Quality VCD's

[Smith2129]

I just started making VCD's, and I've noticed that they're not very good quality. Is this simply because the videos I download offline are generally poor quality? Everything I've read said that VCD's are comparable to VHS, but is this if I've captured them off TV, DVD, or VHS Tape? Is there anyway to increase the quality of the videos I download offline? I set the encoding quality to highest in TMPGEnc. I was also wondering about the size of video files. My roommmate downloaded American History X and it is a DivX and the resolution is close to that of a SVCD, but the whole movie is less than the size of a CD. If I converted this to MPEG-1 to make a VCD, how big do you think the file would be? Would there be a loss in quality of the movie since the resolution is comparable to a SVCD, but I would be dropping down to the resolution of a VCD? Also, how could I split the file if it were bigger than the size of a CD?

Thanks,
Newbie

[Vejita-sama]

Yes, your VCD is only as good as it's source. DivX movies make a poor source for video. A DVD ripped source will make an x(S)VCD that FAR better than VHS. You can't improve the quaility of the source above what it is either.

The size of your source material has ZERO affect on the size of your encoded MPEG file. The size depends only on the bitrate you choose. For the standard VCD template that's video=1150kbit/s & audio=224kbit/s. That works out to 1min=10MB (ie. 90min movie would be 900MB). Another way to say that is a 74min CDR will hold 74min of data, and an 80min CDR will hold 80min of data.

If you lower the bitrate you can fit more movie on each disc, but the quaility goes down. If you raise the bitrate you can fit less movie per disc, but the quaility goes up.

The resolution doesn't affect the MPEG file size. HOWEVER, if you use a higher the resoltution you'll want a hihger bitrate, at lower resolutions you can't see the 'macroblocks' and other artifacts as much and a lower bitrate is ok.

Spilting the file can be done in several ways. Spilt the DivX, spilt the encoded MPEG, encode 1/2 the MPEG then encode the other 1/2. The last one is the easiest.

Click on "Tools | Bitrate calculators" to the left. Enter all your dersired info and it'll give you a video bitrate to use to fill each CDR.

Run TMPGenc and load either the standard VCD or SVCD template (NTSC for the US, Canada or Japan or PAL for Europe), then load the unlock template (../templates/extra) this will unlocked all the greyed are parts of the standard template.

Click on settings: set motion search to high, click on encode and choose either CBR or 2pass VBR. For CBR enter the bitrate from the calculator. For 2pass VBR: max=DVD players max (normally~2500kbit/s), ave=calculator#, min=(calculator-300~500). If necessary, click on the audio tab and change the bitrate to what you entered in the calculator.

Then click on the advance tab. Double click on source range. You can find info on source range if you scroll down here:

http://www.vcdhelp.com/DVDConversionGuidev1.3/dvdtovcd2.html#TMPGEnc

setup batch encode, then burn.

[Dragon_zombie_x]

can you enlarge a video from say 320x240 to fullscreen WITHOUT losing quality? So that I can watch it on my dvd/vcd player without going blind from how small it is?

[Compound]

tmpge resizes it automaticaly to fit the screen the quality usualy stays the same as the source file depending on the settings u use