give me your opinion.............

[easydvd]

Does anyone have an opinion about this.......


DVD rip and encode straight to VCD with a high CBR (1800kbs)

----or-----


DVD rip and encode to VERY high mpeg4 (2200+) and then I have a high quality original that I can do VCD or SVCD with TMPGEnc

[vitualis]

There is absolutely no reason in going to an intermediary MPEG-4 format (or any codec) first.

You already have a high quality original. It is the decoded MPEG-2 original video, digitally ripped from the DVD. There is no higher quality original if you are going from this source.

If you want to make a VCD, make a VCD directly from this source.

If you want to make a SVCD, make it directly from this source.

You should only be making MPEG-4/DivX if you want to make a DivX movie.

Regards.

[easydvd]

I totally agree with you. The reason I'm curious about this is DVD2SVCD apparently encodes an avi on the fly before going to VCD or SVCD. Or, am I totally wrong about that?

[vitualis]

I don't use DVD2SVCD but I'm pretty sure that it doesn't encode to AVI first "on-the-fly". It uses AVISynth to frameserve to the encoder (i.e., it pass the video data info off to the encoder directly from the source +/- filters to the TMPGEnc file, but masquerading it as an AVI file). AVISynth allows you to use encoders that only normally load AVI files in a much more flexible fashion -- however, there is no "intermediary" AVI file as such.

Regards.

[easydvd]

aaaaaahhhhhhh.......

I thought that it was making an avi to encode from..... that was what led to my curiosity about encoding to vcd or avi first. I usually stick with either avi or vcd and am not too familiar with svcd encoding.....except that it takes a lot longer than i have patience for.

You seem to be a knowledgeable individual, can you tell me also if you think the result given with multi pass (4x) VBR using CCE as the encoder is worth the extra time it takes? I can encode 100 mins to MPEG1@1660kbs with a screen res of 352x240 in about 5 hours with DVDx. If I encode it to MPEG4 avi, still with DVDx, the time taken is about 3 to 3.5 hours. It takes like 11 or 12 to do the same thing with CCE multi pass VBR at the same resolution. Still new to CCE, mostly I use either TMPGEnc or DVDx and have had excellent results with both of them in terms of speed and quality.
Thanks in advance!!

[C-Dub]

It is the decoded MPEG-2 original video, digitally ripped from the DVD. There is no higher quality original if you are going from this source.

EXACTLY