Need help converting VCD MPEG's to DVD MPEG's

[poo706]

I've only had a DVD burner for a few weeks now, so I'm still in the learning process of all the involved software and such. This has been a great and useful site, but there's so much wealth of information on it that it's hard to pin point what I need. Anyway, what I'm trying to do is transfer 10 clips (about 22 minutes each) from VCD to DVD. I've used VCD Gear to rip all the .dat files at MPEG-1 files. But now I need to convert those to DVD-compliant MPEG-2 files. I initially planned on using MainConcept MPEG encoder, but from what I've read here in the forums is that it has problems with DirectX 9, so that's out. I know that my other two options are TMPG and CCE. The quality on these clips aren't the greatest to begin with (about 8/10), so I know that I don't need any rediculously high bitrate. I'm looking for something to convert relatively quickly, so (from what I've read) it looks like CCE is my better option over TMPG. So basically, I need to know how to set up CCE to:
1. Work quickly
2. Retain as much quality as possible
3. Keep the size of the MPEG's down low enough so that I don't have any problem creating ~220 minutes of video on one DVD+R using Ulead MovieFactory 2 (if this is even an issue, I'm not sure)

When it comes to choosing a bitrate and choosing between constant and variable and tweaking all the options, this is where I get confused and lost. I appreciate any help anyone can give me. And if this sort of information is already on the site, I appoligize, but like I said it's hard to sort through this much info. Thanks in advance.

[Greg]

[pokito]

you can make dvd-vcd www.svcd2dvd.com

[jaxxboss]

persoanlly i only go as far as 2hr-20 min(7- 20 min shows) (140 min)max when I do my tv rips onto dvd. I guess you can go more, but quality starts to suffer and its really not a DVD per se anymore. In which case you are better off putting then on vcd disc cd's as they are 10 times lower in cost. I just encode with tmpge set it at 2600 then encode, then author with dvd author and it comes to about 4.3 gigs, then burn it in dvd author. Looks great on my ps2 and dvd player. Use a bit rate calculator or just fart around with one and see what the size will be then multiply by the number of shows u wanna do.

[poo706]

> Pokito

I have looked in to the whole DVD-VCD briefly, but I'm concerned about compatibility. Would a DVD player have to be compatible with VCD in order to play a DVD-VCD? Could a Playstation play one?

> Jaxxboss

Hmmmm, only 7 shows before the quality starts to suffer? I've seen people take a 17-disc VCD set (50 shows) and transfer them to only 4 DVD's. Maybe they actually made a DVD-VCD instead of real DVD's. Is that 2600 a constant bit rate? Also, I'll look into a bitrate calculator. I haven't used one, but I'm assuming you input the size of the disc and the time/size of the MPEG-1's and it'll tell you what max bitrate you can use?

[Greg]

[bugster]

Take a look at the WHAT IS DVD on the left of the page. Also check out WHAT IS VCD if you are not familiar with those technical specs.

Briefly, for NTSC anyway

VCD 352*240, 23.976fps or 29.976fps, 1150kbits bitrate mpeg-1, audio 44.1khz
Valid for DVD 352 * 240, 29.976fps, upto 1850kbits mpeg-1, audio 48khz
PAL has 352*288 res and 25fps, otherwise the same.

SO if your VCD's are PAL or 29.97fps, the video is already DVD compliant, just the audio needs resampling. If your VCD's are 23.976fps, you will need to re-encode. In that case, up the bitrate just slightly (to say 1400kbps), keep the res the same and encode to mpeg-1. Quality loss should be minimal. Still need to upsample the audio though.

You could take a look at SVCD2DVDMPG to help with this.

[poo706]

Ok, I looked at the MPEG's and they are in fact 352 * 240, 29.970 fps. So my next step would be to convert the audio from 44.1 to 48 using SVCD2DVDMPG. Once I finish that, I can load all those converted MPEG's into MovieFactory 2, create my menus, and burn straight to DVD without it having to reconvert anything. Is that correct?

When I was toying around with this whole thing to begin with, I skipped the middle step and just loaded all 10 of the VCD-ripped MPEG's into MF2, which fell under the 4.3 gb space limit. It tried to convert the clips before burning (whether it was doing just audio or both audio and video, I don't know), but it failed in the middle of the second or third clip and aborted. Once I convert the audio to 48, am I still going to be able to load all 10 clips on to one DVD, or am I going to need to go down to 7 like Jaxxboss said?

[Greg]

[neomaine]

poo,

I've done the same, with MF2, with a bunch of VCDs. Convert them to DVD that is.

Its as simple as you just said. I actually let MF2 convert the audio for me on the fly. Since they were just tv episodes I wasn't too worried about the quality of the audio conversion. Though I have to say, it sounded just fine and no noticable difference.

The only thing you should have to do is set the 'Do not convert compliant video' option (or something similar) to make sure MF2 doesn't take your VCD and try to re-encode to full DVD specs.

There's a button for 'Change MPEG settings' to set what you've determined to be compliant settings. Just make sure your's is set to VCD and you should be good to go.

[pokito]

you should be able to put all 10 clips (220 minutes) on one DVD. It can hold about 450min of VCD.
use SVCD2DVDMPG to convert the audio and then MF2.
I found that if I don't convert the audio using SVCD2DVDMPG first. MF2 will try to re-encode the video even if I checked the 'Don't convert compliant...'

[poo706]

Great! Thanks for everyone's help. This'll give me something to try here in the next day or two. I'll write back here again when I inevitably run into some other unforseen problem.

[Greg]