I can't burn VCD in perfect quality

[DjBeau]

First of all I want to ask this question:

I can't burn VCD at all. Is it because my burner is sooo old (several years - 2x speed) that it doesn't support VCD?

Second - and this is, for now, my biggest problem:

I have bought a Sony DV cam. I can easily import and work on my movies in DV file format. When I'm finished working on the movie I save it as DV because I figure it's the only way not to lower the quality.
But when my friend - whose burner CAN burn VCD - wants to burn it the quality goes all bad. If I play it on my stand-alone DVD player the quality is not nearly as good as it is, when I just connect my camera directly to the TV to see my footage.
Why is the quality that bad? Is there any way that I can burn a CD that will work on my DVD player without losing the lovely DV quality?

[DJRumpy]

Not without going to SVCD, CVD, or even DVD for your final output. SVCD, and CVD are the next step up from VCD's, and both will give you a better end result, but your standalone may not be compatible. (see SVCD on the left, and DVD Players to see if yours is listed)

[bruce48]

My cd burner is almost as old as yours--Zip CD by Iomega---and it burns at 4x.
I would think maybe it is a software problem.
Here is my formula for outstanding looking SVCDs and VCDs:

I use Pinnacle Studio 7 to edit my project and then I create an AVI.
Then I use a VCD or SVCD template in TMPGenc to create the necessary file and burn my project into SVCD or VCD using Nero.
It seems TMPGenc and Nero are the faves for a lot of people.
Good luck!
bk

[Digifreak]

DV and VCD are 2 entirely different animals. Your VCD(standard) will only have 352(NTSC)x240 resolution and 1150 bitrate, at a quality way below what DV is capable of. You can make it look much better by using non-standard VCD (XVCD) MPEG1. Here the resolution can be whatever you want and bitrate whatever you want. Higher bitrate=less time fit on CD. Keep in mind not all DVD players play XVCD. If your player can handle SVCD 480(NTSC)x480 MPEG2, you will be much more pleased with the result than VCD, do some reading to the left. Look at DVD Players to see compatibility. The higher your bitrate, the better the quality, the less time will fit on CD. Your CD-RW should be able to burn VCD fine as long as it doesn't buffer underrun, maybe 1x speed. It sounds like you just don't have the software to convert your DV to VCD.

[House de Kris]

An hour of DV is about 12G. An hour of VCD is about 600M. It is not surprising that a VCD of DV footage doesn't look like a perfect copy. DV has 20x the bitrate of VCD.

[DjBeau]

Thanks for all the answers.
Concerning SVCD: Actually I've tried this, but when it was played on the stand-alone DVD it was extremely small - actually it only used 1/4 of the televisio screen. That's rather funny, I think.
To your information I use PAL.

[Digifreak]

Either your players was not SVCD compatible or encoding was screwed up. Try a different known compatible player (Apex always works) and a different encoder or different settings. Do LOTS of reading to the left. I am quite pleased with SVCD variable bitrate if 1 hr or less per CD encoded with CCE 4-6 pass.