SVCD help for a newbie!!

[rob_finch]

I have just begun burning svcd's, but am disapointed at the results. To keep them down to roughly one cd per hour, the bit rate is low, and the quality is not so good. I currently have 80 min CD-Rs, but am considering the 90 min ones. Are these worth it, and do they work on standalone DVD players? If not, what is the best way to improve quality without having much less than an hour per cd?

Thanks to all who reply.

[anti-alias]

If you are that concerned with space / no. of disks then try using VCD instead. SVCD is only better than VCD when the bitrate is substantially higher. Since standard SVCD has a higher resolution than standard VCD, it actually requires a higher bitrate for the same relative quality. A well done SVCD will look sharper than a VCD. However, if you pull the bitrate down to the same as that of a VCD it will actually look worse.

[rob_finch]

Thanks for your help, that makes sense. I decided to try the Panasonic MPEG-1 encoder plug in trial on my DVDx (1.6/1.7/1.8), but it either keeps saying the video size must be multiples of 16 (when they are!), or it works for five seconds, then crashes DVDx. Any ideas?

[vitualis]

There were reports of DVDx stuffing up with Panasonic in NTSC??

I suggest that you try DVD2AVI (with TMPGEnc) or FlaskMPEG with Panasonic.

There are extensive guides at http://www.doom9.net

Regards.