SVCD in 2022

[Amaroc]

Hi to all . Is there any other kind of madman in the world who, like me, still creates, uses and collects SVCD (Super Video Compact Disc) ??. I started collecting science videos of up to 1 hour in length about 21 years ago, and until today I can't stop. I have mastered the art of creating qualitatively perfect SVCDs almost perfectly. I have more than 800+ units. Compressed videos in this format also serve as a mobile standard on my smartphone wherever I am. This is not a question of details, just my curiosity .

[dellsam34]

Just upload the damn video to Youtube and watch it from anywhere in the world at any resolution you would like up to the video native resolution, 240p is there to satisfy your obsession, disc free, free iCloud, free encoding, free downloading for offline playback. Technology is making it easy for you, don't make it hard on yourself.

[jagabo]

20 years ago? OK. Now? Maybe for something that's not available in any other form. Otherwise, useless.

[Cornucopia]

Other than as an occasional quaint nod, or a wistful reminisce, I don't go in for nostalgia for nostalgia's sake. Particularly with technology.

It needs to be currently useful if you expect me to continue with it. I doubt SVCD was EVER all that useful (low road - VCD, high road - DVD, at the time), particularly here in the US.
It's a museum piece.

Scott

[ConsumerDV]

This was a topic of a media conference 10 years ago:

Across much of Asia and Africa, the VCD format has become extremely popular as low cost film carrier. From resistance movements using the VCD in Burma through to the widespread availability of controversial Pastho films in VCD formats in Pakistan, the VCD format lends itself to a range of unexpected media practices.

What is the point of SVCD over VCD? If these are not Hollywood movies, but some journalist reports or resistance movement news, they don't need two hour duration. Maybe if someone had a computer with a CD drive only and no DVD drive, then watching SVCD would make sense. But then a USB reader with a MicroSD card would make even more sense (Snowden would approve).

The only use of the enormous 12-cm CDs is if you want to have a physical object with artwork, and you don't like DVDs for some reason.

I dump the videos that I, um, collect onto an external hard drive. I have been thinking about a NAS, but I am too lazy to do anything about it.

[jagabo]

What is the point of SVCD over VCD?

Twice the vertical and temporal resolution.

[davexnet]

I made a few, 2004-2005, encoded in Tmpgenc 2.5 and authored in VCDEasy.
Probably still have the disks somewhere

[Skiller]

Actually SVCD wouldn't be so bad if:

• the maximum allowed bitrate wasn't capped to only 2x CD speed (about 2500 KBit/s for the video)
• the resulting run time per CD wasn't only about 40 minutes (at maximum bitrate, because any lower don't even think about it).

Back in the day, I always felt the lesser known CVD format was better ("China Video Disc"). Well, the only difference compared to SVCD is it uses a horizontal resolution of 352 instead of 480 which, at this bitrate, is better overall. And all hardware players that played SVCD wouldn't mind CVD.

Before I went all DVD I used to make non-standard CVDs and SVCDs which used a higher maximum bitrate that required 4x CD speed (about 5 MBit/s). Worked on all of my family's players. And it actually looked alright, even with lots of motion and interlaced. Basically a poor man's DVD. But of course you still needed lots of discs which I couldn't even imagine doing today.

[aedipuss]

i made plenty of svcds back when dvdr blanks were very expensive. even some with true 5.1 audio. the main problem i had was that cdr discs are very fragile. a single small scratch on the top and the disc is toast.

[Sharc]

i made plenty of svcds back when dvdr blanks were very expensive.

Same here. Remember this nice tool to put a 2 hours movie onto 2CDs in reasonable quality for our CRT TV?
https://www.videohelp.com/software/DVD2SVCD

[dannyboy48888]

I don't do svcd but I still do 352x480 encodes for my DVD backups. Get 3-5 titles per dual layer disc and the same file plays on my Roku and the disc paly on my portable DVD player.

[ConsumerDV]

A 128 GB card is $20. I use DVD player to play DVDs that I have not ripped.

[Clockwork]

SVCD...VCD...XVCD...
....the reason I originally signed up for this place!

[Amaroc]

Thanks for the entries. I did not expect anyone to write back and remember the SVCD format at all. Someone asked me how do I watch it? I am viewing an image with a diagonal of 2 meters on the Epson 720p projector. I still have about 500 blank discs and about 40 CD writers found and rescued in the garbage can. I record on SVCD only popular science materials from television with a duration of up to 1 hour. I buy longer feature films on DVD. I like to own physical media. Perhaps many people will be surprised, but my sympathy for this format began with a question asked at the turn of the century about the video format suitable for long storage and reading, even after many decades. In a reply from a local broadcast station, I learned that you should trust MPEG standards in industrial form. Therefore, I did not invest in the then popular, in fact, illegal forms of compression, such as DivX , Radium, etc. I chose the only technically flexible format that was available for me at that time and which offered high quality, for example Widescreen. files recorded long ago and ripped can still be successfully used as video output from notebook or NAS. If it is possible for me, I will try to repeat this question on this forum in about 20 years ... eg "SVCD in 2040" .. Maybe then I will be sent to hell with this question . But it will not be possible to repeat this question for the next period even later. Best regards to all video lovers.

