How can I get the most video onto my VCD?

[happy camper too]

I'm a relatively new user of my Dazzle Video Creator II.

I'm looking for the best way to get the most good quality reproduction of my thirty 6 hr.VHS tapes onto the fewest number of Cd's.

I'm capturing using MovieStar because it seems pretty easy, then I'd like to compress it(with TMPGenc?, or what?)into a format that will use the fewest number of CD's as possible, with really good quality.

What is the best way?

Please tell me how, and with which settings and software?

Thanks! I very much would appreciate help.

[MaDmiZe]

That all depends on....What ya going to do with em??
If you want VCD's to play on (some ) stand alone DVD players you have to encode to mpeg1 ...TMPG is good for that.
If you just want to archive a buntch of footage on CD for use on PC...then I would go with a divx AVI.
You can capture direct to avi or mpg ....there is some helpfull info in the how to > capture section.

[happy camper too]

Yes, we want to play them on a DVD player and also send to relatives to do the same.

What about MPEG2? is it more compressed(to get more onto a VCD)? Does SVCD hold more movie time per disk?

What is the best setting in TMPGenc to get the most video(compression) of good quality onto each disk?

[MaDmiZe]

SVCD uses the mpeg2...but I wouldn't say that you'll get more video per CD that way...probly just the opposite. Also SVCD is less compatable with many stand alone DVD players.

The question about the most compression and quality ....The more you compress ...generaly the worse the quality.
For standard VCD jut use the standard "VideoCD(ntsc)" template in TMPG.
That will get you 65 to 80 minutes of video per CD.
If you want more video per CD then use a nonstandard or unlocked template to encode at a lower bitrate. I sometimes fit 2 hours or more on each of my VCD's. (but remember that that will make it a non-standard VCD)

[fyreboltx2]

If you are making a non-standard VCD, be careful as it may not be compatable with some DVD players. If you have a regular TV(i.e. not flat screen, or HDTV) then you can use lower bitrate and the video wont look too bad on TV.

[MaDmiZe]

Then again standard VCD is not compatable with some DVD players.
Nor is SVCD...............
I think some personal experimentation is required on the users part, so they can see what performs best on their system.

[D_Knife]

Without taking into account the compatability issues here you can configure a new template in Moviestar to encode to less datarate than normal VCD to keep the space requirements down.

The default datarate for VCD is 1150Kbs
if you take it down to say 500Kbs you are halving the data rquirements especially if you drop the audio bitrate down from 224 to 128
This will most likely look crap - the DVC II is not optimized for MPEG1 capture in the first place and reducing the amount of data will make things worse.

An alternative capturing with normal vcd template and re-encoding with a lower bitrate in TMPGEnc with two-pass VBR - this will definetley create a none standard as VCD is not supposed to support VBR but it will go some way to compensate

Capping with SVCD will result in a larger file than VCD - the smallest SVCD files the Dazzle can cap is 352x576 (PAL) at 2000Kbps this equals 18MB / minute with is just over 1100Mb per hour
This looks OK - but that was with limited motion in the clips

Hope some of these ideas help you