VCD Quality

[Sakuya]

I'm creating a picture slideshow for VCD. The pictures were captured using a digital camera and are really sharp. However, when I encode it to VCD MPEG standard, they become blurred on the computer. Is there a way to increase the video quality while staying within the standard? I'm afraid that it won't play in the DVD player if I increase the quality. I can burn DVDs too but I don't want to waste a 3.5GB DVD with something like this which is pretty small (164MB in all and that's only the original slideshow in AVI format). Help?

[xtreemkareem]

Most DVD players will play a Kodak/JPEG CD. Just burn your photos to CD as JPEG and see if it will play. If that doesn't work, you could try doing an SVCD/CVD or c-DVD slideshow on CD. I've never tried it but it's orth a shot!

[daamon]

Hi Sakuya,
What you're seeing is possibly / probably the result of interlaced material being played on a progressive display PC monitor. This is normal.

Use a player on your PC like WinDVD or PowerDVD, or go ahead and burn the VCD (use a re-writeable if you don't trust me) and play it on the DVD player and TV. It'll be fine...

[Sakuya]

It looks better on the TV but still not as good compared to DVD material. But I don't want to waste a whole DVD-R for these tiny pictures. Or is there a way to make the picture files as high quality as possible so that it will be really big and fill up the whole disc? I just want to believe that no empty space is left so that it won't be wasted.

[mats.hogberg]

No, a VCD will never look as good as a Video DVD. You say it's from an AVI - then it's just "any other AVI movie" - encode at highest bitrate possible to DVD specs and author as DVD.
If you have the images, give ProShow Gold a try. It allows you to author as VCD, SVCD and DVD (IIRC), with the highest quality possible for the format you select.

/Mats

[guns1inger]

Making really big picture files isn't going to do anyhting but slow down your player. VCD will resize the pictures to standard TV res (whatever format you choose). If you burn it as a data disk, then the player will resize them so you can leave them large if you want. I find I get better quality if I resize them to the correct resolution and adjust them for interlace flicker anyway.

While it may seem a waste of space, a DVD disk is pretty cheap, so you really only blowing a few cents.

[ktnwin]

As a matter of facts, photo slide shows on the TV using VCD or DVD will give you the best resolution of 720x480 (NTSC). This is extremely low resolution for a still photo. I never expect decent quality in this case.
I would use the computer (or laptop) to do a photo slide show. The picture quality is of no contest.

[bugster]

As a matter of facts, photo slide shows on the TV using VCD or DVD will give you the best resolution of 720x480 (NTSC). This is extremely low resolution for a still photo.

On VCD, you only get the higher resolution if you do not include transitions. Add one transition and the whole lot is considered video, dropping the resolution to 352*240. Not great for photo's!

[Hyper Shinchan]

As a matter of facts, photo slide shows on the TV using VCD or DVD will give you the best resolution of 720x480 (NTSC)

VCD still resolution is 352x240 in low resolution and 704x480 in high resolution. If you want 720x480, well, this is just for the DVD.
Anyway I prefer SVCD slideshow, I don't know about transition, I don't use them, but slideshow ,also with audio, are really sharp on my DVD player, really sharper than VCD slideshow, but I obtain the best results with 640x480 source, with highest resolution it isn't the same.