is it possible to burn more than 80mins of video on a VCD?

[4th_alphabet]

i recently tried to burn an 89min movie into a single disc VCD. i used a bitrate calculator and it said that i needed 1010kb/sec to fit 90 mins onto an 80min CD. i set the min, max, min avg, max avg bitrate settings on DVD2SVCD all to 1000kb/sec and started ripping an MPEG1 VCD, but the end result were 2 files, one just over 79 mins, and the other was 10 mins. is this because that an MPEG-1 VCD can only have a maximum of 80mins? or am i doing something wrong?

[MOVIEGEEK]

There is no limit to a VCD(mpeg-1)only the cd length limits it.I would use
TMPGEnc to encode both your files into one 80min.
http://www.vcdhelp.com/tmpgenc.htm

[4th_alphabet]

thanks for replying. so the CD length limits the amount of time i can fit on a VCD? for example, an 80min/700Mb CD-R can't fit anything over 80mins for a VCD no matter what bitrate i encode it to? wanna confirm that. and does the same thing apply to SVCD as well?

[vitualis]

No, no. It ultimately depends on the size.

For standard bitrate VCDs, it works out at exactly 1x CD. Thus, if you have an 80min CD, you can fit about 80min of video. If you have a 90 min CD, you can fit about 90min of video.

If you are making non-standard bitrates (e.g., XVCD), you will have to go by size.

You can fit about 796 MB of video onto an 80min/700MB disc without overburning. The apparent size discrepancy is because VCDs are burnt in MODE2 Form2 (which doesn't have ECC like CD-ROMs).

Regards.

[4th_alphabet]

thanks for the info. standard bitrate VCD meaning 1150kb/sec right? so at 1000kb/sec MPEG1 (non-standard) i'm no longer making a VCD but an XVCD? trying to learn as i go along.

ok, even so...how come DVD2SVCD still gives me 2 files eventhough the bitrate calculator says that 1000kb/sec will fit 89mins onto one CD. is the bitrate calculation wrong?

[vitualis]

I don't know how DVD2AVI works, but working how much bitrate you can fit, etc., is just pure maths...

Regards.

[markums2k]

There are other ways to decrease file size as well, and thus fit more video to a CD.

* Crop the video while encoding. Easy to do in TMPEGenc. In theory, the more black space on screen, the better (less data). What I do is test playback on an actual TV monitor through my Pinnacle hardware before encoding. You see, there's also a little teeny bit of video on the left and right sides that is visible on your computer, but not a TV. So I set little guidelines directly into the video and I crop that stuff out as well. So we're talking masks on the top, bottom, giving even full-screen video that letterboxed "cinematic look" (which you may or may not like), and right and left masks that are not visible when the VCD is viewed on a TV. Depending on how much mask you can take, it can decrease the file size moderately.

* Inverse Telecine. I haven't mastered this yet. As far as I know, this process will reduce 29.97fps to 24fps, thus taking up less space, since the result is almost 5 extra frames per second. It adds up.

* Multi-pass VBR. From what I understand, VBR MPEGs take up less space than CBR MPEGs. Encoding takes longer, but it may help you squeeze that extra bit of video onto the CD, and it normally looks better when the settings are right.

I'm only familiar with TMPEGenc, but these options should be available in most encoders.

[4th_alphabet]

question: under the bitrate tab in DVD2SVCD, do the values include the audio bitrate? for eg. if a bitrate calculator says that you need 1000kb/sec to fit 90mins on one CD, do i set the bitrate at 1000kb/sec or 808kb/sec (1000 - 192) if my audio is 192kb/sec?

[markums2k]

I belive these are seperate settings/bitrates, meant to equal a total bitrate of 1000 or whatever. So, yes, unless you have the extra space, you'll have to accomodate the 192 audio bitrate as well.