Overall Encoding Question.

[M7D7G7]

hey,
i got a movie recently that came in 2 parts. the movie is encoded with the XviD codec. i want to convert it to VCD or SVCD (which ever you suggest) the movie plays at 24 FPS so that would be NTSC Film. but with the first section of the movie is way over 800 megs after it would be encoded.. (both parts are about 700 megs) so i think i'm going to have to cut that part in half and have 4 VCD's overall. (is there any other way so i dont have to do this?) also should i rip the audio first with virtualdub.. so when i encode it doesnot make any sync errors? does this make any diffrence? i have done this sort of thing a few times before but i want this movie to be at the best quality it can be.

thanks for your help
mike

[Vejita-sama]

Here's some back ground because I think you might be confused on a few points:

For best quaility buy the DVD. Next best is to 'backup' the DVD from a friends copy yourself. Xvid/DivX source will not produce the best quaility. However I assume you mean how can I get the best quaility from the source I have

First the size of the original file as no effect on the size of the encoded MPEG. MPEG size is dependant ONLY on bitrate and runtime. The VCD standard calls for video=1150kbit/s & audio=224kbit/s, that works out to about 1min=10MB. The source video size/resolution do not matter. Neither does the resolution of the encoded MPEG file.

However, resolution and bitrate determine quaility. The higher the resolution and the higher the bitrate the better the quaility. The rub is that as you increase resolution you had better also increase bitrate of the picture will look like crap. Image a 1800x1600 JPEG that's 30k vs. an 80x60 JPEG that's also 30k. Same file size, but different resolutions.

Because of this most people (esp when the source isn't that great) choose to encode at either 480x480, 352x480, or 352x240. Since your source is Xvid/Divx, I would pick the resolution that was just smaller than that.

As for the bitrate, pick how many CDs you want to spilt the movie onto (say 2 or 3) then use a bitrate calculator (look under tools) to determine the maximum bit rate for that number of CDs and runtime.

Then make either an xVCD or xSVCD (doesn't matter quaility wise, so I'd go with xVCD as most programs encode MPEG1 faster than MPEG2).

[M7D7G7]

nm

[M7D7G7]

Vejita-sama...thank you for clearing thoes things up also the movie isnt on DVD yet... just the big screen.

[M7D7G7]

ok...i have a few more problems. when i tryed to extract the audio using virtualdub, your suppost to set it to AVI video (under audio tab).. but that wasent an option. there was only No Audio, Source Audio, and Wave Audio. i selected Source audio.. i selected full processing mode.. went to conversion and selected 44100 Hz, No Change (8-bit). went to file and save wav.. and i got this error: "No audio decompressor could be found to decompress the source audio format". so then i tried avi2wav. and it extracted the audio. so i wanted to test out all of my setting on my DVD player. so i encoded the video and audio i just extracted..burnt it to a disk and played it in my DVD player. it looked really really good. but the picture looked scrunched from left and right. and there was no sound. the movie info is this:

Video Stream:
640x272, 23.976 fps

Audio:
compression: Unknown (tag 0055)

any help getting the video to look good and the audio to play would be muchly appreciated.