[Avon]

I made a video cd by using the Quicktime player to export to a Toast ready VCD file. The Quality is poor to say the least. It made a file that was 60 megs (7 min clip). How can I increase the image quality of a VCD? I dont care if the file is 700 megs, as long as it fits onto a cd and that most modern DVD players can play it.

IS there a way to make a better quality DVD? There where no options in the VCD export dialog.

Thanks.

[Uncle Skeleton]

there are no options in the VCD spec, that's why. It is a set resolution (320x240!), framerate, bitrate, format, everything. Your options are SVCD (mpeg-2, 480x480) or DVD (mpeg-2, 720x480)

http://homepage.mac.com/rnc

SVCD is supported by fewer set top players than VCD

[Nap]

Since the VCD standard is for a datarate of about 10 meg/minute for 352x240 video the only reason it would be lousy quality would be giving the encoder lousy data. If you fed the encoder a clip that had already been compressed you can only get worse quality the second time it is encoded. You will have better luck if you can give the encoder an uncompressed file, using component video or NONE as the video compressor. If an encoded clip is all you have then you are probably out of luck quality-wise.

[Avon]

Originally posted by Uncle Skeleton:
there are no options in the VCD spec, that's why. It is a set resolution (320x240!), framerate, bitrate, format, everything. Your options are SVCD (mpeg-2, 480x480) or DVD (mpeg-2, 720x480)

http://homepage.mac.com/rnc

SVCD is supported by fewer set top players than VCD

Thanks I will give the SVCD a shot! I have a full size 720X480 uncompreses QT srouce file. (1.2gb 7 min clip)

[sleepyrenderer]

Actually, one option if you have a copy of VPC is to encode using TMPEG Enc. Set "Max number of frames in a GOP" to 15 for PAL or 18 for NTSC and choose either mpeg1 or mpeg2 in nearly any bitrate (probably keep it between 1200 and 2520 kbs -- CBR, VBR, MVBR, CQVBR or CQ) and at many different resolutions. You then create a VCD (even if you used mpeg2) in Nero and import your encoded movie -- Nero will warn you that it's non-standard but just tell it to ignore that fact.

The resulting "hybrid VCD" will play in nearly any DVD player, even ones that refuse to play SVCDs and you have very fine control over the quality of the video.

Unfortunately doing this through VPC5 is incredibly slow in OS X but it's not quite so bad in OS 9. Does anyone know of an mpeg2 encoder for OS X that lets you fine-tune the GOP structure?

[Uncle Skeleton]

though I have not had occaision to encode to mpeg2, well, ever, the mpeg2enc pipe in MediaPipe is pretty customizable, including min/max GOP size

[k_munic]

have you heard of "mini dvd"?

this means a very rare standard, using cheap standard cd-roms BUT with standard VIDEO_TS and AUDIO_TS files on it.

you can "press" up to 30 - 40 min of video on a 99Ct disk in DVD quality!

first, you have to produce your material into mpg2 standards, have a look here: http://homepage.mac.com/rnc/

then, try SIZZLE (at Versiontracker), it's still a very early beta, but its able to make .img, which you can use in apple's disc copy.

give it at try... problem is, many stand-alone dvd player are a little "worried", why a cd-rom comes as dvd-in-disguise ;-))

for home-movies it's great.
---
pros: best quality
negs: no menus, no chapters (yet), so just good for "transfer" and "storage" of material....