super video cds and picture q and good?

[bionickaren]

how good is super video cd i find them cheep and good for keeping videos iv found on the net ie file sharing places im talking old off air recordings iv made over 200+ super video cds the fast and easy to burn..but saying that if i find a rare clip i do burn to dvdr do anyone other than me use super video cds? i mean you can get fancy menues and intros with the super cd and the picture q is fantastic but why are we still using super video cds i lov making them if i run out of dvd and there super easy to make unlike dvdrs some of the clips i find on the net wont burn ont dvdr but will to super video cd ie wmv vobs mpegs mpeg2 usa format videos ...blah blah blah! im happy with the picture q and my friend says the picture i see on the pc and the q of the clip will be the same in the super video cd is this true i think it is saying that video cd is horid q and i stay well back from that!!

regards k


pps yes i have a dvdrecorder and have put over 50 video tapes and diffrent recordings onto dvd its fantastic

[DVWannaB]

bionickaren,

You can count yourself as a small number of the legacy videophiles

I dont know how many people still create SVCD, but I am willing to bet a far smaller number compared to 5 years ago, when DVD burners and DVD-R were too expensive. Now a DVD burner is like $45 and a DVD-R disc is 30 cents. Also, lets not forget the DVD Recorder. So many VCD and SVCD videophiles made the leap to archiving on DVD.

I to used to do a lot of SVCD and VCD when I first got interested in preserving recordings nad needed a step up from VHS around 2001/2002. SVCD was a great option, for the same reasons you listed. Good quality with small file sizes. I cant help with your problematic files that will not burn to DVD as I will let the experts handle that. But if you have an MPEG2 (including VOBs) SVCD, you can use DVD-lab to author and burn to DVD-R without re-encoding. WMV to SVCD, I am pretty sure you have to convert MPEG2 480x480 resolution to be SVCD compliant.

My .02 c worth.

[jman98]

Some people still use SVCDs, but not many. Yes, the format allowed for much better than VCD quality, but there are a lot of reasons why SVCD has basically failed to catch on.

1) Higher quality comes at the cost of having less recording time per disc. Some people get seriously bent out of shape at changing discs. An 85 minute movie would require either 2 or 3 discs, depending on the bit rate used. I can burn a VCD of an 85 minute movie to a 90 minute CD-R and have it all on one disc.
2) SVCD never caught on as an official standard and nobody has made commercial discs in the format in 5+ years.
3) DVD recorders and media are so cheap now that unless you live in a low income country, there's no good reason not to just make a DVD.
4) VCD encoding quality has improved immensely in the past few years. One reason is that most VCDs are now letterboxed, which means that most of the video bit rate for VCD is used to encode the video not the black bars, so you use the bit rate for a movie that now only takes up 1/2 to 2/3 of the screen, you should expect a quality jump. No VCD was letterboxed in the early parts of this decade or earlier and the quality suffers. Also, the encoders have gotten much better and more efficient. I've got a commercial VCD I bought through an importer of the Taiwanese movie _Three Times_. The VCD was made this year for the Hong Kong market. I was stunned at how good it was. It is the best commercial VCD I've ever seen. DVD quality? No, but it's certainly SVCD quality and it's "good enough" for most people. I also have a few of the Shaw Brothers reissues that only came out on VCD and they are all very very good. VCD today is not what it was 5-6 years ago.

[ZippyP.]

... it's certainly SVCD quality... VCD today is not what it was 5-6 years ago.

VCD is 352x240, SVCD is 480x480 (for NTSC). It's just not possible for a VCD to reach the quality of a good SVCD when it has less than 1/2 the resolution. Note that I said "good SVCD", no sense comparing to a bad one.

Having said that, if it's good enough for you then that's all that matters.

Edit: Correction on SVCD resolution!

[DVWannaB]

SVCD is 352x480 (for NTSC). It's just not possible for a VCD to reach the quality of a good SVCD when it has 1/2 the resolution. Note that I said "good SVCD", no sense comparing to a bad one.

Hmmm...I always thought SVCD was 480x480 and CVD was 352x480. Back to the classroom for me

[bionickaren]

this is a screen cap from my supervideo cd i made 2 day this is what i hope for when i make one and what it looks like on my tv dvd set...




and not bad im really happy with it

[bionickaren]

and another mpeg clip recorded onto super video cd

[DVWannaB]

ever thought of graduating up tp XviD or DivX? Might be worth a look. Smaller file sizes better quality and higher resolution.

[stantheman1976]

You can compare (S)VCD to analog tapes and vinyl. They are not widely used anymore, but there will always be a small contigent of people who love them and if they are made with the right equipment both produce great results.

I've only seen a couple VCD movies that were offically produced and they were very good quality. They played crystal clear on my TV. I've also seen some homemade encodings that look awful.

(S)VCD is a cool format because of being able to fit decent amounts of video on inexpensive media. That's what gave it an edge years ago. The format di much better in asian countries than anywhere else. The marketplace there is just different. Now DVD media and recorders have gotten so affordable and commonplace that there is little need for the (S)VCD format.

If you still find (S)VCD to be your cup of tea then make as many as you please and enjoy them and don't worry about what anyone else says. It all boils down to what makes you happy.