CVD or not CVD?

[Sav10]

I have been following SatStorm's brilliant guide to CVDs
( http://www.vcdhelp.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=98177 ).

My first attempts followed the guide using TPMGEnc templates and then doing the header trick to play on my standalone as VCD. All worked fine (thanks to all on the guide above while I am at it). Quality reasonable albeit a few macroblocks on strong colours. I did however read in other topics loss of quality after every re-encoding, so I thought I would try and author direct as CVDs. The end result was even better ...and yes I am a quality freak!

This is basically what I did:

source material - AVIs captured from DV camcorder

In ULv.6 >create video file>custom> options

Under General tab:
25fps
352 x 576 frame size (PAL)

In the Compression tab:
Media type - MPEG-1 (this avoids the header trick)
Quality - 50
I-frames only - unchecked
Variable and 2520 kbps (quality was not so good under Constant)
Audio - 44100hz 224kbps (audio synch probs on 48khz/160kbps)

Burnt with VCDEasy (Analyse Mpeg Files unchecked)

Simple and effective - no re-encoding or multiplexing.

Even if you were to select MPEG-2 under media type, the quality of playback using the settings above was distinctly better (and you still have to then change the header). Now I am sure I read somewhere that CVDs can only be created from MPEG-2 files and not MPEG-1 hence my question.

So what exactly have I come up with and why was the quality virtually DVD?

[hp_lovecraft]

That would be an xVCD or maybe xCVD?

The terms VCD, and SVCD 'imply' a certain level of compliance.
CVD is generally considered a subset of the SVCD standard, so it needs to be MPEG2 to be 'compliant'.

So, all the means is that your xVCD will not play on many DVD players that support VCD, SVCD and DVD.

Not that it really mattters. I encode alot of DV onto CD using similar specs to yours, and it looks great on my player too. When I make copies for relatives, I'll reencode as 'compliant' MPEG2 so it will play in there players, with slightly less quality.

Nick