Which format should I use? Newbie question!

[Welly]

Hi all!

New to the board, new to all this video malarky, so thought I'd ask a few questions.

I've just got hold of a video capture card (pinnacle DC10plus) which is great! Very impressed with it. The plan is to create short films of me and my friends doing some all terrain boarding which will be distributed freely to anyone who is interested. So basically not planning to distribute DVDs as a. i don't have a DVD burner and b. the discs aren't that cheap either.

So what I was looking at was either MiniDVD, VCD, SVCD or CVD - from reading the documents on the site! VCD, from personal experience, isn't great quality - but then these were videos filmed from the inside of a far eastern cinema with the crowd chuckling away in the background. Thats my experience of VCD. My camcorder isn't the best in the world, but then it's created pretty reasonably quality videos so far!

MiniDVD I believe is incompatible with my DVD player (Sony DVP715) and so this is out of the question too. I want to distribute discs that ideally work in standalone DVD players, failing that, PCs. So I suppose I'm left with either SVCD or CVD. SVCD doesn't work with my DVD player either! But it seems CVD does. How does one go about burning a CVD disc?

How does the quality of CVD compare with VCD? If it's better than VCD either slightly or lots, then I'll be happy! If worst comes to worst, then VCD will have to do. I'll try it out tonight though.

Many thanks all!

Welly

[vitualis]

VCD is the most compatible out of all. SVCD is less so. CVD is probably similar to SVCD.

Both SVCD and CVD can yield significantly superior quality to VCD ... however, if distribution is important to you, I wouldn't necessarily give VCD the flick due to its superior compatibility.

A well encoded VCD from a clean source will look quite good (similar to new VHS).

Regards.