Hey.. thanks
what's an SVCD?

Super Video Compact Disc
Some DVD players, usually the cheap ones like the Apex play these. Generally higher end machines don't. (isn't that dumb? you pay less to get more features)

SVCD uses MPEG2 compression, VCD is MPEG1
MPEG2 gives you a higher bitrate, on SVCD this is about 1500-2500 Kbit/sec.(this means MPEG2 will of course take up more space on a disk)
One important thing I remember learning regarding SVCD renders using Vegas 3.0 is that you need to select "STRETCH VIDEO TO FILL OUTPUT" otherwise your playback quality will suffer. Hope this helps.

Mark

oooooo yea that would make sense! I wondered about that! Thanx

I just bought my 6th DVD player. The first two were Samsung. Pretty good. Then next few were Sony. Pretty good too. All of them were suppose to be able to play VCD disk...but they don't.

The 6th player we just picked up yesterday (Apex AD1200...I think). It definately plays VCDs - as well as MP3 disc (which is good for a long party...just hook up to your stereo..pop in a disk with 100 plus songs on it and away you go!!)

Anyway...I haven't had a problem playing the VCD disks yet. The DVDs are a bit different. Although I'm only making a DVD of small files....the APEX either isn't reading it - or I'm not doing something right with the disk yet.

Long story short - VCD are good to share especially if the person has a computer if their DVD player won't play it.

A really good, cheap DVD player that plays just about everything you throw at it, including VCD's and SVCD's, is the Norcent DP 300, available at many Walmarts for about $50. It even plays raw, unauthored MPG files, as well as MP3's and JPG's. Check out the reviews at DVDrhelp.com.

I bought the Norcent DP300 on-line at Walmart (only available on-line...ordered last Friday, got it Tuesday). I don't have a DVD burner, but am editing my home videos and placing them in MPEG-2 format to burn to DVD later. The machine does play raw MPEG-2 files, and unless the video is "complex" (i.e....a lot of video things happening at once) it plays Great!!! Problem I have experienced is the audio is poor during about 3-5% of what I have burned...usually when the video is "complex." Also, audio is throughout on a miniDVD.

Speaking of cheap DVD player, I would recommend the Sampo 631CF DVD player. In addition to playing everything you throw at it, it has a Compact Flash card slot. You can also play anything including mpeg1, mp3, jpg pictures on the CF card.

And if you really want to make it a versitile, you can add a harddrive to it. Unlike other DVD players, the Sampo player uses an IDE interface and standard computer DVD drives. That makes it possible to add harddrives for media storage.

Sweeeet!!

How about this Danish player then? With progressive scan, DivX and Mpeg-4.
http://www.kissdvd.com/
http://www.kiss-technology.com/

Best/Tommy
www.stormstereo.com

FWIW, VCDs are similar to DVDs in requiring playback software to be installed for playback on a PC. Once you have that installed, other players can most often access the nec software to play them.

Compatibility with/in DVD players seems a combo of the brand of media as the software used to create them.

Spec. VCDs have definite requirements re: bitrate etc. using mpg1, whereas SVCDs can use either mpg1 or mpg2. SVCDs also have a different size video frame (480 x 480) that's expanded by the player. Both types are designed to be played back using stand-alone players similar to DVD players and are more popular in Asia.

A great source of info is VCDhelp.com

For distributing your video, besides the DVD format, many folks do DVDs on CD, though these are more often not compatible with DVD players. Alternatives for PC only include winmedia 9, DiVX, Xvid, & real - for info and software util to help see digital-digest.com

MS & I think it's panasonic are pushing a new format called Highmat that if adopted will allow playback on everything everywhere - as expected it uses winmedia 9. Winmedia 9 itself is being promoted by MS as an alternative to mpg2 on DVDs. While this might sound farfetched, the other Sonic (the one that does MyDVD & DVDit) supports this, as does their code libraries that are widely used to create other brands of authoring apps. Pioneer I think makes at least one stand alone player capable of reading these.

Yes it is dumb, isn't it and you know what, it actually gives me a good pictures and flexibility. :-)

I really, really hate you :-) Now you got me hooked. I have many DivX clips I could only play on the computer and now with this Danish player I could do more (without connecting my computer to TV).

Thanks for the tip :-)

While on the subject of VCDs can anyone point me to somewhere where I can create decent menus for use with Nero. Nero itslef isn't very intuitive and I haven't been succesful at all.

Here's how to make (simple) menus in Nero.

Thanks for that.

But is there not a way you can have options to send the viewer to particulat pojnts within the VCD film?

Cheers