[str1]

Hiya.

Ok. So I'm beginning to mess with VCDs after having loads of fun making Quicktime movies of various videos. But I have a series of questions about all of this, since my first couple of VCDs have, um, er, well. Sucked.

First off, I'd love to make VCDs of TV shows, but I've learned that making a VCD out of a broadcast results in some pretty nasty garbage on the screen. You can watch it...but you have to be about 10 feet away. Looks pretty good on a computer screen (understandable). Is there any way to get a better quality out of these things? Perhaps this is the result of what I'm interested in with question #2

2) When I make these VCDs, here's how I'm doing it: the broadcast is recorded to video and then sucked into my iMac. I use the Sorenson 3 codec to compress on the fly at medium-high quality at 24 fps. i'm using the uLaw 4:1 audio compression at 44.1 khz. Should I not be using ANY compression when I do this? Does Quicktime (using the Toast VCD codec) have a target file size? I mean, if the 40 minutes of video is, say, 3 gig uncompressed, will Quicktime target it at 650 meg or so?

3) Is there any (relatively cheap) way to clean up broadcast video? The garbage that comes through on that signal is really annoying. I'm just doing this a) because I have a ton of videos I need to preserve and b) it's the next step in my geek-evolution (been doing audio for years and years).

Thanks in advance.

Cheers
Scott

[Chuck_star]

2. When capturing to your mac. Do not compress the file. Bring it in DV-ntsc or pal. This should greatly improve the quality. QT will not target to 650.

[str1]

Originally posted by Chuck_star:
<STRONG>2. When capturing to your mac. Do not compress the file. Bring it in DV-ntsc or pal. This should greatly improve the quality. QT will not target to 650.</STRONG>

So how big a file am I looking at when a 40 minute video gets done compressing? Will it fit on a 700 MB CD?

I'm asking because this is going to take, what, 14 hours or so to compress?

Thanks!

Scott

[Chuck_star]

We'll a 53meg DV-ntsc file will go to 2.4megs in Mpeg1. About 5% of the original I guess.

[SpeedRacer]

Originally posted by str1:
<STRONG>So how big a file am I looking at when a 40 minute video gets done compressing? Will it fit on a 700 MB CD? </STRONG>

Well a standard 1.5-2 hour VCD movie is stored on 2 CDs. I believe standard CDs hold 1 hour of video in VCD format.

<STRONG>

I'm asking because this is going to take, what, 14 hours or so to compress?</STRONG>

That's an entirely different question. Highly dependent on your machine and software you're using. A g3 based ibook/300 is going to compress video a *lot* slower than, say, a dual 533mHz g4 tower.

Check out Roxio's Toast section for more info.

Speed

[elrond]

str1: Something to keep in mind. Importing your videotape as DV video will get you great quality when you finally go to the step of convert to VCD via Toast's VCD plugin for iMovie. BUT!, the amount of space needed for about an hour of DV video is about 10 gig plus another ~700mb for the compresss (VCD) version. I think. It's been a while so I don't remember the exact usage. Needless to say it LARGE. Make sure you have PLENTY of space.

Another thing to keep in mind is that once you edit out all the commercials from a typical hour tv show you end up with say 45min of actual video. It'd be nice to up the VCD quality to take up the additional room on the CD that you've freed up. I'm not at my Mac right now. But, if I remember correctly, Toast's plug-in doesn't allow you to specify the amount of compress that is done. Which is shame.

[Cipher13]

I know it isn't cheap, but here I'd have to praise Media Cleaner Pro.

I use it to export my uncompressed DV Streams to MPEG1. Takes a while, of course (I do it on max quality; slow compression), but the end result is amazing.

Toast's MPEG1 (VCD) codec is... somewhat lesser quality wise. Not too bad, but not the best; thats part of the problem, perhaps.

The rest of the problem, as stated before, lies in the compression you're using. Sorenson is lossy; I'm not a fan of it, though I have used Sorenson 3 only very very little, so I'm not in a position to judge it.

Don't compress the movie until it comes to MPEGging it.