Digital Camcorder to VCD

[svsmani]

I want to Transfer my Camcorder video/audio footage to VCD/SVCD.

I have the following

1) Sony TRV 320 didgital Camcorder.
2) Digital 8 mm Tape (The tap has 1 hour of Recording)
3) IEEE 1394 Firewire Adapter for Laptop
4) ULead 6.0 Basic Edition
4) Laptop with CD Burner
5) Sony HT-5500D DVD/ HomeTheater System that plays
CD/VCD/DVD/MP3
6) Sony 32" Flatscreen TV


The above software (4) is not at all user friendly.
So I tried to transfer the Video from Camcorder to Computer
using Windows Movie Maker as .AVI file it occupied 130MB for
hardly 20 seconds.

I want to save the above 1 hour recording to fit in one CD (VCD/SVCD)
and the VCD/SVCD should be playable on both my Computer and Sony DVD player

Pl.let me know the best possible method.

[Webster]

First, I hope you have a large hard drive on that laptop and that it is format in NTFS and not FAT32. If you have FAT32, you will run into the 4gig barrier. 1 hour of avi should be around 16GB.

This is what I would do if I was you. Capture to you laptop via firewire using DVIO - link https://www.videohelp.com/tools?tool=45#comments

encode to VCD/SVCD with TMPGEnc - link https://www.videohelp.com/tools?tool=1#comments.

Burn to CD-R with Nero (or your favorate burning program) - link https://www.videohelp.com/tools?tool=19#comments

Hope this is of some help.

Webster.

[svsmani]

Hi Webster

Could you let me know how much the 1 hr .AVI file of 16GB will come down to after the Encode?

[andkiich]

the emcoded file size will depend on the bitrate used.

[svsmani]

andkiich

Could you give me more specific details

like what bitrate would enable 16GB to come down to some where around 640MB there by one VCD can store the same?

[Webster]

for CD-R 650MB at standard VCD bitrate (1.15kbps) = 74 minutes.
CD-R 700MB disk = 80 minutes of video without overburn.

For one hour of video on one disk, you can actually up the birate a little bit to make XVCD and get better picture quality. You can try between 1.3 to 1.4 kbps (using constant bitrate).

Webster.

[MpegEncoder]

for CD-R 650MB at standard VCD bitrate (1.15kbps) = 74 minutes.
CD-R 700MB disk = 80 minutes of video without overburn.

For one hour of video on one disk, you can actually up the birate a little bit to make XVCD and get better picture quality. You can try between 1.3 to 1.4 kbps (using constant bitrate).

Webster.

If your player will play XVCDs. I'd stick with a standard VCD since the slight difference in bitrate will probably not even be noticable, but will make it non-standard.

Also, I would use VCDEasy to author the VCD. I'm still using the older freeware version (1.1.5.2 I think).

[svsmani]

Hi
I have Roxio 5.3.4 for Burning CDs

what should be the file extension for VCD/SVCD/XVCD when I encode the .avi file using TEMPGENC ?
How do I distinguish whether it is VCD or SVCD or XVCD?
Also pl. let me know at what stage do I select the bitrate? During encoding or burning the CD?

[Webster]

Hi
I have Roxio 5.3.4 for Burning CDs

what should be the file extension for VCD/SVCD/XVCD when I encode the .avi file using TEMPGENC ?
How do I distinguish whether it is VCD or SVCD or XVCD?
Also pl. let me know at what stage do I select the bitrate? During encoding or burning the CD?

see link for using TMPGenc- https://www.videohelp.com/tmpgenc.htm

VCD is MPEG1 @ 352x240
SVCD is MPEG2 @ 480x480
XVCD is MPEG1 @ 352x240 with noncompliant bitrate.

all extensions are *.mpg (automatically set by TMPGenc)

re: bitrate, just follow the guide on how to use TMPGEnc. It's pretty easy to use.

Use your Roxio to burn VCD (video), not ISO (data).

Webster

P.S. the picture on the guide shows NTSC Film highlighted. If you live in North America, you should select NTSC to encode to VCD.

[indolikaa]

I do DVCam to VCD on a near-daily basis. I use my Digital8 camcorder as a passthru device and as a VCR for recording satellite television. Most of the recordings are archvied as VCD. I have literally hundreds of VCDs (and DVDs) authored using this method.

WinDV provides a solid workaround for the FAT32 issue. Before I converted to NTFS, this is the program I used to capture DV.avi files. An hour of DV.avi Type 2 is 13-14GB of data. VirtualDub can append multiple DV.avi files and frameserve them to TMPGEnc for burning by VCDEasy.

The big wildcard in this whole process is whether you use FAT32 or NTFS. With NTFS there is no file-size barrier, so your file limit is the free space on your hard drive. FAT32, on the other hand, has a 4GB limit, which translates into a maximum filesize of roughly 18½ minutes (33,300 frames). WinDV works around this problem by appending files.

I then use VirtualDub to frameserve the streams to TMPGEnc, then burn the VCD with VCDEasy. My conversion ratio using TMPGEnc is about 1½:1, 1½ minutes realtime to process one minute of recorded video.

I strongly recommend using VCDEasy for VCD creation.