3 gig SVCD's

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Just posing a question here.

Are we all killing ourselves trying to jam too much onto a single CDR when the simple answer just might be a multi disk player?

The reason I ask is that if we all were stuck with five gallon gas tanks then the challenge of getting 100 miles to the gallon might make sense. But what's wrong with a bigger gas tank? Or for that matter 2 or 3 five gallon tanks - or CDR's so to speak. Especially since CDR's are so cheap. It's not like these CDR's break the bank or anything.

A 3 gig SCVD is more than possible on 3 CDR's with 99 minute disks and with a 3 tray model DVD player the inconvience of waiting 5 or 6 seconds for an automatic disk advance seems trivial. Especially if the SVCD is cut properly between sceens. And a 3 gig SVCD requires only two cuts. I've done 2 1/2 to 3 gig SVCD's for a typical movie capture and the quality is beyond reproach. No artifacts, no macroblocks, no fuzzies, no mosquitos, just clean sharp enjoyment - and for me they're real time captures which means no subsequent encoding. Just capture and cut. You can even forget the 99 minute CDR's if you'd like. Save those for those epics.

It may seem foolish but I think alot (not all but alot) of the motivation and effort of trying to tweak high quality low bit encoding is the result of the limits that CDR's present. And in many cases its because nobody wants to get up and swap disks in a single tray player. It's almost a macho thing - almost like "Guess how big mine is on ONE CDR!". I think its a great challenge and a tremendous effort and reserved for the very intellegent but heck what I've seen can look good but not great.

I say let the player do the work. A multi disk player taking 5 or 6 seconds to advance a disk is no big deal. If you can accept this minor inconvience then imagine the quality you can achieve with a 3 gig SVCD. That's alot of room to work with and those 5 or 6 seconds, for an automatic disk advance, are a very small price to pay.

Just a forest from the trees observation. I've pretty much landed on the obvious. But its simply a personal choice.

[pacmania_2001]

I agree with you and even though I only have a single tray dvd player I would rather hop up once or twice during a movie to change the cd's then put up with a crappier quality movie. Also in these changes it allows you to get food, go to the toilet. And if you cut them in the right places you dont mind hoping up.