Best format for VCD

[DVDnewbi]

I am going to have a website with high quality clips for download and want to know what format they should be in so people can download them and make a VCD out of them to play in their DVD players, thanks

[daamon]

Hi DVDnewbi,

You say "high quality clips" and then go on to say "so that people can make VCD's".

If VCD is gonna be the end result, and you're not worried about filesize (i.e. neglecting us cave-men still on dial-up in favour of you people in the 21st century with broadband) then why not go straight for MPEG1 which is the VCD standard? Anything higher would be a waste and take longer to download. All people would need to do is author it to VCD (using something like VCDEasy).

See the blue VCD link, top left of the page.

Basically, the higher the quality, the larger the filesize. I suppose you could take a high quality video and encode to Divx AVI or Xvid AVI, but then those downloading would have to do the conversion to MPEG1. More work for them and for you.

If you go the other way, you could have lower resolution (width x height) .wmv, but I'm not sure what the resultant VCD would be like... Nor how easy it is to get .wmv to MPEG1...

[DVDnewbi]

Thanks, would offering downloads to turn into VCD be my only option if i wanted to offer clips people could play on their TV? what about SVCD or what about DVD quality clips or would these be way too big? tnx again

[daamon]

Hi DVDnewbi,

OK - Back to square one first. What's the source of these clips? Home shot footage on a DV cam? What? You see, the level of the quality of the source will be a guide as to the level of quality you go to.

What about SVCD or what about DVD quality clips or would these be way too big?

As it sounds like you know, DVD is better than SVCD, which is better than VCD. The better the quality, the bigger the file size.

For example, a minute from a DV cam (original is DV AVI) encoded to DVD spec at 6,000kbps (good to high quality) gives an MPEG2 file of 43Mb. SVCD at 2,600kbps would be around 20Mb, and VCD at 1,150kbps would be around 9Mb.

[DVDnewbi]

cool, thanks 4 your help BTW i will be shooting with a 3ccd dv cam

[FulciLives]

Best balance of file size and quality would be an MPEG-4 codec such as DivX or Xvid.

It would require people downloading it to convert it to VCD format (or SVCD or DVD etc.) but consider this ...

You could have an option where people could BUY a VCD or SVCD or better yet a DVD from you of this stuff.

So if they like what they download that would be a good extra stream of revenue as some people might want this stuff on DVD but aren't up to the task of converting it themselves.

- John "FulciLives" Coleman