Need help improving VCD image quality for still images

[MrBoof]

I recently put together a family mix of .avi files and stills taken with my digicam using Ulead Mediastudio and created a VCD. The .avi files look good on vcd, however when I add stills to the video, their quality is horrible. Resolution is bad and edges are very jagged. I've corrected for aspect ratio, but that has not effected the still quality. Most of the stills are 1600x1200 (3mp) so the originals look good. Is there anything I can do to improve the image quality of stills on the VCD? Mediastudio creates NTSC VCDs at 352x240 so is this the culprit? I can create DVD images at 720x480 and put them on CDR (which creates stills and video that look great on my computer), but want VCDs so they are playable on most home DVD players.

[vitualis]

If you make stills as VCD video, it isn't going to look that good (mostly poor resolution). Jagged looking edges suggest a poor resizing algorithm used by the proggy you are using...

You can make high resolution still images for VCDs as well. These have a resolution of 704x480/576 (NTSC/PAL) -- DAR 4:3, and look fantastic on TV.

I suggest that you use VCDEasy: http://www.vcdeasy.org to make your VCDs.

For more info on VCDs and still images, read the appropriate article at: http://www.michaeltam.com

Best of luck.

Regards.

[twodogs]

No doubt at all that VCDEasy gives the best quality MPEG stills, but unfortunately no music.

I grabbed the trial of Photodex ProShow the other day which allows XSVCD slideshows to be created, with sound and lots of funky transitions.

Although XSVCD didn't work on my DVD player, I created an SVCD and was impressed enough with the first effort to spend more time assessing it. I believe it is only new on the scene.

Worth a look anyway, might be better than some of the other stuff you have tried.

http://www.photodex.com/products/proshow/index.html

[kjmacke]

Try this program. It converts your stills with background music into an actual avi. file From there just encode with tmpgnc. to vcd or svcd.
http://www.joern-thiemann.de/tools/ssmm/download.htm