Dell

[SloanFan]

Hi. I'm brand new to vcd's, and just know the basics about computers, but if someone can give me a few pointers here that would be great. I'm thinking about buying a Dell, and will hopefully be burning lots of vcd'ds. My questions are: 1. Does anyone know if the cd-rw burners included with Dell computers are good for burning vcd's? 2. If u have a 16x cd-rw does that mean that the cd you copy to has to be 16x? 3. Is a pentium 4 1.0 Ghz, 256mb sdram, 133 MHz SDRAM DIMMs, and 60gb hard drive, enough to make good quality vcd's?
Thanks a lot for your help! =)

[d4n13l]

1) Any CDRW drive will be OK

2) No. It means that the maximum speed you can burn at is 16x, you also have to use CDRs that can be written to at 16x or more.

3) The quality of a VCD is dependant on the settings you use when encoding and the source, not basic system hardware. Faster hardware will only encode VCD faster. Your system will be pretty fast.

[SloanFan]

Thanks for the info, crazy! The reason I was asking about the specs of the Dell is that I've read that when you intially copy the movie from the VCD to your hardrive, it's as an AVI file which is huge, and that then to burn it to a new VCD, you have to convert it to MPEG which takes forever unless you have a large hardrive..... Does that make sense or did I get that wrong?....

Cheers!

[d4n13l]

You could do that, but then you could just do a disk to disk copy of it.

[Shabubu]

DVD>Hard drive will take up about 4>10GB (depending), you would then ideally like another 2+ Gb free for editing and conversion. The resultant VCD should be max around 1400Mb when done (a 2 disc rip). Thus Hard drive space is necessary, but I managed for a long time with a 20Gb, and I don't think you can even buy a computer now with less than that

[d4n13l]

SloanFan, did you mean copying a VCD or copying a DVD and converting to a VCD? Anyways, your HD will be way big enough, I have never ran out of space and I 'only' have 18GB.

[SloanFan]

Thanks for writing back, d4n13l. I meant VCD, but hopefully I will be burning both!... But here's another retarded question: If Nero and others make the software for burning, then why do you need a cd-rw drive, wouldn't a simple cd-rom drive with the right software be enough?..... cheers!

[jaw2957]

Dude, your getting a dell!(commercial)

[coolaid jim]

<TABLE BORDER=0 ALIGN=CENTER WIDTH=85%><TR><TD><font size=-1>Quote:</font><HR size=1 color=black></TD></TR><TR><TD><FONT SIZE=-1><BLOCKQUOTE>I have a Dell Dimension 4100 800MHz Pentium III with 512MB of (PC 133) SD RAM, a 40GB HD, a Sony CRX 140E CD-RW, a NEC DVD ROM and a generic 1394 IEE card(came with the system). I use the crappy Videowave III program that came with the system to capture and Nero 5.5 to encode and burn( I even splurged and bought the MPEG-2 codec plug-in from Ahead). When making a VCD from my old VHS tapes; I connect the RCA plugs to the analog input of a Sony DCR TRV230 camcorder and use it as a pass-through to my computer. When making a Super VCD from a DVD or a movie track on one of my son's PS2 video games (ie. Twisted Metal: Black); I connect a S-VHS cable from the DVD player (Daewoo 3000 series-available at any Sam's Club) or the PS2 to the camcorder. The resultant Super VCD made from these DV AVI files(0 frames dropped) appears (to my eyes) to be equal in quality to Super VCD's made by friends who have used SmartRipper etc. to make the same Super VCD. If you want to make a VCD from a VHS movie with lots of action it will have less artifacts if its made into an Extended VCD(the only use I have for TMPEnc) or Super VCD instead. I make menu's with Nero. Also if you right click on properties for the MPEG track info and change the pause after track to 0 seconds, when burning with Nero, the resultant Super VCD or VCD looks more profesional on a DVD player (makes no difference on a VCD played on a Phillips CD-i. With reguard to Dell computers, thank god they are fairly reliable because Dell's support group solution to everything is to perform a "f-disk" and wipe everything off your harddrive( that is after waiting for hours on hold and being bounced back & forth between their hardware & software support teams "that's a hardware team or software sipport team issue<<>&gt. If you are the unlucky soul who happens to need their help on a weekend; you can count on wrong information or a clueless response such as "I'll have to get back to you ". The OEM WinDVD program provided by Dell will NOT play the any Super VCD that you produce & the software developer will not give support because you did not buy the boxed, full-retail version of WinDVD. R001-12-08 11:52:15, SloanFan wrote:
Hi. I'm brand new to vcd's, and just know the basics about computers, but if someone can give me a few pointers here that would be great. I'm thinking about buying a Dell, and will hopefully be burning lots of vcd'ds. My questions are: 1. Does anyone know if the cd-rw burners included with Dell computers are good for burning vcd's? 2. If u have a 16x cd-rw does that mean that the cd you copy to has to be 16x? 3. Is a pentium 4 1.0 Ghz, 256mb sdram, 133 MHz SDRAM DIMMs, and 60gb hard drive, enough to make good quality vcd's?
Thanks a lot for your help! =)
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[d4n13l]

<TABLE BORDER=0 ALIGN=CENTER WIDTH=85%><TR><TD><font size=-1>Quote:</font><HR size=1 color=black></TD></TR><TR><TD><FONT SIZE=-1><BLOCKQUOTE>
On 2001-12-10 21:05:38, SloanFan wrote:
Thanks for writing back, d4n13l. I meant VCD, but hopefully I will be burning both!... But here's another retarded question: If Nero and others make the software for burning, then why do you need a cd-rw drive, wouldn't a simple cd-rom drive with the right software be enough?..... cheers!
</BLOCKQUOTE></FONT></TD></TR><TR><TD><HR size=1 color=black></TD></TR></TABLE>
Because a CDROM drive cannot write to CDs they can only read them. You need different hardware to write CDs.
CDRW drives have the hardware needed to write to CDR/CDRW's, the software only knows how to communicate with the hardware. Nero etc tells the CDRW drive what to do.

[Macros746]

I think this is obvious but just in case.. you CAN'T rip DVDs unless you have a DVD rom drive. You can burn VCDs/SVCDs and play them with a regular cd/rw drive but you can't get the DVD on your harddrive in the first place unless you have a DVD Drive. Just thought I'd state the obvious because I have seen excited newbies crushed by this before....

Macros

[d4n13l]

lol