Best quality VCDs: Which is the better way?

[vsenapati]

I have been advised to get Canopus ADVC 100/50 to capture from Analogue Camcorder to DV and then convert it to VCD to get good VCDs. The other method which I used to use earlier was to capture by Dazzle DVC II from Analog to MPEG 2 and then convert it to VCDs. I used to use Tmpgenc 2.55 for encoding to VCDs. Is there anyother better method to produce better VCDs from Analog source ? What are the capture cards, third party softwares available for better quality ?

[DivXExpert]

Stick with the ADVC. It has less compression than MPEG-2.

If you really want you can get a decent capture card, and transfer uncompressed. But that takes up a LOT of space.

[vsenapati]

Can you suggest me a Capture Card which can take in Analogue and save in uncompressed format so that I do not have any loss in quality. I can go for a bigger Hard disk such as 120 GB

[MOVIEGEEK]

Can you suggest me a Capture Card which can take in Analogue and save in uncompressed format so that I do not have any loss in quality. I can go for a bigger Hard disk such as 120 GB

AFAIK all capturecards can capture to AVI(search "Capture Cards)as long as your capture software has an AVI setting,I suggest using RGB24.The output size depends on fps,I recommend 25fps for PAL and 29.97 for NTSC.

[rob1]

Forgive this suggestion if you are dead set on VCDs, but...

If you really want to improve quality, you might consider options that go beyond the limits of VCDs- i.e., SVCD, DVD etc. Your quality is always going to be somewhat limited if your ultimate destination is VCD.

If you've got the money to spend on a canopus, it might be worth investing in a DVD burner as well (cheaper than the outlay for an advc-100 for sure). That's probably the easiest way to improve quality. If you are dead set on VCD, just ignore me.

[vsenapati]

DVD Burners are still a bit expensive in India. They sell at Indian Rs.17,000( USD $360 ) nowadays. I am waiting for the prices to fall. On the contrary CD Burners{ Indian Rs.2650(USD $54)} and CD-R { Rs.10 ( USD $ 0.20 ) }are quite affordable. Thats why I am sticking to CD burners and VCDs. But, once DVD burners become affordable I am switching over to making DVDs of my family videos.

[rob1]

OUCH! Yep, those prices are pretty steep. If you keep your eyes open, you can find a decent DVD burner in the $150 range pretty easily in the U.S., which isn't so bad.

Hm- you might consider trying SVCD. You won't fit as much on a disk, but you can go with higher res, bitrates and VBRs and I've read SVCD is pretty easy to convert over to DVD once you do pick up a burner. It's basically a matter of resizing and changing the audio rate. Of course, your set top might not accept them (mine doesn't).

For VCD, you might check out KVCD templates. I never played with VCD much, but I think they've squeezed every bit of quality possible out of the mpeg-1/tmpgenc combo (link).

[txpharoah]

DVD Burners are still a bit expensive in India. They sell at Indian Rs.17,000( USD $360 ) nowadays. I am waiting for the prices to fall. On the contrary CD Burners{ Indian Rs.2650(USD $54)} and CD-R { Rs.10 ( USD $ 0.20 ) }are quite affordable. Thats why I am sticking to CD burners and VCDs. But, once DVD burners become affordable I am switching over to making DVDs of my family videos.

Forgive my ignorance of import/export taxes, if any, but why not mail order from a company in Europe or the USA where they are cheaper?

[holistic]

.........But, once DVD burners become affordable I am switching over to making DVDs of my family videos.

If the video is important - ie: family video , then why not try miniDVD or just make high quality (4500 average bitrate) 20 minute MPEG2 clips (1/2 DVD or fullDVD) burn to CD for transferring to DVD later when you have a DVD burner.

A thought
][

[SatStorm]

@txpharoah

I can partly answer this.
It is not that easy. Also, have you ever consider how you pay for international shipping? And what about the safety of your order? Or, what about the import taxes?

Let me tell you my experience. I live in E.U. and seven months ago, I wanted to buy a DVD burner. The prices in US were the best at the time. So, I tried to do an order. First of all, not so many US online stores ships worldwide. I mean, they state "We ship worldwide" but they don't say that "worldwide" means "Selected Countries Worldwide" In short terms, those countries are the ones which US have stronge military bases or a well know military past (Germany for example).
Anyway, there are some online shops which ships for real worldwide, but they need A. Specific Credit Cards and B. shipping with courier, and guess what, the most expensive ones (western union, etc). There is one more problem here: If something come with a courier from outside E.U., then you have to pay for any import some taxes. I think that way is for every country.
In my example: I wanted to get pioneer 105 from a US online shop. I had to pay: 220$ for the burner, 140$ for the courier and about 110 Euros for the import. So I end up with ~465 Euros for the burner. At the time, the same burner here, costed 440 Euros. I choose to wait for prices to drop...

Even for countries between E.U. the shipping is high. The same burner from Germany at the time costed about 320 Euros. The shipping again was about 80 Euros. Delivery in 2 weeks and the handling cost was about 20 Euros. So you end up with 420 Euros.

And what about if during shipping something happened to the burner? Send it back? Ain't that easy. The returns are for 20 days after THEY send it to you. Standard international shipping is about 10 working days. That means about 14 days and if they ship it Friday it might need 16 days.... Something wrong (a day off for example, a local celebration etc) and you can't return it, even if it is broken because of the shipping!

Only if you live in UK - Australia and partly Germany buying online from US maybe gonna cost you less. There are special trading laws for them.


From the other hand, buying from Amazon or Yahoo DVDs, CDs, Books and small stuff, because they send them through standard post (with your risk), is cheaper in most cases. A typical example is a DVD movie. It costs 16$ in US and about 32 Euros here. The shipping is about 5$ so this way there is a considering ~11$ difference. Personally, I by only online DVDs any more. Much cheaper if you buy them in pairs or 4 together!

[dominic01]

I have been advised to get Canopus ADVC 100/50 to capture from Analogue Camcorder to DV and then convert it to VCD to get good VCDs. The other method which I used to use earlier was to capture by Dazzle DVC II from Analog to MPEG 2 and then convert it to VCDs. I used to use Tmpgenc 2.55 for encoding to VCDs. Is there anyother better method to produce better VCDs from Analog source ? What are the capture cards, third party softwares available for better quality ?

Also I would suggest you to consider KVCD (www.kvcd.net) if you are dealing with CD's.

Dominic

[vsenapati]

Thanks friends in Forum, I have taken the right decision of getting Canopus ADVC 50 and I am quite happy with the quality of capture. I could not get that quality in Dazzle DVC II. I am busy with my canopus ADVC 50 right now.

[Cecilio]

Thanks friends in Forum, I have taken the right decision of getting Canopus ADVC 50 and I am quite happy with the quality of capture. I could not get that quality in Dazzle DVC II. I am busy with my canopus ADVC 50 right now.

hey you know CVD is also pretty good you can have 60 minutes on one cd-r with good quality i mean for sure its way better than the 80 minutes on vcd quality. plus you can really easily transfer those to DVD-R/+R later just drag and drop oh and use 48000 for audio frequency.

[MrKGB]

hey you know CVD is also pretty good you can have 60 minutes on one cd-r with good quality i mean for sure its way better than the 80 minutes on vcd quality. plus you can really easily transfer those to DVD-R/+R later just drag and drop oh and use 48000 for audio frequency.

Yep, CVD, aka 1/2 DVD, aka 352x576 is a very good idea.
I think most of the DVD players in India must support it (except Sony).