[pchan]

As long as they stay in the same format and in readily accessible storage medium of that current time, you are good to go in 40 years time. Watching clips recorded in 1996 of my kids brought back some fun memories.

[jagabo]

I learned that you should trust MPEG standards in industrial form. Therefore, I did not invest in the then popular, in fact, illegal forms of compression, such as DivX

MPEG 4 Part 2 video compression (Divx, Xvid, etc.) was not illegal. The standard comes from the same place as MPEG 2 video compression, the Moving Pictures Experts Group. They were also involved in the h.264 (AVC) and h.265 (HEVC) standards. They all have wide support in modern media players.

[Cornucopia]

As long as they stay in the same format and in readily accessible storage medium of that current time, you are good to go in 40 years time.

There's the rub. Longevity of the medium (esp. the recordable version), and the ability to read or playback, will be the sticking point. And that is where SVCD was always at a disadvantage, even compared to VCD.

Scott

[pchan]

Anyway SVCD is still mpeg2 which somewhat similar to DVD. It should be still around 40 years later.
As for storage medium, it's a moving sand. Cloud, hard disk, or SSD. Take a pick. I am not sure about blu ray as it's not so popular.

[Skiller]

I am sure we would have a hard time finding a working optical drive and have a means of connecting it to somewhat modern hardware to read optical media in 40 years.
Just think of 5.25" floppy disks. I am not into these but I know it's problematic to say the least to read these in 2022.

[Amaroc]

I can advise, all of the recorded SVCDs are now also stored as files, All are compatible with the Philips format, not CVD, XCVD, XSVCD etc.. Compression is MPEG2, quality almost like DVD. .. VCD is a poor-quality format compared to a well-made SVCD .., VCD uses older MPEG1 compression, low resolution, no interlacing support, no subtitles, no many audio tracks, no aspect ratio, is not flexible in terms of video and audio bitrate selection, as a industry standard it has many limitations. For the goal I set for myself many years ago, the SVCD has worked very well. Any interference, such as recompression, would only reduce the quality, is unnecessary, and is not recommended for long-term archiving. When choosing anything, we only have at our disposal what is available at a given time. Only you should choose well so as not to waste what you want to save. I am not sure if I could choose today with as many limitations as I did then. At the time I was making my choice, there weren't even DVD burners. I chose the best I could then. And until today I am satisfied . Browsing through old recordings and comparing them with today's ones, I can see a change in the form of filming, narration, and it is already possible to notice the progress of the presented knowledge in the content of the films. I remember my first computer experiments with the AMD DURON 800 processor with MPEG2 compression and waiting all night for the result. Sometimes everything had to be repeated several times .. The most important thing was the optimal bitrate selection to get the maximum use of the CD capacity and thus the maximum audio-video quality. All the SVCD files I have are the same size, with an accuracy of 1 Mb. Isn't that crazy?. . Until now I have a detailed excel bitrate table, so compression of an hourly material to an SVCD file takes about 15 minutes in two passes in TMPG. I greet everyone.

[pchan]

If you are happy with SVCD then all is fine. Just let it be.
What if that you have videos captured in HD format e.g. AVCHD, and by encoding them into SVCD is terrible downgrade.
Most current video capture devices are in HD format.

[Amaroc]

Yes it's true. I am still getting the video material from the website of the TV station which puts the programs to watch a week after being broadcast on the air. About half of the material I'm interested in is in stupid resolutions like 800x448, 740x480, which is still good for making an SVCD, but more, and more 720p or rarely 1080p. That's why I'm going to slowly move to 720p Bluray version archiving, which will be both good and universal for the next decades. I will probably compress the SVCD less frequently as the available material in low resolutions will diminish. Regards.

[dvd3500]

AVCHD supports SD resolutions but at high bitrates. You can also fit a lot more video on the DVD and even use Blu-Ray media if you want.

[ConsumerDV]

Optical media may be more reliable than external HDDs, but are you sure they will still be making optical drives ten years from now?

