BILLYBOY, what DVD burner to do use? and what authoring program?
thnx, i am going to buy one, one day :)
sb

If you keep your screen size reasonably small VCD looks fine.
352 X 240
looks pretty darn good.

W

I went with the HP 200i which does DVD+RW and DVD+R. I use Ulead's DVD Movie Factory for both the creation of chapters and the actual burning of the DVD's. Unless you want to have extra fancy menues, it does all you need.

Rereading what I said in my other post, I'm sorry if I came on a little strong to the original poster. It really depends what your source material is. If you're making video from a digital camera then you'll probably be very disappointed if you reduce them to VCD. Not the fault of Vegas Video or any other editor, just that the hit due to compression would make them suffer badly. However, if you're starting out with lower quality MPEG files as the source, then you can get decent VCD's, better SVCD. I ought to know, I've made hundreds that way.

I agree mpeg1 is not great quality. DVD Mpeg2 and Mpeg1 VCD are apples and oranges.
If your DV capture footage is Not full of motion and you reduce the size of the project 320x240 for instance you would get nice quality. I hear you on not expecting too much with Mpeg-1.

I often make promotional CDROM's with Video MPeg1-2 or DVix and in all of these formats if limitations are respected can work well. Don't you think?
W

apology accepted...since i made VIDEO a hobby i have come to know that encoding to VCD produces bad output.. the reason i am insisting on a VCD format is that, there is not many persons i know of that have a DVD player nor a SVCD capable player so as much as possible i would want to produce a good quality VCD as much as possible..

back to my question... so, billyboy are you saying i should try to adjust my captures so that it would not suffer much degredation? from 720x480 to 352 x 240?

what i usually do is capture the highest possible setting and MPEG2...

would appreciate more feedbacks.. should i consider making a good quality VCD as searching for the holy grail :)

If you're going to limit yourself to VCD you probably would prefer the more laborious
method I use to use if quality is your most important goal as opposed to getting done quick.

Begin (if necessary) with preprocessing in Virtual Dub (a free editor/utility) that has some feaures Vegas Video doesn't. Render to a AVI file. Bring this file into Vegas, do all your editing, add filters, etc., again render to AVI. Obtain a copy of TMPGEnc (another nifty editor, free trial, s/b at VCDhelp) and render to a MPEG-1 VCD compliant file that way. The TMPGEnc render engine is superior for VCD,MPEG-1 but you'll likely get equal or better reders with Vegas Video if you make SVCD and the MC render engine. Look for and read the tips over at VCDhelp on how to get the most out of it. For example the unlock option, 2pass variable rendering and also some special templates the guys that post there have developed. To do all this you'll be much happier if you have the NTFS file system, otherwise the files are so large, the splitting and joining process gets old fast.

If you stick with FAT32, then break up the AVI file rendered in Vegas to smaller chunks, render each seperately in TMPGEnc, then as the last step use the TMPGEnc tools option to put Humpty Dumpty back together again. Like I said, a lot of work.

Just wondering, if most of your friends don't have a DVD player, and you want to share your videos, since they still need a set-top DVD player hooked up to a TV, why are you using VCD? If all you want to do is share the videos so they can be played off a computer, then you can use other file formats and just burn a more traditional CD.

thanks for the prompt reply.. as for your second and third paragraphs.. i think i have that covered... i see to it that i visit the vcdhelp forums to check on my VCD related problems..

as for your last paragraph, am not sure i get what you are asking about...are you saying the CD i will be producing will not work with other people's (my friends) VCD machine? i am from the philippines and back home there are not many people there who can afford DVD players much more PC's ..

Where I'm getting confused is how you're going to end up playing the videos you make. Are you hoping to play them only off a computer, off some set-top DVD or video player, a combination or what?

In his last post, he said he was going to use a VCD player.
He shouldn't have any problem, as long as the particular player supports CD-R/CD-RW.

VCD players never took off in the USA like they did in Asia, so US posters don't tend to think of them.

- vin


PS.
BillyBoy, are you the same William S. that used to give Alan F. fits in the CIWAH newsgroups? I haven't read CIWAH in years, but it was always good for a laugh or two.

with a regular VCD player which is quite common in household in the philippines...is this not possible?

off topic:
Alan who? Yes, its me, I plead guilty. I haven't posted to CIWAH in years. I did peek in a few months back and the same cast of characters are still chewing over the same pieces of gristle they were years ago. As much fun as I was having, enough was enough. Everyone moves on. Well, not Alan and the boys of CIWAH, they seem stuck in the late 80's. <wink>

Back on topic, I'm still confused. A true VCD player (not easy to find the U. S.) still needs to have the MPEG-1 format I think. Right? If so, then going the TMPGEnc route is probably the way to go. While you can make VCD's with Vegas Video, SoFo has always said they put their best efforts in developing encoding for newer formats.

tried burning to VCD the sample .avi files (boat, beach, implosion..etc) that came with VV3 and the output was MARVELOUS!!! when i tried what the difference was with these files and my captured clips is that the former was in 320x240x24 and the codecs varied from either INDEO VIDEO and CINEPAK CODEC....while my captures where in 720x480x24 UNCOMPRESSED....

i was thinking... is there a way i can capture my clips using the same CODECS and settings as the VV3 samples? maybe this way i can remedy my problems with not so worthy VCD output...

bapski,
There is another difference between the files you encoded from the SF samples versus the ones from your own camera. That difference is the source material.

Without seeing what your source material is, it is hard to tell if what you are getting is truly BAD (for VCD standards) or if it is the best that the low bitrates and resolution of VCD can handle. (everyone has their own definition of quality)

That said, in general, you won't want to generate VCD from video that has already been compressed (or at least highly compressed) as that typically introduces compression artifacts in the video which make it harder for the transcoder to do its job (it doesn't know the difference between noise and action)

In general, material captured from consumer cameras will not produce the same quality output as from pro cameras, as consumer cameras tend to have noisier picture quality, and therefore make the transcoder work harder to compress the stream into the available bandwidth.

Again, its hard to tell if what you are getting is *abnormally* bad for VCD. It may just be the best you will be able to get with the type/quality of footage you are starting with. (fast action, low light, etc.)

If you had a sample, it would be easier to tell.

--

All that said, you may also want to try encoding through TMPEGenc. As BillyBoy said, SF has stated that their effort went more into producing a quality MPEG2 encoder, but I don't think that the SF MPEG1 encoder is that bad. Your results may be different.


- vin

Also, when rendering to VCD, make sure to use "Best" quality (project properties, render quality). The image down scaling (from 720x480 to 352x240) will have fewer high-frequency artifacts due to scaling, and will therefore compress better. With VCD, there's not that many bits to go around, so every few you can divert from encoding artifacts to encoding content, the better.
///d@

vin,

my captured clips go on these settings.. 720x480x24 29.970 dv...

would be glad to send you a sample clip... how would you like me to send it?

tried to render my clips to SVCD and finally after two months of painstaking i was able to produce a video that i am satisfied.. although its not the format that i was intending to use because of unlimited resources to my CD-beneficiaries.. my thanks to everyone who has shared their insights...

just the same... my search for a good (NO BLOCKS!) VCD will continue and i too, hope that good people will continue to contribute their ideas...

again my thanks...

<The image down scaling (from 720x480 to 352x240) will have fewer high-frequency artifacts due to scaling>

What would the setting be for PAL?