Better quality and sound on VCD

[theblkone]

I have burned a vcd, but the quality and sound arent good at all. I was wondering if there is anything to improve on that. 8)

[hwoodwar]

Unfortunately, there are many different ways to produce a VCD. To help you out we need more specific detail, such as file format (avi, mpeg, what) and quality of the original file, how you encoded it and how it was burned to CD. Try to be specific about the quality of the original and what your first VCD looked like, are you talking picture clarity (focus), video noise, skipping or studdering, macroblocks, motion blurring, etc.

[Tikkanen]

The other question is have you seen regular VCDs before? (ie: How is the sound/picture compared to other VCDs?) Just making sure you're not comparing it unreasonably to DVD.

[theblkone]

I'm very new at this, so I really couldnt answer all those questions. All I know that it shows bad. The picture clarity is horrible, sound is off and it studders. Sometimes it breaks up and you cant see anything.

[Tikkanen]

hwoodwar's trying to figure out what you started from (source) and what tools you used.

1. Source? (DVD or video file: .AVI/.MPG, etc.)

2. What program(s) were you using?

3. What settings did you use? (default is an OK answer)

[Joex444]

The very nature of Video CD isn't good quality. Now, it should be watchable, without skipping and things of that sort.

But if you think about it, you are trying to cram enough data to draw up 352x240 pixels in only 1150kbps (143.75 kilobytes) for 30 frames. In theory, each frame only gets 4.79kilobytes. [It doesn't work like that, since I frames get more, and P frames aren't full frames, so they take up less...but that'd be an average].

The audio should be acceptable at talking level and slightly louder (think talking is ~65dB, so maybe 70-75dB), but not as loud as you can play a music CD or watch a DVD. The audio is a very old format, and even with a higher bitrate of 224kbps (compared to MP3's typical 128kbps), it still isn't that good.

Now, here's the part that is making it really bad looking.
Those 352x240 pixels on the MPEG file are being stretched. A TV's resolution is higher than 352x240. When you capture a TV source on your PC, half-res is 352x240, so full-res has to be 704x480.

So, you could say you are stretching the video by 2x. What happens when you zoom in on a JPEG file 200%? It looks bad, and the small flaws are magnified.

My recommendation would be to create XVCDs or SVCDs. If you've got a couple really-good quality AVI files, or if you feel like ripping a DVD, you can create a little 2-min or so test MPEG. Give it the standard bitrate of 1150kbps, then go higher, try 1300kbps, 1500kbps, 1700kbps, 2000kbps. Use 224kbps for the audio, 44.1khz stereo. Now, burn all those to CD, and see where it looks good, and if your DVD player can play it properly (skipping should not occur....if it does burn it at 8x or slower and see what happens).

SVCD is a good alternative, since you have the higher-quality MPEG-2 video instead of MPEG-1, and have a higher resolution (480x480) instead of the lower-resolution VCD. On top of that, it is a VBR source instead of CBR. In VCD, if there are 5 seconds of black frames, it takes up 718kb. In SVCD, that could be down to 40kb, because it is black. A solid color is very easy to encode, and takes up little space. Now, the difference is great between 718k and 40k, but not in respect to the size of a CD. It is just an example...the easy frames get less bits, leaving room to either fit more on the CD or to let the harder frames get more bits.

I've made a few SVCDs and they have looked very very good. The only drawback is the length, they can only have ~45-50 minutes on it. Even with 99 minute CDs, you can only fit ~55-62 minutes on it.

CVD is another alternative. It uses MPEG-2, but has 352x480 instead of SVCD's 480x480 or VCD's 352x240. I haven't tried these, but people seem to like them...

And just remember, if you are encoding a horrid looking source, you are just going to make it look worse. Any AVI file you downloaded that is about 200mb for an hour or 300mb for an entire movie will look like junk. The bitrates are just sooo low it is pathetic. If you downloaded a high quality movie, with like a 576x300 resolution and a 1000kbps bitrate, that should look good.

If you are using TMPGEnc, set the motion precision to high, not normal. It will take longer, but it will be better. Always choose quality over speed. Speed is designed for real-time capture, not for archiving.

If you are using NERO to encode, don't. It is the worst looking, using TMPGEnc.