Maybe a stupid question...
POSTED BY: Tiger
UPDATED: Wednesday, September 11, 2002 17:03
VIEWED: 8545
PAGE 2 of 3
Not a stupid question at all.
Video CD.
It can be played in certain DVD players.
Tymen
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VCD is Video CD, basically MPEG video on CD-ROM. The format is uniquely very popular in Asia and is probably the number one choice right now for exchanging video on CD until prices of DVD burners come down. Adding to its popularlity is that VCDs are playable on many DVD players.
One could download a video from the internet, re-encode it, and burn it to VCD to be viewed with your DVD/VCD player. And if you have a video capture card handy, you can pretty much make VCDs of your favorite TV show. It's actually a much better way to record shows than a VCR.
BTW, VCDs are about standard VHS quality. SVCD is SVHS quality.
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Quote:
Originally posted by Zicsoft:
I basically agree. Except I think I'd rather see "Serenity" before the other eps. I'd take it if I could find it.
I'd help if I could but when I say I was offered it on VCD, it was the physical discs. I hear it's available for download but I've never found it.
I know what you mean about seeing it first though. Now I'm all torn again.
Shug
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Quote:Specifically, a lot of Asians own VCD players like this one:
Originally posted by Haken:
VCD is Video CD, basically MPEG video on CD-ROM. The format is uniquely very popular in Asia ...
http://www.globalsources.com/MAGAZINE/AV/0209/AVNP22.HTM
I think most of them use special codecs like DivX. I think you have to follow certain rules when burning a CD for it to be a "standard" VCD.
I suspect there are actually more VCD players in use then there are DVD players, even if you count western countries like the U.S. where VCDs are almost unknown. The nice thing is that anybody with a CD burner can make them, so in places like Hong Kong, you can get almost anything on a VCD. Of course, most of them are pirated...
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Quote:
Originally posted by Zicsoft:
I think you have to follow certain rules when burning a CD for it to be a "standard" VCD.
Nowadays, most software will do the entire re-encoding and burn process for you if software like TMPGEnc and VirtualDub is beyond one's technical abilities.
Ahead Software's Nero Burn is one such software,
http://www.nero.com/en/index.html
and making a VCD is just as simple as making a Music CD. Simply drag and drop and the software does the rest.
As an alternative, I believe Roxio Easy CD Creator Delux/Professional will also do the same, though I haven't tried it out myself.
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Quote:
Originally posted by Zicsoft:
I think most of them use special codecs like DivX.
Technically then it wouldn't be a VCD, it'd be a DivX on CD. There are players that can play that though. Plus I think the X-Box can play wma format.
Quote:
I think you have to follow certain rules when burning a CD for it to be a "standard" VCD.
A standard VCD is an MPEG-1 at 1150kbps. It's either 352x288 at 25fps for PAL or 352x240 at 29.97fps for NTSC. Some players will let you vary from the standard and still play (say if you wanted a higher bitrate for better quality). Then it gets called XVCD - AFAIK there's no standard as such for XVCD.
Standard SVCD has a higher resolution (480x576 for PAL and 480x480 for NTSC) and uses MPEG-2. MPEG-2 is variable bitrate but you have to keep it under 2520kbps to be SVCD. Again there's XSVCD where you vary the resolution or bitrate outside the standard. My DVD player won't play XSVCDs for e.g.
Quote:
I suspect there are actually more VCD players in use then there are DVD players, even if you count western countries like the U.S. where VCDs are almost unknown. The nice thing is that anybody with a CD burner can make them, so in places like Hong Kong, you can get almost anything on a VCD. Of course, most of them are pirated...
Plus there are a lot of downloads in VCD and SVCD format MPEGs - although I think DivX is more common. Personally, if I were to download (which would be very naughty), I'd rather have something I can play on my TV than my PC monitor. Of course you can always re-encode.
Shug
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Quote:
Originally posted by Shuggie:
Of course you can always re-encode.
Except that when you decompress DivX and re-encode, chances are good that the re-encoded video will be highly pixelated or blocky. I've tried a few times to solve this problem with no luck.
By design, the data simply degrades as a result of the initial compression. Can't really rebuild something without all the pieces I guess.
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Quote:
Originally posted by Haken:
Except that when you decompress DivX and re-encode, chances are good that the re-encoded video will be highly pixelated or blocky. I've tried a few times to solve this problem with no luck.
Hmmm. Well going from one lossy compression format to another is never ideal. You should in theory be able to get similar results though. Do you re-encode directly or do you create an uncompressed AVI as an intermediary? It's going to take up an awful lot of discspace though.
Anyway - I would only re-encode if I had to.
Shug
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Quote:Incorrect. Converting from lossy to lossless formats doesn't restore the missing information. When you convert from one lossy format to another, you lose all the information discarded by both formats. Use a non-lossy intermediate won't change that.
Originally posted by Shuggie:
Hmmm. Well going from one lossy compression format to another is never ideal. You should in theory be able to get similar results though.
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Quote:
Originally posted by Zicsoft:Quote:Incorrect.
Originally posted by Shuggie:
Hmmm. Well going from one lossy compression format to another is never ideal. You should in theory be able to get similar results though.
Weren't you the one who had a go a me for being this blunt?
Quote:
Converting from lossy to lossless formats doesn't restore the missing information.
I never said that it did. I said similar results not identical.
Quote:
When you convert from one lossy format to another, you lose all the information discarded by both formats.
Agreed.
Quote:
Use a non-lossy intermediate won't change that.
Here's where theory and practice seem to diverge. It shouldn't make any difference - but in the case of DivX, in my experience, it can.
Maybe there's a bug the DivX codec, or a bug in TMPGenc, or it's something to do with the fact that DivX is very CPU intensive[1] but when I've worked with DivX in the past I've had a lot of problems - sometimes with image quality, mostly with the encode failing for some reason.
Also - and to be fair I never mentioned this explicitly - there's usually some filters applied during re-encoding, even if only to resize. So there already can be an intermediary stage in the process. If so it's better to not re-apply lossy compression along the way.
The best thing is to try for yourself. As one of my colleagues is fond of saying -
Quote:
In theory, theory and practice are the same. In practice they are not.
[1]yes I know that should only make it slower but TMPGenc does stuff with process priorities which may have an effect. I'm just speculating.
Shug
Who doesn't claim to be an expert but has done quite a bit of capturing, encoding and generally messing around with video formats.
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