I seem to remember that SVCDs in PAL format actually looked very close to DVD, whereas SVCDs in NTSC looked pretty bad. Are you in a PAL or NTSC area?

There is VCD and SVCD. SVCD is "Super VCD" and the quality is quite a lot better than regular VCD. I would be careful using this format though even if you get results you are happy with. Early foreign DVD players used to play back VCDs but higher end American ones did not. After a few years, royalties were demanded for any player incorporating VCD playback and pretty much all manufacturers dropped this feature at this time. There just wasn't enough demand. This was right around the time that jpeg playback started to be added to DVD players.

The point is, that players that support VCD playback are not that common anymore.

"VCD. Now that is a name I've not heard in a long time."

"The point is, that players that support VCD playback are not that common anymore."

The cheapo Apex players would play anything you threw at them. Don't know if that's still the case. I have one I bought over 8 years ago that still plays.

"The point is, that players that support VCD playback are not that common anymore"

I was under the impression that being able to play VCDs and mp3 audio disks was aprt of the DVD spec. I've not come accross a DVD player that doesn't play them. There's also a uniquely Chinese variant of VCD that was developed to avoid paying royalties that is now extinct.

Either way I did author a lot of VCDs years ago, specifically for distro in China where DVD players were very uncommon and they didn't look too bad at all. Don't forget there's a few commercial DVDs around that are only 1/2 D1 resolution. If it's only old photos VCD is probably more than enough resolution although given the minute cost difference between DVD and CD media I just cannot see the justification for making VCDs unless there's a specific need for them.

Bob.

In reply to the OP, and trying to build on what others have already said:

1. The jump in quality from a VCD to a DVD (assuming that you are starting with high quality, digital source material) is similar to the jump from DVD to Blu-Ray. In other words, the difference is both large and significant.

2. In addition to the difference in resolution, encoding codec, and bitrate, VCD encodes progressive, whereas DVD can encode interlaced material. If you are starting with NTSC 60i, or HDV or any other interlaced format, you will lose half the temporal resolution when going to VCD. This is quite significant and will definitely impart a different "feel" to the result.

3. Someone mentioned SVCD. This is a higher-quality, but definitely not as widely supported variant of VCD which provided for MPEG-2 encoding; interlaced support; and higher bitrates. Done properly, you could get results, on a CD-ROM that approached low-end DVD quality. In other words, quite good. However, many DVD players did not support this, and I suspect that even fewer DVD and Blu-Ray players support it today.

There were also other, even higher-end variants, usually referred to as XVCD, which could achieve really great quality. I still have quite a few of these that I created years ago, and find them very enjoyable (quality-wise) to watch.

I am not sure, however, whether there is any reason to create a VCD today. High quality DVD blanks are available for under $0.50, so the cost advantage to CD-ROm is nil.

The only remaining reason I can think of for using VCD is if you wanted to ensure playback on virtually any computer that has almost any type of optical drive, including those that only have CD-ROM drives and are running Windows 95/98.

In another post it was mentioned that you could write Blue Ray on a DVD disc albeit 12 mins or there about. Is it possible then to write DVD quality on a CD disc if it's smaller than 700MB?

"Is it possible then to write DVD quality on a CD disc if it's smaller than 700MB? "

I haven't actually tested this but yes, as far as I know it is possible but I would not certify that it would work. The lower data density of a CD means for the same data rate the disk has to spin faster and the heads of the player move faster. Going from that even if it did work it would not be reliable and is therefore not recommended. If it works, great but what have you saved. If it doesn't work for someone you've got no comeback.
From my experience burnt compared to pressed DVDs pose enough of a challenge with clients and failing DVD players. Why add another considerably risky variable into the mix.

If you are concerned about people who have systems without a DVD player in them you'd be better served giving them something like a CD with the show as a WMV or moeg-1 file with instructions to copy the file to the HDD if it will not play reliably,

Bob.

Like Bob says, the data rate is a lot lower coming off a CD-R than off a DVD+-R. I usually keep my DVD data rate down around 6Mbps in order to get reliable playback and even then there are sometimes problems. VCD made sense back when DVDs were over $10 each. Now that they are just a couple of cents, I don't know why anyone would bother.

In another post it was mentioned that you could write Blue Ray on a DVD disc albeit 12 mins or there about. Is it possible then to write DVD quality on a CD disc if it's smaller than 700MB?I don't think you can write, onto a CD-ROM a true DVD, with menus and the VOB structure. However, the SVCD that I mentioned uses MPEG-2 encoding and handles interlaced video, and as a result, this gives you video that looks exactly like what you get with a DVD, although at a lower bitrate (the read rate from a CD-ROM doesn't permit the 10 mbps data rates of a DVD).

VCDs date back to the early 1990s, the SVCD format, invented by the Chinese in the late 1990s, typically specified an image dimension of 480x480 NTSC or 480x576 PAL although 704x480 NTSC and 704x576 PAL were allowed. As John Meyer pointed out, it used a significantly lower bitrate, the combined audio and video data rate was a paltry 2.7 Mbps, which just doesn't produce very good looking MPEG2 video (unless there is virtually no motion in the video.) Another difference is that SVCD only supports 44.1k audio using MPEG-1 Layer II encoding. Personally, I didn't see much use for VCDs and SVCDs back then and I certainly don't see any use for them now.