Newbie...How to make good quality VCD?

[Chappy81]

I hope I am posting in the right section. I am new to VCD, and I have tried converting an AVI file to an MPEG file with TMPEnc, and I then burned the file with VCDEasy. The only thing is, that I am not familiar with all the settings in each of the programs, and when I play the VCD on my standalone DVD player, the video is very jerky.

I have tried looking in all the different guides, but I'm still not sure I understand. More specifically, is there a certain setting for the 'fps' and the 'interlace/deinterlace' I should be using?? What do they mean?

Any help in making a 'smooth' video would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks, Christina

[ZippyP.]

What's the frames per second of your source? Test it with avicodec.
What template in TMPGEnc did you choose... NTSC, NTSC film or Pal?

You need to match the template to your source.

[Chappy81]

Thank you so much for your reply. I can't seem to remember which format I used in TMPGEnc. I think it was NTSC. I tried finding out the fps of the source using the AVICodec you suggested, and it worked great! It's telling me that the source is 25.0fps. So does that mean I have to choose the NTSC setting that will encode at 25fps???? I didn't think there was that option available.

Any other suggestions would be appreciated.
Thanks

[ZippyP.]

25 fps means that you need to select the PAL template, which should still be able to play in an NTSC DVD player if you're in North America. Match your source frame rate when selecting a template in TMPGEnc.

[Chappy81]

The manual for my DVD player says that it cannot play any other format other than NTSC. If 25fps is a PAL format, do I need to convert the film to either NTSC or NTSC Film?? Is this possible with TMPGEnc?? And will doing this for sure fix the problem of the video being jerky?

[ZippyP.]

I'd try playing a Pal VCD first before doing a Pal to NTSC conversion. My DVD player (Pioneer) does Pal to NTSC on the fly. If it doesn't work then you can try the converting the video from pal to NTSC. From what I've seen it's not that easy but it will remove the jerkyness.

[Chappy81]

Ok, I will try those things. Thanks for the help!