VCD vs. DVD, VCD quality

[justducky150]

Question:
VCD quality is average. Surprisingly I have been successful in my rookie experience in burning our family videos from a Sony DCR-TRV520 NTSC. I'm using Pinnacle Express 1.1 software and obviously using the firewire. I tried burning the SVCD and couldn't view it on the new Sony DAV-C450 DVD player like I can the VCD. I thought the video quality would be at least above average, with which I would be happy.
Christmas is almost here and I am debating whether I should copy the videos to the old VHS for fear of having this subpar VCD quality. The whole idea is to get away from VHS. Please tell me I am doing the right thing and any ideas of tweaking the quality.
I don't have a problem with purchasing the DVD burner although the blank DVDs seem to be much more expensive than the blank CD-Rs. Should I accept the reduced quality VCD or bite the bullet and go to DVD? Any feedback will make a happy holiday for our family! Thanks.

[Tommyknocker]

Since they are family videos, I am sure you agree with me when I say they literally priceless and irreplaceable. If I were you, I would go with DVD quality. Anyway, try this TMPGEnc guide and see if it helps in "tweaking the quality".

[Mavrick]

I would go with the DVD writer since you can’t go buy another home video if it gets missed up (tape breaks, etc.). DVD Writers are getting fairly cheap now ($299 range) and the Media is down in cost too. I would look at the HP 200i (+R and +RW), or the Sony DRU 500a (-R, -RW, AND +R, +RW).

If the DVD writer is not an option, I would still get the videos on to some type of SVCD, XSVD, or CVD. Your problem with not being able to play the SVCD may be your DVD Player. You could get a new DVD player for Christmas! The RCA 5240P ($99.00) will play: VCD, SVCD, XSVCD, CVD, and MP3’s. I have played XSVCD’s on mine with bitrates up to 4500! At that rate the quality was perfect, I would call it DVD quality… The down side is with rates of 4000, I can only get 20-30 min. per CD. But that’s ample time for most home movie “themes”.


Hope this helps,


Mavrick

[Nelson37]

VCD sucks. Either a DVD burner or a DVD player that will handle SVCD, If you put your home videos on VCD your grandchildren are going to kick your ass.

A good SVCD, from home video, (USE A TRIPOD!!!), is hard to beat, even with DVD, because of the source.

[wulf109]

VCD can be as good as SVCD,it depends on the bitrate. I doubt there's anyone who tell the difference between VCD or SVCD encoded at 2200 bitraye. But DVD is definitely the way to go for maximum quality.

[fmctm1sw]

VCD can be as good as SVCD,it depends on the bitrate. I doubt there's anyone who tell the difference between VCD or SVCD encoded at 2200 bitraye. But DVD is definitely the way to go for maximum quality.

My limited experience shows that VCD can be very good for slow moving stuff. My home videos turned out real nice. Just a couple kids crawling around. Cartoons turned out real good too. But going along with nelson, I will say the only reason my house isn't littered with DVDs is simply because I don't have a burner ($300 isn't cheap for everyone)....

[Craig Tucker]

VCD can be as good as SVCD,it depends on the bitrate. I doubt there's anyone who tell the difference between VCD or SVCD encoded at 2200 bitraye. But DVD is definitely the way to go for maximum quality.

If the bitrate is 2200, then this is no longer VCD, bitrate for VCD is 1150, any deviation and it becomes XVCD.

Craig

[adam]

VCD can be as good as SVCD,it depends on the bitrate. I doubt there's anyone who tell the difference between VCD or SVCD encoded at 2200 bitraye. But DVD is definitely the way to go for maximum quality.

If the bitrate is 2200, then this is no longer VCD, bitrate for VCD is 1150, any deviation and it becomes XVCD.

Craig

Furthermore, mpeg1 does not support interlacing, which justducky150's sources obviously have. With an interlaced source a SVCD will still look better than an XVCD at the same bitrate, and it should be a fairly noticable difference also.

[wulf109]

Who cares if an out of spec. VCD is an XVCD,or an out of spec. SVCD is an XSVCD. I'm really fed up with people who constantly have nothing else to contribute except pointing out this meaningless distinction.

[adam]

Considering that there are threads in this forum in which people ask why their VCDs skip or do not play when they encode at 2000kbits and considering that this is the NEWBIE forum, obviously the distinction between VCD and XVCD is not meaningless.

Is it that hard to just type the X? It does prevent alot of confusion, maybe not for you or me, but definitely for someone who doesn't know the difference.

