[gromit95]

Hello all

I need help with burning a VCD. I'm able to burn the cd but the quality is very lousy. If you look at the video in a small screen it's fine , play it on a dvd player with a 32" tv and it looks like *%$#.

I followed the directions I got from the Roxio web site, I tried the directions from my Mac Addict magazine. All with the same results. What am I doing wrong???

Here is my set up. IMac 700 w/ cdrw , OS X 10.2, Toast 5, iMovie 3.

I have the iMovie 2 missing manual book and they recommend getting Cleaner 5 to convert the QT Movie to Mpeg 1. Will solve the problem I have??? Saw it on e-bay for $50.00.

Thanks fred

[jtc]

Where are you getting the video from? Is it DV, DVD rip, divx, etc?

I've found that ripping a DVD, then converting to VCD (or XVCD) gives great results. Converting a divx or someother downloaded file usually sucks though.

[gromit95]

sorry
its comoing from a sony DV camcorder
fred

[Uncle Skeleton]

VCD is by definition 352x240. it's just not big enough to give a good result when blown up to 32". SVCD is 480x480, maybe that will be good enough. Toast 6 will offer low and high quality settings for both formats, btw

[jtc]

SVCDs will give you more resolution, but it needs a much higher bit rate to look good (because it has almost triple the number of pixels). If you can use 2500 kbps or higher (you can fit about 30 minutes of video on a 80 minute CD) then you should get good results.

One other option is to make XVCDs, which are VCDs with a variable bit rate. If you are trying to put 80 minutes of video on a CD (1150 kbps average bit rate - same as VCD) you will get much better quality with a VCD (depending on the max bit rate you use - I usually use around 2500) because it will use a low bit rate when possible (i.e. low motion) and bump up the bit rate when needed. If you are putting less than 80 minutes on a CD, you'll get even better results since you can increase the average but rate.

[gromit95]

do you recommend a program i could use

Fred

[memento]

Toast 6