VCD quality problem AND compatibility issue with DVD players

[David]

I just XP and thought that I could record movies from my Sony digital
camcorder to the hard drive and then burn either VCD or DVD's with great
quality. Because I've got tons of cheap CD's, I've been practicing
making only VCD's. (I don't want to ruin many DVD+R's until I
understand the process better)

So far I've gotten a couple of VCD's to play on DVD players, but the
quality of the rendered video from a clean AVI file is HORRIBLE. There
are so many compression artifacts, the video isn't worth watching. The
source file is clean. I can't find a way to improve the quality of the
video when recorded to CD. But here is the kicker; I downloaded an MPEG
file from the net and recorded that to a CD (Video CD mode in burner
software) and looked at it on a TV. It look fine.

So what am I missing here? First of all I can't find any options in
WinDVD Creator 2, or Windows MovieMaker 2, or Adobe Premier, to make a
movie as an MPEG file. It appears that files on VCD are not inherently
pixelated, but so far, the software I've tried to burn VCD's isn't
letting me choose the appropriate file types, and hence, the proper
quality. Also, some of the formats aren't readable in a DVD player,
like the WVM file types. Also, when I place a VCD in a DVD player, the
onscreen prompts are confusing. ONLY pressing Fast Forward gets the VCD
moving along to the next menu option, which is to select the video file
(again, using ONLY Fast Forward). If I mail out these VCD's to friends,
they will most likely think the VCD wont play at all, because pressing
Play or Forward doesn't work. Suggestions?

What do I need in order to simply burn an mpeg or mpeg2 video onto a CD
and also onto DVD's so that they will be readable in most DVD players?
The burner is a DVD+R in a new HP machine. Will the video quality issues
simply go away when I switch to burning to DVD's or will there still be
no options for making MPEGS with the 3 programs I mentioned?

Let me rephrase my questions, for clarity:

1. Must I be burning MPEG OR MPEG-2 files if I want great quality?
2. Can an AVI file be created on a VCD with exceptional quality?
3. Can Windows Movie Creator 2 burn a great looking DVD, even though I
can't seem to get it to make a compatible (with NON pc-based DVD
players) and good looking VCD yet?
4. MUST I buy a stand alone product to make MPEGS?

PS: If this should be posted to a different news group, PLEASE advise!

David

 

[David]

I think I got a bit dyslexic with an acronym. I meant "WMV"; not "WVM".

David

 

[Rehan]

You need to use TMPGenc to encode from AVI to MPEG format. TMPGenc is one of
the best quality encoder out there and its free (for VCD encoding).

 

[Ionizer]

I just XP and thought that I could record movies from my Sony digital
camcorder to the hard drive and then burn either VCD or DVD's with great
quality. Because I've got tons of cheap CD's, I've been practicing
making only VCD's. (I don't want to ruin many DVD+R's until I
understand the process better)

Spend some time browsing this site: http://www.videohelp.com/ You'll find
lots of tutorials, software recommendations (many freeware,) etc.
Obviously the problem in your case is the conversion process from avi to
VCD-compliant mpeg-1.

Regards,
Ian.

 

[David]

I'll check out the link. Thanks, Ian.

FWIW, I accidentally burned a DVD yesterday and the quality is fine. I
wanted to see how WinDVD Creator would respond if a DVD+R was in the
burner. sure enough, the options changed drastically for the type of
files I could burn. I clicked on "next" one too many times and I
couldn't abort the burn, even by clicking the cancel button. I played
the DVD in a TV-DVD combo and it played perfectly. So I know that I can
now record good looking DVD's with little fanfare. All that's left is
to figure out why the VCD's look bad unless my source file is ALREADY an
MPEG file.

David

 

[Rehan]

All that's left is to figure out why the VCD's look bad unless my source

file is ALREADY an MPEG file.

That is not a mystry... DVD uses around 8Mbps while VCD is only 1.15Mbps. To
produce good looking picture using so low a bitrate, the encoder must do a
lot of processing. Most DVD authoring softwares dont bother too much. As
suggested before you can use TMPGenc which does a good job and still allows
you to control many factors to tweak the quality...

 

[Graham Hughes]

You could choose the SVCD option for writing to cd's, which uses a smaller
mpeg2 file, so worse than dvd but better than vcd.
Use this link to find tmpgenc which is excellent, it also gives the optimum
settings for making a dvd file.
Unfortunately, as you have found out, making a vcd/dvd is not as easy as a
music cd, burn and play is still not there yet. Also check out
www.dvdrhelp.com for a checking out what you dvd player will play, as some
will play vcd and not svcd, or even the other way round, including some will
play +r discs and -r discs etc etc.....
For saving money and discs, why not invest in a couple of rw's
Graham

 

[Guest]

Here a late response, but maybe still helpfull: try "ReClock" to improve your
(S)VCD

Suc6
Myra