[xed]

TMPGEnc produces the best-looking VCDs, period. Depending on the source material, VCD encoded at standard 1150 mbits/sec using TMPGEnc can look significantly better than VHS, and nearly as good as SVCD.
One advantage of producing VCDs is that a standard 352 x 240 11500 mbit VCD will usually play on most standalone DVD players. SVCDs will sometimes not play even on late-model recent standalone DVD players.
What determines whether a VCD will look good?
[1] The bandiwdth of the original source. I fyou capture directly from a laserdisc or from digital satellite TV and make a TMPGEnc'd VCD directly from that source, your VCD will look pretty impressive.
However, if you capture from a VHS tape and make TMPGEnc'd VCD from that source, you are likely to be disappointed. The lower bandwidth the source, the higher the bandwidth the encoded MPEG file seems to have to be to avoid introducing lots of grungy artifacts.
Specific example: Suppose you capture your video from an old VHS tape. You will probably notice some obvious color bleed (colors that drift over the edges of where they're supposed to be), some "crawl" around the edges of bright colors (due to the way chroma is encoded on NTSC VHS videotapes) and some fuzz around the edges of sharp objects. These artifacts are introduced into video when its recoded on VHS, but we typically don't notice 'em too much because VHS decks nowadays have noise-reduction circuitry to improve the picture.
When you encode said VHS video into VCD MPEG-1 at 1150 mbits, all these grungy VHS-videotape artifacts are made worse. In effect you're getting 2 sets of video artifacts piled on top of one another -- the artifacts introduced by recording on VHS tape, PLUS the artifacts introduced by encoding into MPEG-1 at 1150 mbits/sec at 352 x 240.
Encoding a VCD from MPEG-2 introduces some artifacts. Here again you're getting 2 sets of video artifacts piled on top of one another -- the artifacts introduced by the orignial MPEG-2 encoding, plus more introduced by the MPEG-1 encoding.
In fact, even if you re-encode an MPEG-1 file into MPEG-1 (which you might occasionally wnat to do for reasons of, say, color correction, or noise reduction) you'll pile on 2 sets of video artifcats. And it's noticeable.
So the best way to get good results is to work with the best possible video source. If you recorded your video on standard VHS, try running your video through VirtualDub or AVISynth and using some video filters. You can improve the video to a surprpising degree.
---
[2] How fast the picture changes. Rapid panning around a scene creates massive blocky breakup in encoded VCDs. By contrast, a static shot of a scene that doesn't change much puts very few demands on an MPEG-1 encoder.
No MPEG-1 VCD encoder, no matter how excellent, will give you good results if the picture changes a lot. The picture might change for a number of reasons -- you might pan the camera around a lot, or different objects might move quickly through the field of view, or one object might move very rapidly through the field of view, or there might eb a lot of rapidly-changing detail in the shot. (The classic example of this last case is the leaves of trees in the wind. Even TMPGEnc falls apart trying to encode that much detailed video information.)
So avoid anything that changes the picture a lot, and also avoid lots of finely detailed objects in the field of view if you can.
Specific example: If there's an intricate persian rug in the background you might want to use TMPGEnc to crop out that part of the picture and only encode the simple realtively unchanging parts of the picture.
[3] Objects with rapid complex motion. This can be dealt with to some extent by using TMPGEnc's Motion Estimation settings (under OTHER SETTINGS) but encoding time explods.
---
The overall detail and clarity of your encoded videos will always be greater with a DVD MPEG-2 file at 720 x 480 than with a VCD MPEG-1 file at 352 x 240. Even at the same bandwidth (say, 3 mbits/sec), a DVD MPEG-2 of the exact same video source looks noticeably clearer and more detailed than the VCD (actually, XVCD) MPEG-1 version.
So if your intent is to record your personal videos for posterity, use DVD.
...Unless, of course, you're Bob Crane.

--xed

[vitualis]

Who cares if an out of spec. VCD is an XVCD,or an out of spec. SVCD is an XSVCD. I'm really fed up with people who constantly have nothing else to contribute except pointing out this meaningless distinction.

As what adam said. If people actually realised what an XVCD was compared to a standard VCD, a lot of newbies wouldn't be posting problems of this regard on the forums.

It doesn't help when people perpetuate the erroneous concept that XVCDs are still VCDs or that it "doesn't matter". It obviously does.

Regards.

[Nelson37]

To me, one of the worst problems with XVCD is its lack of definition. Describing a video as XVCD is like describing an NBA player as tall. VCD, or SVCD, require no further description and can be compared to other VCD and SVCD on an apples-to-apples basis. XVCD requires more info - resolution?, bitrate? - and without that info, they cannot be reasonably compared.

To Wulf109 - if I have $5 in my pocket and you have $5 in your pocket, we can exchange fairly, can't we? But without that precise info, would you like to trade the "money" I have in my pocket with the "money" you have in yours? You need more info, don't you?
Also, neither my eyes or my TV are all that good and I can DEFINITELY tell the difference between 480x480 and 352x240 at 2000, so could everyone I checked with. Blind tests, clip 1 and clip 2, which one looks better? NO QUESTION.

A good VCD can be OK, but a good SVCD blows it away, every time.