Can I get better quality?

[TracyB99]

Hi,

I'm using Ulead DVD Movie Factory to create my vcd's. The movie on my computer works great, not choppy or anything. I encode it, add chapters and burn it through this program also. Once it's been encoded to an mpeg file, it still plays fine on the computer.

What I see for settings are:

File Format: Mpeg, NTSC VCD
Video Attributes: 24 bits 352 x 240
Frame Rate: 29.970 frames/sec
Data Rate: 1123 kbps
Audio Attributes: 44100 Hz, 16 bit, Stereo
Bit Rate: 224 kbps

That information comes up automatically. Then I am taken to the screen where I can make chapters. After that, it goes through the burning process. When I am done making the vcd, when I go to play it, sometimes it's choppy, sometimes the words don't match the mouths, it seems to jump and then it plays fine for a while, and then back to square one again. If those settings aren't correct, is there a way I can change them? Am I doing something wrong when I make the vcd? Maybe I'm burning at too slow a speed? I burn at 16x.

Any ideas would greatly be appreciated!

[tenders]

perhaps try a different burning program such as vcdeasy
for better video quality,why not try an svcd?

[TracyB99]

I don't want to sound totally stupid, but what's the difference between a vcd and an svcd? If my dvd player will play vcd's, does that mean it will support an svcd? (yes, I'm very new to this stuff! lol)

[TracyB99]

I just went and read up on some information about svcd vs. vcd. Also checked out my dvd player (Apex AD-1500) and it seems to support pretty much anything. I am currently converting a movie to svcd and will give it a shot. I didn't know what that was all about before. I just read up on vcd's and tried making my movies that way. Hopefully I get better quality with the svcd. I will post back with the outcome

[tenders]

svcd is all i do now the quality is very good (depending on your source file). yes the apex will play svcd's, as this is the model i have

[TracyB99]

Ok, I converted part of a movie to svcd and burned it. The quality turned out awesome! But one question...what's the maximum I can hold on one disk? I'm using 80 minute/700 mb disks. When I did the first part to this movie, I could only get about 35 minutes on it. Do I really need to use 3 disks for this movie? It's about a 80 minute movie. When you're creating vcds, can't you burn that on one disk?

[Whitespliff]

Are you using DVD2SVCD?
This is a very good program for creating SVCD's.

For how much video on 1 disk: it depends on the bitrate you're using,
wether you use Constant Bitrate (CBR) or Variable Bitrate (VBR).

If you use a CBR of 2250 (almost dubbel of VCD) & audio of 224, you can fit about 40mins. on 1 disk.

I would suggest trying DVD2SVCD (look at this site), you can find the program there and there are several guides on how to use it.

Personnaly, for a 80 min movie (if there ain't too much action or the audio ain't that important) I lower the bitrate that much I get a SVCD using only 1 disk.
I suggest using the CCE encoder with VBR and 4 passes.

[tenders]

you can get 50-60 min on one cd/r depending of course,on what settings you use. most of my movies are on 2 discs, i don't go beyond that and i still get excellent results. :P for an 80min movie you should go for 1 or 2 cd's depending on what quality you are willing to settle for 8)

[TracyB99]

Tenders,

What settings do you have yours at? I've been making movies that are on two disks already, but would like better quality and still keep them on two disks. I have never changed the settings, just always used the default settings.

Thanks!

[tenders]

i use CQ at 2520 max bitrate and 0 for min. CQ between 70 and 85. under 70 and your quality will start to suffer. over 85 and your file size gets too big(i.e. 3 discs). the thing about CQ is that the final file size is unpredictable.