DVD SVCD or VCD

[Skavenger]

Hi,

New to this Forum so bear with me.
I have made a couple of VCD,s in the past using TMPGEnc and have just transferred a short VHS videos onto VCD using Virtual Dub and TMPGEnc so I have had some success, This was captured using PicVidMJPEG so ended up rather large 2.3GB once converted it reduce to about 450MB.

have now captured another couple of AVI files from my VHS collection and have experimented with formats of DivX 3, 4 and 5 the files also vary in size from 700MB to 1.3GB.

My question is this, I have a dual CD / DVD burner, should i convert these files to DVD SVCD or VCD. This will obviously depend on the length of the converted product, if its too big for a CD then I would like to put it on a DVD.

Even so can you put a couple of VCD or SVCD Videos onto a DVD and would they be recognised and playable in a DVD player?

Many thanks

[macleod]

well your questions depend on a number of things.

Are you looking for maximum compatibility across all DVD players OR are you looking for compatibility with your dvd player. Your's can be answered by looking on the left under dvd players.

An amount of dvd players can handle VCD,SVCD, CVD, and DVD. For capture sources, it depends on your cap and final resolution. VCD resolution is 352x240, SVCD is 480x480, CVD is 352x480 (aka 1/2 dvd resolution), and dvd is 704x480 or 720x480.

CVD (with 48mhz audio) and DVD are the only two formats that you can put on a DVDr that will give you maximum compatibility with the largest number of dvd players. There will be posters who say that their dvd player can handle SVCD and VCD resolution (with tweeks). This is true, but it is a crapshoot IMO.

If you cap you movie at a resolution of 352x240, leave it as a VCD and probably go ahead and burn it to a CD. if you cap at or above 480x480, I would personall recommend converting down to 352x480 (48mhz audio) and burn that onto a DVDr. If, for whatever reason, you cap your vhs source/tv source at 720x480 or 704x480, I would still convert down to 352x480 and burn to DVDr (or even CD if you can fit the data onto a CD).

[xtreemkareem]

As for the DivX and other MPEG-4? If you only wish to archive to your PC decent quality and super small file sizes, go some sort of MPEG-4 (DivX, XVID, QT, MS MPEG-4, etc.). You can always convert back to VCD or CVD (quite frankly I dont know why SVCD even exists anymore... CVD is way better... if it hadn't been for the Chinese government subsidizing the megacrops working on the white book SVCD, CVD would be the dominant standard today b/c they had over a years head start ... but anyway, I digress) but there will be some quality loss.... depnding on your quality of encode can vary in range from unoticable to significant. If you want to view both on your PC and on a DVD player encode straight to DivX to archive on your pc or on CD-R (patiently waiting for the Day DivX compatible DVD players go cheapo en el USA!) and encode seperately to VCD or CVD. Frankly, I find that VCD works mre then well enough for MOST animation.... going DVD on a VHS capture of the Simpsons is more than overkill. For most films CVD is sufficient, but if you like fewer discs, you can easily tweak a few settings to get 90 minutes decent quality film on a VCD... trying to fit more than that (even with KVCD!) results in low-quality movie - trust me. Agai, main advantage of CVD - on CD-R today on DVD+/-R/W/RAM tommorow or for the real fanatics, "the entire series of CVD on blue-ray..... someday!"