Choosing VCD or SVCD - what factors to consider?

[CarolynG]

Hi all,

I am wondering if there are certain reasons/characteristics to take in to
account when deciding to encode a movie to VCD or SVCD?

To put it another way - When I want to burn a movie (often downloaded, and in avi format) are there characteristics of this movie that should dictate whether it should be made to VCD or SVCD?

I hope that is understandable!! I was unable to find an answer to this question.

Otherwise, I am aware of the need to choose the correct FPS in TMPGEnc. Also, both formats play well in my DVD

Thank you for any help!

"CarolynG"

[lumis]

well vcd = 10mb a minute.. svcd is VBR.. if the movie you're encoding is 90 minutes you'd have to split it over 2 discs.. using only 900 of the available 1600mb.. the end result would be much better if you were encoding to svcd, because you could use both discs to capacity to maximize the quality..

not to mention the fact that svcd uses mpeg2 video, which is better than mpeg1.

if you're looking for quality, svcd is the way to go.

if quality isnt much of a concern, but quantity is, vcd is the way to go..

although i hardly ever use those formats, i did back in the day.. dvdR all the way now..

[AlecWest]

although i hardly ever use those formats, i did back in the day.. dvdR all the way now..

Me, too. And, prices for DVD burners now are so cheap they remind me of CD burner prices only a few short years ago. Hehe, I remember when the very first internal DVD burner came out for a computer. I believe it was a Pioneer brand that cost roughly about $4,000. Now, you can get a BenQ DVD burner that would run rings around it for only $44:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16827101645

Heck, it even burns dual-layer (grin) DVD+Rs. Not sure why anyone would want to burn VCDs anymore unless they had an ancient system ... especially since capture cards are equally cheap and the software needed to author and burn is largely free.

[Cole]

Not sure why anyone would want to burn VCDs anymore unless they had an ancient system ...

I think that VCD still has its place. I do my conversions to DVD the vast majority of the time, but occasionally I do capture a short programme off air and covert to VCD. This is usually for something like a documentary or chat show (and from a very clean source, like a digital receiver).

Mind you... my old signature used to say, "now that I have discovered DVDs, what am I going to do with all these CD-Rs?" I have a fair few CD-Rs, so I may as well still find some use for them

am wondering if there are certain reasons/characteristics to take in to
account when deciding to encode a movie to VCD or SVCD?

There is one other thing that may be worth mentioning. I sometimes encode stuff to VCD format (or XVCD) so that I can fit a whole series of a programme onto one DVD using TMPGEnc DVD Author.

SVCD format is better quality but AFAIK it is not as easy (but not impossible) to later put onto DVD as VCD is.

Hope that this is helpful.

[mats.hogberg]

If I can make it fit on one CD as VCD, I'd go for that. If it's more than 80 minutes, SVCD would be my choice, or rather CVD, as CVD is also DVD compliant, making the transition (the day you get a DVD burner) really simple. Calculate the bitrate to fill 2 CD. If I end up <15-1600 kbps, CVD is a better option anyway.

/Mats

[CarolynG]

Thanks to everyone for your helpful replies!

I do have lots of CD-Rs to use up!

From your replies, I believe that I had made an assumption that is incorrect. I had assumed that there would be technical characteristics of a movie that would suggest to either go to VCD or SVCD. (Eg. whether it be such things like Video Codec, bitrate, frame size.. or other technical factors relating to its original encoding).

If anyone can confirm that I made this up, it would be appreciated!!

I'll be making more SVCDs now until I use up the CD-Rs

[freebird73717]

I second following mats advice. Use CVD 352 x 480 for ntsc and 352 x 576 for pal and use 48khz for the audio and you will be set. Also like Mats says when you do eventually move to dvd it will be fairly simple to take your cvd movies and put them on dvd... not to say that vcd isn't as easy but cvd will give better quality....In my oppinion.

[freebird73717]

As a follow up use common sense...If you have an avi that has a resolution of 320x240 then choose vcd as it's resolution is closer than cvd. Choose a format thats resolution is closer to the original avi.

[DereX888]

CarolynG
I would buy any of the cheap dvd players capable of playing divx/xvid files. They can be found for as little as $40.
It is much easier to simpl burn those AVI files on your CDRs and watch them with dvd/divx standalone player on your tv, than to encode them to MPEG, burn as SVCD, and then watch them...

But if you must encode AVIs to any other format - use SVCD instead of VCD or CVD (352x480/576) as some suggested. On a good dvd player and good tv you will *always* notice better quality of SVCD over CVD (if both are made right ofcourse, because some people have ability to make even a DVD in worse quality than VCD )

[freebird73717]

The main reason i suggest CVD is that it is perfectly dvd compliant. Not all players will play dvds with svcd material. Some authoring programs won't allow svcd mpegs because of the compliancy issue. However I will acknowlege that with the extra resolution of svcd it will look slightly better than cvd...but not much to my eyes.

[dphirschler]

If your source is interlaced, VCD may not be the best choice for it as it does not support interlaced video.

SVCD requires a fairly clean source, so if it is noisy, you might want to consider going to DVD.


Darryl

[Hyper Shinchan]

On a good dvd player and good tv you will *always* notice better quality of SVCD over CVD (if both are made right ofcourse, because some people have ability to make even a DVD in worse quality than VCD )

And I think that not all the DVD player support CVD. But about the resolution, if you use the same bitrate with SVCD (480x480) and CVD (352x480) you will have best results with CVD, as it's written in the CVD "what is"that you can find here on this website https://www.videohelp.com/forum/userguides/98177.php

[adam]

I can't possibly see how the quality difference between CVD and SVCD can be anything other than pure opinion. Some people will prefer the results of a higher bits per pixel ratio and others will prefer the higher resolution. This will also depend on the nature of the source.

