Advantages of VCD over VHS

[robrosen]

All CD's and VCD's are extremely vulnerable to scratches. But it's not the bottom of the disc that's vulnerable - it's the top. The common misconception is that the reflective part of a CD is sandwiched between two plastic discs. Thus, the only danger is from scratches at the bottom.

Nothing could be further from the truth. The next time you create a coaster while burning a CD, score the top of the coaster with a box cutter. You will find that a CD's reflective layer is just pressed on. CD's, far from being indestructible, are even more fragile than vinyl LP records, which will at least play the rest of a disc after skipping through the scratched portions. From the standpoint of physical robustness, I would go with VHS any day, especially if you have kids futzing around with them.

[vitualis]

In terms of the "robustness" of a CD-R disc, this is one of the compelling reasons to buy higher quality discs like Kodak Ultimas and Verbatim DataLife Plus. It is the TOP layer that is important and better quality blanks have a superior lacquer +/- protective layer on the top.

Regards.

[Betamax]

I don't think scratches at the bottom of a disk is that much a problem.
I had a DVD (pressed) with lots of scratches at the bottom, but the dvd-player didn't have trouble with it. In fact, it played the disk as if it didn't have any scratches..

More sensitive are the cd's which one burnes them selves.
I think a CDRW can have more than a CDR, but I'm not sure.

It's true what Vitualis said about the the top of a cdr/w : that's why one shouldn't use a balpoint to write things on it, instead a soft pen should be used.

[q1aqza]

I think you should save you save up for a DVD burner instead as midwestarts suggested earlier. For a litlle extra outlay now you will have treasured home movies that will have near perfect pciture quality, be highly compatible (meaning compared to to VCD and XVCD playback ,etc not the compatibility of cheap DVD media - that's another saga!).

The price of DVD media now makes it virtually as cost effective as making VCDs as you could fit 4 x as much video on a DVD as you could a CD and some DVD media is now down to approx 4 x cost of CD media.

Plus you will have the ability to back-up large of amounts of your data, and it will still burn VCDs if you really want to!

[telemike]

Gonna thow my 2 cents in. I have a Terapin VCD recorder. I can get really good recordings from dvd transfers (high quality source) that I think is better than VHS except in high motion scenes. My tv reocrdings are about equivalent to recording on VHS at the 6 hour mode.

[azuberi80]

ok ive been reading this thread and now im confused.

one thing ive learned from this website is that GARBAGE IN=GARBAGE OUT when capturing.

so how would it be an advantage to buy a dvd burner and put home videos from vhs onto dvd instead of putting them on vcd.

are you guys saying that with a dvd burner you can actually rip the vhs at a bitrate high enough to get the SAME quality as the original vhs and fit more one a dvd-r?

[q1aqza]

I was referring to putting home camcorder DV footage on to DVD. You can hardly tell the difference between DVD spec/bitrate MPEG2 and the original DV AVI recording.

For my own VHS --> DVD conversions, I did not improve the quality but it wasn't any worse and now I have menus, chapters, etc and I don't get any playback or tracking artefacts that can be generated by a VCR head during playback

[Nelson37]

A little clarification -

When you compare a VCD with an XVCD, you are comparing someone who is exactly 6 feet with someone who is tall. This is COMPLETELY NONSENSICAL, a total waste of time and effort, and really annoys me.

My take - VCD is NOT as good as VCR, but using VCD settings with VBR and a max bitrate of about 1400 is better. Then you move into CVD and SVCD which I think offer significant visual quality improvements over VHS, plus menus and longevity, durability, and smaller storage space.

ALL video has defects. I find VCD defects to be more objectionable than VHS defects

[japniz]

Can I add a question to an already interesting thread?

How do DVDRs and DVDRWs compare for durability and quality? Are they as sensitve as cdrs and cdrws seem to be from the above posts? Obviously, if you lose a DVDR to a scratch, then you've lost a lot more data than the capacity of a cdr in a stroke.

Anyone any thoughts on this?

[Tiribulus]

so how would it be an advantage to buy a dvd burner and put home videos from vhs onto dvd instead of putting them on vcd.

are you guys saying that with a dvd burner you can actually rip the vhs at a bitrate high enough to get the SAME quality as the original vhs and fit more one a dvd-r?

He's saying that you would be able to create files using higher settings hence excellent quality, but would still be able to be burned to a single disc with a dvd burner, but would require several discs for regular cd's. Or you would have to compromise quality to fit your material on CDr's but wouldn't have to with DVD-R's Which is what I think you were asking. If you can swing a DVD burner NOBODY is going to try to tell you to buy a CD burner instead... I don't think. A dvd burner will do everything a cd burner will do AND burn 4.7 gig discs as well as 700 megs.
Tiribulus

[q1aqza]

japniz wrote:

Can I add a question to an already interesting thread?

How do DVDRs and DVDRWs compare for durability and quality? Are they as sensitve as cdrs and cdrws seem to be from the above posts? Obviously, if you lose a DVDR to a scratch, then you've lost a lot more data than the capacity of a cdr in a stroke.

Anyone any thoughts on this?

I keep old backs ups so if a DVD media failed then I wouldn't be too far behind by rolling back to an earlier back-up.

When I create DVDs of home movies the raw MPEGs have high personal value to me so everytime a create a home movie DVD also back up the raw mpegs (and if space available I include my critical personal data!). I buy double DVD cases so all my home movie DVDs have back-up disks included. I pay £0.60 for my disks and that is minimal cost for protecting valuable home footage.

[japniz]

Good idea. I do the same with my SVCDs. Those precious camcorder minutes would be irreplaceable if lost. (The original tapes are beginning to stretch a bit and reception on cam playback is not good if I needed to recapture anything.)

My thought was, are DVDs RWs more robust than CDRs/CDRWs? Or do they suffer from the same degree of risk from scratches and other light damage rendering them unplayable? Does anyone have any technical info about this?

Thanks[/quote]

[Nelson37]

Don't have specific DVD vs CD info but I HAVE used those disk polisher kits on both DVD (not R or RW) and CD, CD-R, and CD-RW and this has turned an unreadable disk into a readable one, almost all for PC use but 2 or 3 SVCD used in DVD player.