basics

conlippert wrote on 2/18/2002, 10:56 AM

Hi,
I'm a brand new VF user and am attempting to make a slide-show for my son's swim team banquet and include music. Could someone tell me what the difference is between video cd and dvd? Also, what is the best format for the music to be in? and one more question you've probably heard before: After rendering the avi file, I can't get the music and video to sync.
Thanks,
C.L.

Comments

wvg wrote on 2/20/2002, 7:04 PM

The difference between a VCD and a DVD is the former uses low birate MPEG-1, while DVD supports much higher bitrates using MPEG-2. The difference is quality because of the higher bitrate and larger frame size. The downside is unless you have a DVD burner you'll need to stick with MPEG-1 and the specific NTSC template if your purpose is to make a CD that can be played on a set top DVD player hooked up to your TV. If you're just going to play off your computer, don't matter. I would stick with WAV files for your source for audio files. If you have a bunch of stills, start with an uncompressed format like TIF if you can. JPG files are OK if that's what you got.

ramayes wrote on 2/21/2002, 8:37 AM

There is a way to use MPEG-2 with a CDR drive and create a SVCD. There are a couple of different way to get there and you may have to experiment to get the best quality.

What I do is render from VF to an MPEG-2 and then use a program called TMPGEncs to render into the SVCD format (also mpeg-2 but different specs) then I use VCDEasy to burn to a SVCD. The quality is much better than a VCD. If you don't have the MPEG-2 plug in, you can render to AVI and still use TMPGE, but the AVI files are huge. (1 min = 1GB)

I've also have pretty good luck in setting my projects up as a DVD project. It has a larger fame size than the vcd template.

As far as syncing the sound, if you have the files synced in VF, they should render in sync.

There also some info here:
http://www.sonicfoundry.com/forums/ShowMessage.asp?MessageID=91407&Replies=1&Page=3

conlippert wrote on 2/23/2002, 7:25 PM

Thanks wvg for your suggestions. I actually did end up with the NTSC format but didn't realize that it could be played on a DVD player hooked up to the TV. It simply played better with my ATI file player software. Windows media was awful with no syncing of the music and picture. The real player software was no better. Do you know what format (music or data) to burn the CD with? music doesn't seem to work, but maybe I need some software for that? My pictures are in JPG format, and my music is mpeg files (1 or 2? I'm not sure).

conlippert wrote on 2/23/2002, 7:31 PM

Thanks ramayes, for these suggestions. My slide show is 8 minutes long all together.
With SVCD, I could watch it on the computer or with a DVD player? Also,How can I tell if I have the mpeg2 plugin? And two more questions(!) how much is vcdeasy and what is tmpgencs? I would like to publish copies of my slide show for the other parents to purchase.