[DereX888]

Yes, not every dvd player is capable of playing SVCDs or CVDs, but in my experience every standalone player that was capable of playing CVDs was able to play SVCDs as well, so there is no difference in compatibility between both 2 formats. If a player can't play SVCDs - it most likely won't play CVDs either.

But as someone pointed out CVDs are perfect for D2 DVDs (just upsample the sound if it is 'proper' for CVD/SVCD 44.1kHz). This might be important factor to consider if someone is planning to move his CDR-based video collection to DVDRs. However CarolynG said from begining she want to utilize her CDR blanks, not DVDRs - thus compliancy with DVDs is not an issue at all.

Also both CVD and SVCD support interlace (but CarolynG most likely won't have any interlaced AVI source among those "downloaded files").

Lastly - the quality is in the eye of beholder, true. But the arguments like "more bits/less pixels per frame" in case of CVDs versus "less bits/more pixels per frame" in case of SVCDs is fairly simple to explain.
You are right if you compare CBR CVD versus CBR SVCD, I would agree that given same source for both CVD should look better.
But IMO only insane person would NOT utilize VBR abilities of CVD and SVCD formats. Good encoder in VBR mode will allocate more bits in high motion sequence per frames, and less bits for low-motion sequence of frames. Therefore with good/proper encoding there should be no difference in quality when it comes to "bits per frame".
Then we have left with only "pixels per frame" argument, and in this comparison SVCD is obviously better than CVD since it has more pixels per frame (higher resolution), its that simple.
Yes, I know that on rare occasion maximum allowed bitrate may not be sufficient for some very very high motion scene, and in such case CVD would yield better quality portion of the movie than SVCD in the same part since it has less pixels = more bits in each frame (or actually it would be "less pixelation on screen" than SVCD, because in most of such extreme cases Im rather sure that standard maximum allowed videobitrate would be not enough in both formats to sustain good, non-pixelated picture) ; but throughout any given entire movie how many scenes like this happens there? Not that many to notice them, right? Only Matrix, Fast & Furious, and very few other like this come to mind. Among 90-95% of all movies very few would benefit from lower pixel count and higher bitrate allocated to them as it is with CVDs. Therefore in conclusion you must agree that overall picture quality of entire movie in SVCD format *must* yield better quality than same in CVD format.

2 CDs per average 100min long movie at VBR mode in SVCD format in vast majority of cases simply must look better than same in CVD format, even if we count some very high motion scenes where maximum allowed video bitrate was not enough in both formats (and CVD had these particular frames looking better than SVCD had). As I already said - very few movies like "Matrix" have constant motion of most of the pixels in most or all of consecutive frames for it to become a noticeable/visible quality factor.
Im no expert, but Ive made enough of both CVD & SVCD in my life already to notice the difference.
CVD is my first choice only for short movies (if they were going to be put on a single CDR) or them Matrix-alike lots of high-motion scenes ladden movies; any other 'average' movie benefits significantly in its quality from SVCD's "more pixels per frame", when "more bits per frame" is not neccessary or not an issue throughout the most of the movie.

EDIT:
Lastly - I didnt want it to turn into another CVD vs SVCD neverending threads.
May I remind you all my 'main' suggestion to CarolynG:
buy a cheap dvd/divx player and burn your AVIs on your CDRs as what they are - an AVI files, and play them as such without any unneccessary CVD or SVCD encoding work. If you have more than few movies in AVI format it will save you tens of hours of your time... well worth those mere $40 IMO...

[Cornucopia]

Yes, the DVD/DivX player would be the most straightforward and probably highest quality answer, but how do you know that what the OP has are REALLY avi files. On the net, even from friends, there are mislabelled files--asf/wmv as avi, mpg as avi, avi as mpg, etc.
Plus, if it's avi, but not DivX (or other compatible MPEG4 alternative), it still wouldn't play.

Going to MPEG2 for DVD Authoring is still the most compatible option of all.

Scott

[DereX888]

Yes, the DVD/DivX player would be the most straightforward and probably highest quality answer, but how do you know that what the OP has are REALLY avi files. On the net, even from friends, there are mislabelled files--asf/wmv as avi, mpg as avi, avi as mpg, etc.
Plus, if it's avi, but not DivX (or other compatible MPEG4 alternative), it still wouldn't play.

Going to MPEG2 for DVD Authoring is still the most compatible option of all.

Scott

True.
I assumed theyre AVI (divx or xvid codecs) because OP said theyre movies (there goes my another assumption - movies as in "full length feature movies"). I have seen on the web only a handful of movies in other format than AVI encoded with one of those 2 mentioned codecs.
The el-cheapo dvd/divx Philips player of mine plays both (plus some versions of ASF/WMV too). The only problem it ever had with AVIs is when advanced, processing power-hungry option of those codecs called GMC (Global Motion Compensation) was used in their encoding.
My other, mid-priced Apex dvd/divx player have no problem with GMC at all.

I agree MPEG-2 is the best current format (quality-wise and compatibility-wise), at least the one with DVD-Video specs.
But them MPEG-4 AVIs (divx/xvid) are second to DVDs in quality, kudos SVCD or CVD to them... (again - assuming theyre "dvdrips" and such "releases" as listed on i.e. http://nforce.nl , not the collection of low quality 10sec ASF porn samples ) and I would rather keep their original resolution (usually same or close to source DVD) than encode them to lower resolutions.