Commercial VCDs what tool to encode them?

[dinkob]

Recently I acquired one VCD that was made by Columbia Pictures I think and it contains only previews for the movie releases and TV shows.
(I think I gotten it somewhere as a preview free VCD or something)
This thing look fantastic.

The menus don't quite work like DVD (arrows don't work but pressing the numbers will change the color of selected icon and go to the other menu as well) but it's very nice.

Also the noticable thing is the encoded picture which looks very good. I don't think that TMPGENC can achieve anything like that, hence my question is the following:

When it comes to Commercial VCDs, are they encoded with software or hardware and what are these tools?

Is there some prefiltering done to it?

Would PAL VCD look better than NTSC regardless of encoders?

If I find some FTP space I could probably post some sample. Thanks ahead

Dink

[Supreme2k]

Most of the time, the "commercial" VCDs just have a really good source for encoding. I've encoded VCDs using TMPGENC's standard template, with a crystal-clear AVI source, and they look fairly close to SVCD.

[adam]

Exactly, commercial VCDs are going to be created from the source whereas you are only going to have access to an already highly compressed version.

As far as PAL vs. NTSC quality differences with VCD, I find that NTSC is far better due to the fact that VCD uses such a low bitrate. The higher resolution of PAL is actually a disadvantage in this case. Of course this assumes you are making NTSCfilm VCDs (23.976fps). If you encode to NTSC (29.97fps) the quality is always going to be poor.

[3nos]

As far as PAL vs. NTSC quality differences with VCD, I find that NTSC is far better due to the fact that VCD uses such a low bitrate. The higher resolution of PAL is actually a disadvantage in this case. Of course this assumes you are making NTSCfilm VCDs (23.976fps). If you encode to NTSC (29.97fps) the quality is always going to be poor.

according to my friends, they can definitely point out what is NTSC with 29.97 fps or 23.976 fps. They found that some pictures are slip or the action scen is not smooth enough.
it means that you have to trade between the quality & smooth (i guess)

[adam]

That's true. VCDs are not able to be telecined as well as DVDs, and the video is sometimes jerkier then NTSC. But NTSC is often even jerkier for most people because they don't realize that they are throwing out half of their fields, and thus half of their temporal information. Now THAT screws with motion. If you blend the fields instead its much better, but then the macroblocks still take over since your bitrate is now effectively 20% lower. All things considered, an NTSC VCD looks about 10 times worse to me then an NTSCfilm one.

If you are a PAL user then NTSCfilm VCDs are usually very jerky. If played on NTSC equipement the movement is pretty good.