Comments

Chienworks wrote on 4/25/2007, 7:34 PM
Unles the client absolutely needs to have the videos play on a DVD player that doesn't support VCD (probably very rare), i wouldn't bother. There will be no improvement, and as you pointed out, the result will actually be worse than the originals.

If he just wants archival, offer to burn copies on to "gold" archival CD-Rs.
rs170a wrote on 4/25/2007, 7:40 PM
Looking at the VCD page at http://www.videohelp.com/vcd reminded me that (from what I remember) all you need to do is change the extension on the AVSEQnn.DAT file in the MPEGAV folder from DAT to MPG.
BTW, VCD is an mpeg-1 file. NTSC res of 352x240 or PAL res of 352x288.

Mike
PeterWright wrote on 4/25/2007, 8:01 PM
Thanks for the replies - Mike, yes, I was getting confused with SVCD for MPEG2.

The client, a tai chi school, was hoping to create DVDs with a more sophisticated menu structure. When I get the disc I shall show them a demo with the footage at original size, i.e. PIP within the DVD frame, and enlarged to full frame, so they can see the difference.
fldave wrote on 4/25/2007, 8:29 PM
"VCD is lower resolution MPEG2"

The resolution "may be" lower, but the bitrate for MPEG-1 is higher than a comparable MPEG2 at the same resolution. So, less compression. Remember, the small 352x240 is a valid MPEG2 standard.

"Some" of the old VCDs have better quality than you could achieve with a same-resolution MPEG2.

Best to leave it alone. If you have the original source video for the VCD, then that's a different story.

I love to tell a client (for free) that they don't want me to do what they ask me to. They always come back later wanting me to do a years worth of work. Just had to turn down another year from my favorite client. It's nice to be too busy, I guess.
johnmeyer wrote on 4/26/2007, 9:39 AM
This may not be relevant or useful, but there is a way, by temporarily patching headers, to put existing SVCD -- and I think VCD material as well -- onto a DVD, complete with DVD menus, but WITHOUT having to re-encode the material. I have done this and it works.

The big caveat is that the equipment that plays the resulting DVD MUST be able to play a VCD because the player is actually switched between DVD and VCD while playing. Thus, you will not have as wide compatibility as you will if you simply drop the VCD onto the Vegas timeline and re-encode. However, with this trick, you can burn your DVD within a few minutes, without any re-encoding.
GeorgeW wrote on 4/26/2007, 3:39 PM
DVDA won't let you do it, but the compliant VCD mpeg-1 is also dvd-compliant (after changing the audio from 44.1 to 48khz).

All you need is an authoring program that handles vcd-compliant mpeg as valid for dvd (i.e. without re-encoding), and the resulting video should be the same quality as it is on the VCD.