VCD Quality

[karass]

Hello everyone,

I just need to understand something about VCD quality.

I an a newbie, but I have done some research on this site to learn the basics of encoding MPEG-1. I've been converting my VHS tapes into VCDs. Quite honestly I'm not too crazy about the quality.

After capturing the video (as AVI) and then converting it in MPG the quality looks ok on my monitor (Windows Media Player @ 100% view size). When I burn that file onto a disk and make a VCD out of it the quality becomes blocky, choppy and pixilated.

Logically thinking, I think it has something to do with my TV. It's a 27" TV and I think that the resolution of the VCD is too small for the TV. I guess the image is stretching to fit into the screen and I see "fake" pixels being created on the screen.

Is there something I might be doing wrong? I did follow all the directions in newbie guides using Virtual Dub and TMPGEnc. It is working, it's just the quality that bothers me a bit.

Any ideas?

[frankb]

Hi,

VCD quality, basically, is not extremely high. From my own experience it is bearable for stuff you just like to watch (like TV shows) maybe once or twice. The advantage is obviously that you can get around 60 / 70 minutes on one 700 Mb CD.

Recently I've been experimenting with SVCD. Quality is quite good - drawback is you can only get 30 / 40 minutes on one 700Mb CD.

(See the comparison charts on this site for quality comparisons).

Next thing I'm going to do? Buy myself a DVD recorder (probably the Sony 510A). Great quality and around 2 to 4 hourd on one DVD.

So, in short: yes, VCD quality IS low - very little you can do about it. Two things I found that do make a (small) difference:
1. experiment qith different burning programs.
2. burn at low speeds rather than high speeds.

Frank

[g_shocker182]

Any and everything you need to know:

https://www.videohelp.com/vcd

[poopyhead]

@karass,

standard, compliant VCD is fixed at 1150 kbit/s CBR, 224 kbit/s MPEG-1 Layer II audio, and 352 x 240 NTSC resolution...there's nothing much you can do with those settings...

the only thing you may be able to do is in TMPGEnc, you can adjust the motion search accuracy to high quality (slow)

if you adjust the bitrate, encoding method, resolution, audio, etc...then you will be deviating away from standard, compliant VCD to make a non-standard, compliant xVCD...which has lower dvd player compatibility.

----------

you should try to go with SVCDs, like frankb mentioned...it is higher quality than VCD...but you will prolly only be able to fit max 50 min / SVCD and still get decent quality...as opposed to 80 min / VCD.

however, you need to make sure your dvd player can handle SVCDs...check here: https://www.videohelp.com/dvdplayers

[karass]

Thank for all your explanations and suggestions.

I think I might try SVCD. Most of my home videos are about 50 minutes long after editing and cropping all the bad shots.

On the scale of 1-10 if VCD is at 5 what level would SVCD be?

p.s. thanks again.

[Cecilio]

well i have seen some VCDS that are very highly highly in quality. but i dont do low reselution, so i always do CVD, unless a movie is like 90 minutes i put 30 minutes on a CD-R and use 3 cds

[poopyhead]

On the scale of 1-10 if VCD is at 5 what level would SVCD be?

this is very subjective...and partially depends on how many CD-Rs you wanna use for a movie.....

the more movie you try to squeeze per CD-R, the less quality it will be. unlike standard VCD which has a set, defined bitrate (1150 kbit/s) and encoding method (CBR), standard SVCD gives you a lot of flexibility....as long as total bitrate (audio + video) does not exceed 2778 kbit/s, then your SVCD will be standard. SVCD standard also allows you to use various encoding methods (CBR, CQ VBR, multi-pass VBR).

thus, you can't really compare SVCD per se because there's such a wide range to choose from.

if you want good quality, i would advise you to set the bitrate to at least 2 mbit/s and use VBR (either CQ or multi-pass). however, if you do this, the max will prolly be 50 min/CD-R...maybe even less.

[mysticgohan17]

Thank for all your explanations and suggestions.

I think I might try SVCD. Most of my home videos are about 50 minutes long after editing and cropping all the bad shots.

On the scale of 1-10 if VCD is at 5 what level would SVCD be?

p.s. thanks again.

for the running time youve given (50 minutes), i'd say a 7.6 or low 8.

[barrybear]

Have you tryed the SKVCD templates

I have been able to copy 110minuets of footage on to 1, 700 meg cd.
The quality is beter than standard VHS. I was amazed that this is possible but it will work . I have tryed playing thes back on a standalone dvd player and each played well apart from a scan2000 that produced blocking now and then. but still watchable.

Barrybear