SVCD Quality v.s. VCD Quality

[wolfwood87]

I know this is a newbie question, but I have always been a fan of VCDs, and now I am planning to venture into the mysterious world of SVCDs but am not sure if it is worth it. Is the quality of an SVCD better enough than the quality of a VCD to switch over and lose the amount of possible time that can be stored on one disc? In FFMPEGX, is there a great difference in encoding times? I am currently planning to use DV footage and convert it into SVCD through FFMPEGX v0.0.5.

Thanks,
Wolfwood87

[major]

Is the quality of an SVCD better enough than the quality of a VCD to switch over and lose the amount of possible time that can be stored on one disc?

Yes. And if you really want to to fit more stuff in a CD, try CVD.

[SCB]

SVCD is better but you're not going to notice any significant quality gain if using the same bit rate (eg 1150 kbit MPEG-1 vs 1150 kbit MPEG-2). You can decrease the bitrate from 2500 to squeeze a movie on two CDs. You may also be interested in making CVDs. I made a CVD from Office Space yesterday and the whole movie fit on one CD! Looks pretty good.

[wolfwood87]

How long did it take you to encode Office Space to CVD? Sounds like what I want to do, so thanks for mentioning it. My movie would be about 100 mins at most, so how would I know if it could fit onto one CD?

Thanks,
Wollfwood87

[SCB]

It was kind of a fluke; getting it onto one CD that is. The total time for Office Space is about 90 minutes. I used the CVD preset for in ffmpegX and kept the bit rate at 2300. I changed the audio bit rate to 128 and the sampling to 44100 hz (48000 on VCD/SVCD sounds strange on my player). Under options I only have Altivec and QT decode checked. Thread is also set to dual CPU (cause I have one). Constant bit rate is also checked. Deselected author as SVCD under tools because I used MMB. Keep elem streams, echo command line, author as SVCD, and postprocess were checked as well.

It took a few hours to encode on a Dual 867 MDD (although I was doing other stuff while encoding). The end file ended up being about 739 MB so I had to overburn w/MMB. You can shave some time off the movie by not encoding the credits.

[Cecilio_87]

SVCD is better but you're not going to notice any significant quality gain if using the same bit rate (eg 1150 kbit MPEG-1 vs 1150 kbit MPEG-2). You can decrease the bitrate from 2500 to squeeze a movie on two CDs. You may also be interested in making CVDs. I made a CVD from Office Space yesterday and the whole movie fit on one CD! Looks pretty good.

Hey umm what is a cvd i mean i am not really a newbie but i have never made a cvd so if you can tell me the bitrates and the resolution and all the details. and you said you fit Office Space in one cd what im wondering is how long did the movie last and what bitrate did you use. if the movie was around 80 minutes then you would have had to use bitrates like vcd right 1,394 or if not tell me i wanna know what a cvd is. plz.

[major]

http://www.vcdhelp.com/forum/userguides/98177.php

[SCB]

Most of the questions you asked were already answered in my previous post. A CVD is a China Video disc; much like an SVCD. You can get more info from the side bar on this site.

[Cecilio_87]

Most of the questions you asked were already answered in my previous post. A CVD is a China Video disc; much like an SVCD. You can get more info from the side bar on this site.

Yea i bearely noticed i am reading it i am like 3/4th done l8rs

[wolfwood87]

Which gives a better overall quality: CVD or SVCD?

Thanks to everyone involved,
Wolfwood87

[SIMPLE_THINGS]

> Which gives a better overall quality: CVD or SVCD?

Depends on source material... I noticed that with high motion movies CVD is better than a SVCD with the same bitrate (I think 'cause it needs less bits due to the resolution: 352x576 vs 480x576 - I work in Pal!). But with low motion movies SVCD gives you a clear and more defined image...

In any case the difference is very little!