Quality when played back on my DVD player

[skyhawk]

I downloaded a Movie (avi) encoded with Divdx . I used VirtualDub to split the AVI so it would fit on a 80 min CD . I than used Nero 5.5 to make a Vcd . When I play that VCD on my tv. the picture is not sharp Is there any way to enhance the sharpness when played on a 32 inch TV. The AVI files are sharp when played on my computer. I have tried a few products to create the MPEG files to go on a VCD and have the same sharpness problems.

[Poplar]

First of all, don't use plugin encoder with Nero. Try TMPG, which is the best mpeg1 encoder.
Secondly, if your avi source is encoded in high resolution and bitrate, convert it to SVCD instead of VCD to retain original quality.

[videoguy79]

skyhawk--

DivX avi's that one downloads off of the internet use mpeg-4 data compression and are *highly* compressed. That means that the resulting file is not only exponentially smaller than the original DVD, but also contains exponentially less video and audio data than the orginal DVD. When you make a VCD, you are compressing an already compressed signal, which makes it look worse. I my experience, it is very difficult to make a VCD or SVCD that looks as good (or sharp) as the original DivX. Also consider the fact that most DivX's are at resolutions of 620x270 (or something similar). Standard VCD's only have a resolution of 352x240 for NTSC (north american TV), 352x288 for PAL (european). That's a big drop from your original file. I would recommend going the SVCD route, personally. They have a resolution of 480x480 (for NTSC), which should look a little bit better on your TV. The downside is that a compliant, standard SVCD only holds 35-40 minutes of video, so plan accordingly. Just keep in mind that garbage in means garbage out---if your original DivX file looks crappy, your SVCD or VCD will only look worse.