vcd newbie

[the_shyguy]

hiya ppl... new to this forum

i have a bit of a newbie question concerning vcd...

what format should i be looking for when downloading movies? .mpg? .avi? etc.

i have TMPGEnc ready to be installed, cos i read that i will probably need that? and i have nero for burning...

as most ppl i want to get the best quality of vcd to view on my home dvd...

i have read the guides and other posts etc. but didnt find a straight forward answer to my above question...

shyguy

[glockjs]

.mpg is gonna be the easiest to deal with. .avi(divx, xvid) most likely is gonna give you the best quality, but takes time to convert. it really all depends on the person who put it in that format in the first place.

[teegee420]

If you download an avi you will have to convert it to mpeg. For more info about this conversion there are links in the guides section that explain this in detail. If you don't have a DVD burner than the best quality video disc you can make is probably SVCD. I would advise that you read more about VCD's and SVCD's by clicking on the "What Is VCD" and "What Is SVCD" in the upper left portion of this page. By the way, welcome to the forum.

[zedolfblack]

The quality of a VCD will reflect the quality of the source it was made from - the format of the source is in effect negligible.



When you're considering downloading a video to convert to VCD establish it's resolution and bitrate.
It's resolution and bitrate equate to 'bits per pixel' and this is a true measure of the source video's quality.

The equation is

bits per pixel=bitrate(bits per second) / (width X height X framerate(fps))

The higher the bits per pixel the better the video quality.
Smaller resolution and higher bitrate is generally better than large resolution and a lower bitrate.

Standard VCD bits per pixel values are

• PAL 0.454
  NTSC 29.97fps 0.454
  NTSC 23.976fps 0.567

(I've read that a bits per pixel value needs to be 0.15 for a minimal quality).

Do some sums.
The figures will be a more accurate indication of the quality of a VCD that a source will encode to than the format of the source.

Martin.

[the_shyguy]

ah... okay cool... cheers for the advice ppl...

with the res and bitrate thing... i am currently using overnet and there arent any options to find that info out before you download the movie...

do you suggest a diff p2p? are there any p2p's that display this info before you go through the process of downloading it..?

and so when looking for a movie to convert to vcd, i should just be looking at the res and bitrate, whether it is .mpg or .avi?

[zedolfblack]

Yeah right - how to know a video's properties before you've downloaded it....

I guess that unless you download a bit and preview it you're not in luck!

I'll post again if i have any bright ideas.

Martin.

[ZippyP.]

Due to better compression, a typical (divx, Xvid) avi will be better quality than an mpeg of the same file size. Just a little rule of thumb.

[Capmaster]

Why VCD? Isn't that limiting your quality a bit? Why not author a DVD instead? If you're downloading many movies you can either get a good quality one and burn it or get several smaller ones and put several on one DVD. Burners aren't that expensive anymore if you're planning this as a hobby. Just my $0.02 worth

And as a note: Be careful when discussing movie P2P downloading. This board has zero tolerance for illegal/bootleg/warez download posts

[the_shyguy]

aiight... cool cheers ppl... yeah i would like to go the dvd burner, but gotta get the cash first

cheers ppl

shyguy

[the_shyguy]

hey... i gotta question about the bits per pixal thing...

i looked at one of my avi's and did the equation and got an answer of approx. 2.3 bits per pixel. but then i used gspot on the same avi and it said that the bits per pixel is 0.226? so would we assume that gspot is correct and i am wrong? i went by the equation shown earlier in this post...

to get the info for the equation i just right clicked on the file and went into properties and the summary showed the required info... or cant that be trusted accurately?

shyguy