VCD Quality & Compliancy experts please!

[Trenton_Net]

Hi,

Recently I have been testing with MPEG Encoding, and I was wondering if anyone with practical experence could tell me which encoding types produce the best results. The two I am thinking about is: Automatic VBR and 2 Pass VBR.

Is there a big diffrence between the two aside from 2 Pass taking twise as long to encode? Is the trade worth the time?

Also, I noted that may new stand alone DVD players play VCD, SVCD and a wide range of formats. I wanted to know if they play these disks only following the strict formating rules set for each, or if they will generaly play disks, as long as it dosn't go beyond the specs of the player itself?

Keeping in mind that you don't deviate so far that the disk is no longer complient all together. What I mean is changing things like the bit rate outside the bounderys of VCD, setting VBR instead of constant, etc etc.

Any input would be greatly appreciated,

Thanks for your time.

[VideoGuy]

Follow this yellow brick road to find the truth about superior quality VCDs from DVDs, good luck!

http://www.vcdhelp.com/dvdtovcd.htm