[Skiller]

I can testify to optical media being reliable – if burned using a good burner and quality media. My oldest DVDs date back to 2006 and they still play fine, although I do see an increase in non-critical error rates (PIE/PIF) when I scan them in a LiteOn nowadays.
Before that I was burning random branded CDs in a random burner and they pretty much all failed within 10 and less years.

Optical drives were produced in masses, there is a gazillion of optical drives on the planet. So even if they are not produced anymore in 10 years, similar to VCRs, there won't be a shortage anytime soon. I expect compatibility with modern hardware to be the main problem sometime in the distant future.

[ConsumerDV]

With media promised to last for at least 100 years I expect drives to be available for 100 years, but I am not sure they will be available 10 years from now. So, I am uneasy to use optical media for long term storage. And while there are a lot of drives have been made, they stop working with alarming rate. I have a VHS/DVD player, the VHS works but DVD does not. So far, external HDDs plus memory cards with USB interface seem a better long term solution to me. OTOH, the whole planet can be blown up at any time, so may be I should not worry about storage longevity and redundancy.

[pchan]

With media promised to last for at least 100 years I expect drives to be available for 100 years, but I am not sure they will be available 10 years from now. So, I am uneasy to use optical media for long term storage. And while there are a lot of drives have been made, they stop working with alarming rate. I have a VHS/DVD player, the VHS works but DVD does not. So far, external HDDs plus memory cards with USB interface seem a better long term solution to me. OTOH, the whole planet can be blown up at any time, so may be I should not worry about storage longevity and redundancy.

Nice sense of humor.
The trouble with tech promise is... the guy who made the promise is no longer around. I have a LG burner just died. The system wouldn't boot if it's connected. I still have a USB DVD burner that came bundle with the Asus laptop as a backup. Those corrupted CD and DVD discs are a pain. If lucky enough, ISOBuster can help. Looking at the way the tape goes, it's a matter of time the optical disc may go the way of the dodo. Solid state of some form is the future.

[84lion]

You are digging way down into the treasure chest here. I remember DVD2SVCD as well. I may still have some old SVCDs but the few I have found I’ve tossed.
Nowadays I have a 70 inch 4K set with Dolby Vision. I am wrestling with using an AI upscaler to make DVD content watchable on the big screen. I now have not one but two NAS that I have Plex on. The upscaled DVD files go onto the NAS and get played back via a Fire Cube. The results are quite good. Playing a SVCD on my BR player (assuming it would play it) would probably be painful given that an upscaled DVD looks like crap (artifacts are the worst, rather annoying).
In the day, though, SVCD was a great solution. Anyone remember Super VHS? Laserdisc? I still have both those. I need to get rid of that stuff.
Love the trips down memory lane though!

[Amaroc]

Hi. Assuming this thread, I was curious if anyone else was compressing files to SVCD except me. And it turns out that several related threads were raised here, e.g. the longevity of the medium. All SVCDs, even those that I recorded 20 years ago, were easily ripped to .mpg files. I have always bought good quality CD-ROMs (Kodak, Fuji, Philips, Verbatim) and I don't know how long they will survive as media, but it doesn't matter at this time as they have become files again. I do not think that I would be able to obtain the collected materials in a better (modern) quality, because at the time of their creation, the HD technique did not exist. For me, the content contained in the video material that I obtained is important, and this is of paramount importance. The farther into the future, everything that is known today will one day be what SVCD is today, even h265 8K ... In order for what is common today to be possible to use in the future, it is necessary to choose from among the available solutions without stress. It will never be that no one will spit on what you have been given to do well, because of various human weaknesses that are not worth writing about here. In general, it may be that you will find everything you do unnecessary, but then you will find that you have wasted your time. I do not have this feeling, rather the opposite ... I am not the youngest person anymore, but maybe that's why I need to have the exclusivity of what I paid for, which is why I belong to people who collect physical media containing content that I can reach or share with my relatives and friends at any time, without constantly paying the crooks. I live in Europe, I have a small apartment, and I only have a small home theater containing a 720p projector, an old AV processor NAD AV910, and a Marantz stereo amplifier. For years I have been collecting most of the popular physical media: Laserdisc 270+, VHS 80+, S-VHS 30+, VCD 100+, SVCD 800+, DVD 900+, Bluray 450+, UHD BD 20+, 8mm 100+ film, Super8 film 80+, 16mm 90+ film. And it does not hurt me that these carriers are of different quality. When using a projector and a small screen (2 meters), any quality (even VHS) looks good or very good. When using an LCD TV I admit that the differences can be large, but projectors with optical zoom make video scaling a lot easier. If one were to rely on the availability of content from only one type of media, it is inevitable to limit the availability of content. As far as I know, no number of titles published on different media is greater than on Laserdisc .. apparently about 60,000 titles. Regards.