I have been creating VCD's and SVD's for about 8 months with lots of success (and lots of help from the forums). The one issue is quality... svcd and xsvcd just don't have enough bitrate. My guess is there's not one answer to my question below, but I am hoping to spark conversation that might be helpful to all.

Here are the standards I've settled on in 8 months (I work on both Mac & PC):
  • - Capture using analog passthrough over firewire in Premiere. < 0 dropped frames
    - Frameserve using AVISYNTH from Premiere
    - Conversion (video) using CCE - 3 pass VBR < best quality (and I'm mental about quality)
    - Conversion (audio) using TMPGenc < quick, great tool, used to do video here
    - Mux streams in TMPGenc
    - Burn to CDR using Nero < easily the best way to burn all flavors of (x)(S)VCD
Since quality is the only thing that matters, even XSVCD will not suffice.
Question:
  • To create DVD quality video clips for archive purposes, is it enough just to up the bitrate to 9MB/s and check of "DVD compliant" in CCE?
Is there source specific work you need to do to make your final product beautiful? (like going frame by frame to adjust bit-rate manually)
(VCDHelp.com is easily the best site on the net on this topic. I would have gone nuts long ago without these forums. Thanks all.)
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mkirk