when capturing for a vcd do i need to stick to 1150kbit/sec?

[kel]

when capturing for a vcd do i need to stick to 1150kbit/sec?
i have been trying to capture a video of mine,
i have been trying all kinds of differnet settings, and i understand now
i need to capture 352 x 288b, but what settings for the video bitrate
have to be??

[Stile]

1150 kbits/s is the default bit rate for VCD. You can increase the bit rate. I am using 1500 kbits/s bit rate for VCD (converting my VHS movies to VCD) because the quality is better and with this bit rate I can put 1 hour of video on 650MB CD-R. Only you should care about is that is your DVD player capable to play VCDs with bit rate higher than 1150 kbits/s. This is so called XVCD.

[kel]

i was looking at a bit rate of about 8000.
will this effect when i try to make the vcd with nero??

[Phlexor]

The highest bit rate for VCD that is within standard is 1151929 bps. anything higher is an XVCD which is a non standard VCD. Some DVD players will play XVCD's and some wont, plus there is no real rule to how high a biterate that you can go to, each player is different, from what I understand.

[kel]

so will 8000 be ok for a standard vcd
or will i need to recapture @ 1150?

[EricB]

I think we are going in circles!

The "standard" is 1150, so if your goal is standard VCD you use that bitrate.

If your player supports XVCD (higher bitrate) then you can use a higher bitrate at the expense of making a larger file. You should also check to see if your player will work at your chosen bitrate. 8000 for an XVCD is awfully high. I use between 1500 and 2000. That much of an increase from 1150 makes a big difference.

[gll99]

Usually xvcd ( non standard vcd) will not work properly or not at all on a standalone player if you exceed a combined audio/video bitrate of about 2700.

For svcd or xsvcd (non standard svcd) mpeg2, many stand alone players are more forgiving and you can crank up the bitrate. 8000 is extreme since many DVD's don't even have that bitrate. What's the sense if you only get 10 minutes on a CDR.

If you have a DVD burner then it's a different story, look at the DVD templates and Author a DVD.

If you still want a high bitrate and don't mind having only a few minutes on a cdr ( or cdrw) then use the DVD templates, Author a DVD but use a software that lets you write it to cdr. It will look just like a mini DVD with VOB files and everything.

[Phlexor]

When will everyone learn that the maximum bitrate for the VCD standard is 1151929 bits/sec not 1150kbps? If you still doubt me check this link out and then get back to me and tell me that I am still wrong. I dare you to.

http://www.icdia.org/cdprosupport/encoding/pink/mpeg1_specs.htm

[gll99]

Hi Phlexor:

Theoretically the writer of that article is correct.

the maximum bitrate for the VCD standard is 1151929 bits/sec not 1150kbps?

No one has said different, the standard allows less also.

When people quote the standard they often use 2 numbers.

Why do they do this you ask? I'm glad you asked!

1120 (less common) or 1150 (more common), probably because its easier to remember but more likely because most apps set the vcd default window to show 1150. Who knows what the encoder really does.

Let's do a little practical exercise together shall we.

In tmpg please set your default stream to standard vcd. Now try to adjust the video bitrate to 1151929. Hum....You can't do it. Tmpg allows increments of 50 only.

Which do you choose 1150 or 1200? 1150 or less is standard and you can't go higher.

End of exercise

Theory is one thing but reality and practical application is another matter entirely.

Also, in loose parlance users often still refer to 1500kbit files (or other) as vcd but we all know that they mean xvcd.

[Mirror_Image]

You are right, but I use 1150 as "shorthand" for 1151929, not unlike we say that 29msi as the Young's modulus for all steels, when we know that the actual value varies a teeny bit depending on the specific alloy. When we crunch the numbers, we plug in the true value, but when we say 29msi in a professional conversation, we all know what we really mean.

At any rate, when capturing for a VCD end product, I usually use a higher res and bitrate in MPEG-2 (mostly 352x480 4.80 mbps VBR MPEG-2), then convert to VCD (352x240 1150/224 CBR MPEG-1) after the capture is finished. To get picky:

Constraints for MPEG files in VCD

The MPEG standard allows many variations for the stream format. Not all possibilities are useful for implementation in the Video CD decoder, so additional restrictions are made for VCD compliant MPEG sequences. The most important ones are:

-Each pack has the length of a CD-ROM/XA Form 2 sector, i.e. 2324 bytes
-There is exactly one video stream and one stereo or two mono audio streams in each sequence
-Video streams have a bit rate of 1151929 bits/second
-Audio streams are in Layer 2 and have a bit rate of 112000 bits/second per channel
-A video stream must have one of the following resolutions and frame rates:
352x240, 29.97 Hz NTSC
352x240, 24.976 Hz Film
352x288, 25 Hz PAL (only in VCD 2.0 and later)
-The distance between two subsequent I-pictures must not be greater than two seconds

[Aron]

A VCD needs audio and video, both of which have different bitrates. If you use 224kbps audio, then you need 1150kbps video. But, if you lower audio to 192kbps then your video can be higher at 1178kbps. As long as your combined KBPS equals 1374, or less, it will be VCD compatible. Remember, your frame rate must also be 29.97fps, and your audio must be set to 44100, 16bit Stero to remain VCD compatible.

Hope that helps, Aron

[gll99]

Hi Aron

I will borrow from someone else's page and become strictly technical.

I'm afraid what you say is not quite true. The standard VCD max is 1150 (1151929). The combined max rate you mention does not permit increasing the video when the audio is reduced. The opposite is true though you can increase the audio if you reduce the video and still remain within the strict VCD standard as long as you don't surpass the max total bitrate that you mention.

If you increase the video beyond what has already been stated it becomes a non-standard vcd or what we commonly call xvcd.

That said I would doubt very much that using the rate you suggest would have any negative effect on any player, PC or standalone.

[Phlexor]

Let's do a little practical exercise together shall we.

In tmpg please set your default stream to standard vcd. Now try to adjust the video bitrate to 1151929. Hum....You can't do it. Tmpg allows increments of 50 only.

How about we do another exercise then.

Open TMPGEnc.
Click on the Option Menu.
Click on Environmental Setting...
On the General Page look under 'General setting' for the 'Edit bitrate by bps not kbps' and make it checked.
Now you can enter 1151929 in the Bitrate field.

One reason to state that the maximum allowed is 1151929 and not 1150 for shorthand is that this place caters for newbies as well an experienced users and a newbie might not know this.

You are right in that not all mpeg encoders allow you to enter 1151929 and just 1150 as the maximum, but TMPGEnc will, so why not use it?

[Sulik]

You have to keep in mind that MPEG video bitrates are all multiple of 400bps (the way they are coded in the file). Anything else is wrong: it will either be truncated to the closest multiple of 400, or could create VBV problems (underflow and/or overflows).

The closest multiple under 1151929 is 1151600, although a few bytes per second will not make any visible difference anyway.

[Phlexor]

Then why is 1151929bps a Whitebook standard? The Philips VCD2ToolKit doesn't have a problem with is and how fussy is the VCDMux program in that thing?

Why don't u ppl give it a try and see how it works 1st?