Quality Loss????

[cellardoor]

What is the quality loss if a converted a dvd to svcd? I don't mind if its a little bit. I just don't want go through everything and end up with a piece of crap. Any advice would be appreciated.

[HAGGARD]

cellardoor,

Depends on the bitrate!!! I did some DivX to SVCD (Black Hole) encoding with REAL standard SVCD values in TMPGEnc (eg. 1537 kbps)... Result... Almost identical!!!
I Also did some DVD to SVCD encoding (Star Wars) with 3000kbps (non SVCD standard, so called XSVCD) Also with great results!!! (Oke, When your head is about 30cm from the TV-set, some artifacts are visible).
Problem with higher bitrates is that CD's can hold only about 30-45 minutes of this high quality video... (eg. Star Wars ended up with 5 cd's!)

Hope this answered your question.

'Hag

[telemike]

If you use KVCD (www.kvcd.net) or DVD2SVCD (www.dvd2svcd.org) and variable bit rate encoding you can fit most movies on 1-3 discs.

I use DVD2SVCD with CCE encoder using 1 pass VBR (max bitrate = 2200, min bitrate = 300, audio bitrate = 160) and get great results with most movies on 2-3 SVCDS (mpeg-2, 480x480)

[ZippyP.]

It really depends on your skill in the conversion. Like telemike says, use DVD2SVCD and either CCE (Cinemacraft) or TMPGEnc. With proper settings, you can get near DVD quality. CBR or CQ at higher rates will give excellent quality, 2 (or more) pass VBR can reduce the number of disks but can take almost twice as long. 8)

[K2]

If you know what are doing with VBR you should get 80-90% of the original quality.
Bearly noticable. but have the inconvience of switching discs in mid movie.

Note: do not use DVDx for SVCDs

I use Mediator and bbmpeg, rare on this forum but free and I get great SVCDs in 5 hours. Max 2600, Avg 0(auto), min 0, Quant 6, fits on 2 SVCD. VCDeasy is a great tool for make the Svcd image.
The other encoders are $50-$100 and would be worth it if I did Svcd often.
I only make them so my son can play movies on his computer (teenager).
They still play great on the DVD player.