svcd on two disks?

[budgirl357]

I know how to encode avi and others to mpeg, and I always thought that for a average length movie, it takes three disks. Lately a friend has been sending me movies labled svcd that are on two disks only. what I am wondering is are these movies from files that are high resolution (capable of being encoded to svcd) and encoded to vcd, resulting in high quality vcd with "SVCD" written on them?

Understand the question? Your opinions would be appreciated!

budgirl357

[KingJohn]

SVCD's are higher resolution, but they do sometimes take more disks Does your DVD player play SVCD ?

Video-CD NTSC (MPEG-1 352x240 29.97fps CBR 1150kbps, Layer-2 44100Hz 224kbps)

Super Video-CD NTSC (MPEG-2 480x480 29.97fps CBR 2520kbps, Layer-2 44100Hz 224kbps)

To make SVCD's you sometimes need to install different codec's. Nimo is OK with the Free TMPGEnc, but for the Plus version you will need another codec like the one supplied with Power DVD 4

[PlaiBoi]

Are you asking, that is it possible to make a VCD equal to SVCD quality? So your friend could just mislabel it as SVCD?

If so, then no, VCD cannot be equal to SVCD. As KingJohn posted, the resolution and bitrate is much higher with SVCD.

Making a 2CD SVCD just means you have to lower the bitrate.

[SatStorm]

Using 2 Pass VBR and an average birate between 1900 - 2100, it is possible to get a 90min movie on 2 CDs with the SVCD format. With the use of the CCE encoder and the excellent fronter DVD2SVCD you can do it easy and for more time (100 min wouldn't be a problem...)

16:9 movies have a less active picture window on SVCD/CVD/VCD. The higher possible SVCD/CVD bitrate, 2520kb/s if you keep the audio to 224kb/s, it is the cut of the edge for a full 4:3 movie. For a 16:9 movie (which for your final SVCD/CVD file gonna be a 4:3 movie with Up and Bottom borders), the same results should be expected with an average bitrate of 2300kb/s at least! 1900kb/s should be no problem!

[banjazzer]

Using TMPG's CQ mode you will get a 100 minute movie onto 2 CDs choosing a min. bitrate of 350, max. bitrate of 2520 and Quality setting between 75 and 85. It will also be excellent quality, but you won't know how big the file will turn out, unless you do some test encodes and can do basic maths. 8)

[donalo]

The beauty of svcd is that you can be flexible with the bitrate (audio & video). You can easily fit 2 hours of video on 2 cd's using svcd with great results. I'd recommend using dvd2svcd as most settings have been worked out for you in advance.

Remember, when watching a svcd, vcd or dvd on a stand-alone player the quality will always be far superior than on a computer.

Computers nowadays may ship with dvd-roms which are great for ripping, but the playback quality even on a high end machine sucks in comparison to a stand-alone player and a half decent T.V.

[PlaiBoi]

I dont know about you guys...but any bitrate lower than 2100 is not good enough for me. I guess im just a quality freak, but ill go for the 3'rd CD for a 120 min. movie if it means getting graet quality. Most of my movies are with avg. bitrates of 2300-2400. GREAT quality.

[therick]

I agree PlaiBoy-if you really want to get your movies onto two discs I would suggest using CVD...I just did Empire Strikes Back with an average of 1585 and it looks wonderful...also about 63 minutes a disc...

[KingJohn]

Well if the source is good, then VCD is good, I have plenty of VCD's that are almost as good as DVD, never bother with SVCD. and would never make anything except a fully compliant VCD, if you replace your player in the future, you may wish you never made anything except fully compliant VCD's

[therick]

Everything I have ever done has been DVD compliant...I have been using 352x480 for almost a year now...so when I get a DVD burner I am just going to throw 2-3 movies on a disc and go...

[banjazzer]

Well if the source is good, then VCD is good, I have plenty of VCD's that are almost as good as DVD,

This has been my experience also. Just because some VCD s are bad, it doesn't mean they have to be this way.

[KingJohn]

Oh there are some very bad DVD's also, have you ever seen some of those old Jacky Chan movies on DVD, the lip sync is terrible

[banjazzer]

Unfortunately, I have seen some bad DVDs also.

[mh2360]

If you use the standard SVCD bit rate (around 2500) then you can expect an avarage movie to use 3 CDRs. However if you use CQ (constant quality) or VBR (variable bit rate) then you can fit around an hours worth of very high quality video on a CDR. Set Tmpgenc to CQ (75-80 depending on the movie)

[kreg]

I'm no expert, but lately i've been storeing DVD videos onto 2 SVCD disks. I do enjoy quality, but i'm not bent on absolute best. As long as i can watch the movie without thinking of it's quality, then I am ok with the job done. So to make the job easy I just use the following link to calculate a CBR (it could be VBR) bitrate and set it up for two disks. If it's below 1500kbps then I scratch my head and consider a third disk.

http://digvid.info/digitalvideo/bitrate_calc.php

I watch all my SVCD's on a standard TV with a hardware decoder card. i have a creative dxr3. Anyone suggest a different one, it's an ok card, but has it's issues every blue moon. The reason I watch it on an interlaced display is because I also convert VHS tapes and those tv shows are almost all 29.97 interlaced videos and don't look as well on a PC display. If anyone can explain to me how people are successfull with converting VHS or anything interlaced to a regular VCD with all fields intact please let me know. That theory eludes me. AFAIK interlaced video and every single field can only be salvaged with SVCD or higher.

Anyhow back to DVD's, I will likely purchase a DVDRW drive someday and end up joining the 2 SVCD disks back into one single stream. At that point i might kick myself for not taking advantage of the 3 disk.

These are just some thoughts I felt like I would vent. Any opinions would be fun to hear.

Kreg

[banjazzer]

If anyone can explain to me how people are successfull with converting VHS or anything interlaced to a regular VCD with all fields intact please let me know. That theory eludes me. AFAIK interlaced video and every single field can only be salvaged with SVCD or higher.

I very rarely work with interlaced sources, but I understood it was possible, rather than just discarding one of the fields, to combine them in various ways. Have you tried experimenting with the many de-interlace filters in TMPG?

[kreg]

Yes i have played with de-interlacing filters both in tmpgenc and virtual dub. Mostly I use tmpgenc as an ecoder and filter via frameserving from virtualdbub. Alot of the vhs videos i have are 1 hour tv shows like star trek tng. That series has ALOT of un-pure interlaced scense. interlaced, telecined, and I've even seen some seens that have a telecined background with a pure interlaced foreground. I just sat down one day and said quit trying to deinterlace everything and leave it how it was meant to be. So i just went with svcd. So overall interlaced video not modified looks alright on a PC screen and great on a TV screen, since they are displaying interlaced anyhow.

Welp. Time to go outside this week.

Kreg

[banjazzer]

Welp. Time to go outside this week.

It's not good for you! 8)