704x480 VCD?

[meapoppa]

When burning pix from my 2MPixel camera directly onto VCD w/ Nero 5.x, I notice that they appear quite sharp. Since Nero doesn't allow music tracks w/ the JPEG pictures, I used my video editing s/w (MovieXOne) to add a music track, generated an 704x480 AVI, converted to a 352x240 compliant MPEG-1 w/ TMPGEnc & reburned w/ Nero. The pix are kinda fuzzy.

So I tried converting from the AVI to a 704x480 MPEG-1, again w/ TMPGEnc. (The other settings in TMPGEnc are retained from the standard NTSC VCD template BTW.) I didn't really expect this version to play in my DVD player but it did. And the pix are quite sharp.

Does this always work? Will this higher resolution play on other DVD players?

I've got a Pioneer (sorry, don't have the model # handy at the moment but it's about 2 yrs. old).

[Vejita-sama]

You've made an xVCD. Generally speaking as long as your resolution is can be dived by 16 it will work on your TV. However, if you go over 720x480 and center your MPEG parts will be off the screen.

For displaying still pics use the higest resolution and file size possible for best results.

[hitechjunkie]

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On 2001-09-26 13:25:43, meapoppa wrote:
Does this always work? Will this higher resolution play on other DVD players?
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only the really forgiving ones. i've got two toshibas and a jvc. my jvc is the only one that will play hi-rez XVCDs, even 720x480. but because of the add'l time for encoding at the much higher rez, i've stuck to 352x480 if i want higher video quality XVCDs.

[meapoppa]

Thanks for your reply.

Is xVCD part of the VCD standard? And will other DVD players be able to play this?

Also, what about the bitrate? Will increasing the bitrate over standard VCD give an even better picture? Will doing this cause additional playback problems?

[kinneera]

http://www.vcdhelp.com/xvcd.htm

http://www.vcdhelp.com/comparison.htm

http://www.vcdhelp.com/dvdplayers.php

[Vejita-sama]

Again the higher the resolution and bitrate the better your encode will be. Not all DVD players can play xVCDs but most of the new/popular models (eg. Pioneer 343, 434, 333 or Hitachi 415) can.

As the bitrate goes up you can store less material per disc (resolution has no affect of file size).

[VideoBoy]

I have to disappoint you guys. At 704 (or 720) x 480 resolution, only still images look nice, but not a video. Video looks much much worse than 352x240 res. I have tried them both, my Sony DVP660 plays both and found that for VCD 352x240 is the best result yielding resolution.

[Vejita-sama]

That's because at higher resolutions you need to up the bitrate or the sharpness goes to hell. Try making a 352x240, 352x480, 480x480, and 720x480 MPEG (say 2min clips from DVD source) at 2500kbit/s (or DVD max) and compare.

That's why for DivX -> MPEG 352x240/352x480 is more than good enough.

[vitualis]

Remember, from 352x240/288 --> 704x480/576 there is a 4-fold increase in the number of pixels.

If there isn't a commensurate increase in bitrate, quality will suffer despite the increased resolution. This doesn't necessarily mean a four fold increase in bitrate though as there is some degree of redundancy in the visual data.

Regards.

[hitechjunkie]

<TABLE BORDER=0 ALIGN=CENTER WIDTH=85%><TR><TD><font size=-1>Quote:</font><HR size=1 color=black></TD></TR><TR><TD><FONT SIZE=-1><BLOCKQUOTE>
On 2001-09-26 21:36:43, vitualis wrote:
Remember, from 352x240/288 --> 704x480/576 there is a 4-fold increase in the number of pixels.

If there isn't a commensurate increase in bitrate, quality will suffer despite the increased resolution. This doesn't necessarily mean a four fold increase in bitrate though as there is some degree of redundancy in the visual data.

Regards.

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agreed! as an experiment, i encoded a rip of "The Klumps" to an MPEG-1, 720x480, 23.97fps, CQ_VBR 0-2300, and the XVCD played flawlessly on my JVC and my niece's Oritron and the video quality was amazing, even on her 53" Toshiba.


<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: hitechjunkie on 2001-09-27 08:18:27 ]</font>

[ktnwin]

I have tried similar thing. Encode (a short DVD rip) XVCD at 720x480 res. and CQ_VBR 80 (bitrate from 0 to 2500.)

I play the resulting MPEG on my PC with WMP (100% zoom) and
I can really see all the defects in the video. With 352x240 XVCD (other settings remain identical), I could hardly see any imperfection even at 200% zoom.

Have not tried to play on my Pioneer DV-333 to see if it even play it.