand alone DVD player promises to play an XVCD.
So, when arguing about what looks best, you always have to keep the size of the medium/file in mind, along with what your player can handle.

/Mats