I usually prefer sitting in a well supported good posture chair, it always is better than sitting indian style for an entire CD-rom render.

Lol,
sorry couldn't resist....but sometimes you get what you ask for.

Cheers,
red

it's an 18 minute video thati need in real good quality

Go to www.vcdhelp.com their you can check your DVD player make and model to see if it supports SVCD format. You will also find all kind of info on different formats such as vcd/xvcd/svcd/sxvcd. SVCD is very good quality and depending on your burning software you can even add menus and chapters.

MVPvideos,

You could have a total maximum bitrate of 4.8 Mbps for an 18 minute video on a 650 MByte CD-ROM (Assuming my calculations are correct. 8 bits in a byte, right guys?). So you've got a cosiderable amount of bandwidth to work with. I'd recommend either the Main Concept MPEG-2 codec, or DivX 4.12, if you've got a non K6-family processor. I'm writing a program right now that will calculate the maximum bitrate or file size given the length of the project and one of the two former variables. I'll let you know when it's done. Could be of some use.

Hope this helps,
Nick LaMartina

Nick: How is your utility different than the file size estimator in the CD burning wizard?

There are several difference:

1. Mine is standalone, obviously enough.

2. Mine can calculate the file size of any format (audio or video) so long as the user has the appropriate variables.

3. My program can estimate the BITRATE of a file given its size and length, vesus the wizard which estimates the SIZE given the length and bitrate.

In the case of the aforementioned CD, the user would simply tell my program how big the CD was (650 megs), and how long their video was (18 minutes). My program then tells the user that the final bitrate must be 4.8 Mbps or under to fit on the CD. If he/she used the Burn Wizard, it would only estimate the final size. This way, if he/she rendered an 18 minute video, it'd tell him/her it would be 'X' megs big. But the user would still have 650 - 'X' megs to spare. Unless they are using the NTSC VCD format, they'll be wasting bandwidth potential.

In this, the tool is also useful for web developers. Say you've got a 5 minute video that you want on your webpage, but the file size has to be under 3 megs. Without my program, you'd have to guess an appropriate bitrate. But by using this method, one can find the absolute highest bitrate possible with a given file size. It just saves time and space.

Hope that helps explain it a bit,
Nick LaMartina

sounds very cool Nick!

Wait a minute... Isn't there a glass ceiling most DVD players are going to crash into if you exceed a certain bitrate then start falling behind or choke?

I'm a little rusty, but I recall reading something over on VCD Help that for CD's (not DVD) the max bitrate for MPEG-2 NTSC SVCD was around 2500 or so. Right?

Am I missing something?

WVG,

Yes, you're absolutely right. VCD's, SVCD's, and DVD's all have a very specific audio and video bitrates. If they're altered by too much, they won't play. However, I was speaking in reference to a person wanting to put video on a CD for storage, not playback in a player. If someone wanted to backup or transfer an 18 minute video to a 650 Meg CD, and they wanted the absolute best quality possible, a bitrate of 4.8 Mbps would be optimum. If the user wanted to make a VCD, then yes, they'd be wise not to be under or over 1.15 Mbps. MPEG-2 formats, like SVCD and DVD use variable bitrates, but they won't exceed 2.376 Mbps and 8 Mbps, respectively.

Hope this helps,
Nick LaMartina

Thanks for clearing that up.

I'm probably going to get a DVD burner somtime this year. I think I know the answer, but I got my fingers crossed I'm wrong because it would be nice...

Can you burn a DVD disc using either VCD, SVCD or XVCD bitrates to:

a. just gain the larger storage space a DVD disc provides, using the disc just a storage medium

b. Can you load up a DVD disc using VCD, SVCD, XVCD and thus get a really long playing DVD, or (what I'm afraid) is there ia minimum bitrate