Vcd's

[Whitemt]

What i am wondering is i see alot of people downloading vcd's. Does anyone here know how to convert them so i can play them in my DVD player? I know this can be done but not sure what program to use or how to do it. I am not asking for where to get the files i am asking for the software to encode them or however it is done i am not sure. Also any instructions would be very nice as well. Thanks again!

[precisionmods]

If your DVD player doesn't support VCD/SVCD format, you should consider getting another one. The only way you can get the VCDs to work in your system is to extract the movie file, reencode it in MPEG-2, and remaster a DVD with menus, etc. Good luck, that's alot of reencoding time.

Or just go buy an Apex, they support VCD/SVCD

[Whitemt]

ok i got that part that the dvd player has to support it but i dont know where to begin is there any documention to say take .avi or .mpeg file and make them playable in a dvdplayer. Most of the files i have are .avi but what i dont know is what to do to them to make them play on a home dvd player or a ps2 or anything besides a computer.

[aussiewan]

If you use Nero, tell it to create a VCD, drag the movie file across, and it will re-encode it to match the VCD standard, tho it can take ages if it is not already in the right format. Try it and see what Nero says. Just remember that you can't usually put a DivX straight onto a VCD because a VCD can only hold 74mins (less than most movies) and an SVCD, tho higher quality, can only hold around 37mins.

[Whitemt]

ok will give that a shot i figured a normal movie i would need 2 cd-rs or what if i burn it to a DVD-R. Then it should fit i hope.

[aussiewan]

I don't think your DVD player will pick up a VCD if it is on DVD. You would need to split it before it gets to nero, otherwise it will just say that the movie is too big.

[brianleb]

VCD and DVD are two completely different movie formats. VCD MPEG-1 and DVD is MPEG-2. You can fit about 60 minutes of VCD quality video on a CD, and you can fit very different amounts of video on a DVD depending on the bitrate. www.vcdhelp.com is the best site for this kind of stuff.

[RAISTLIN]

You could try DVDX. It's a great proggie I used to use for converting my ripped DVD's to VCD/SVCD. It's less involved than most app's out there (re-encodes the A/V streams at the same time so you essentially load the source, click a few options and run it and you get the VCD/SVCD compliant mpeg/mpeg2 stream for burning to CD or authoring to DVD). You can alter the Audio/Video bit rates and resolutions to try to fit it on one CD, or chose the breakpoint for the 2 CD's by setting it for 2 650MB, 700MB, or a custom size. I think the latest version does AVI importing now. If doing a ripped DVD, you can select the chapters and group the CD's that way as well.

It did have some problems with some interlaced movies though, so I used the EZDVD2VCD kit (DVD2AVI, SmartRipper, and TMPGEnc.) to demux the stream, re-encode, then re-mux them together to MPG for VCD or DVD burning. Using DVD2AVI and TMPG is a LONG process (manually done in 3 stages), but DVD2AVI is a much better frameserver than DVDX (Audio Video Synch gets out of wack easily with progressive/telecyne pull up/down). Not to mention the DVD2AVI component will also allow you to choose a codec for encoding a new .avi file (ie. a DivX stream) if you select "Save AVI" from the file menu. It creates seperate Audio/Video streams that have to be re-muxed for DIVX playback, but that can be done with RipItAll also. Again R.IA. is another good tool, but it has some frameserving issues as well. For me, using TMPGEnc was almost always proven the most accurate FREE proggie to use for VCD creation--you just have to get the A/V streams split and synched properly from the start.

Here's a site with some good info and links for how-to's and downloads for home video production. They cover just about everything in home digital video creation--VCD/SVCD/XVCD/DivX/DVD

http://www.digital-digest.com/index.html


Of course, the more automated, direct way to do it would be with a great proggie I got from Circuit City a while back for $40. It's called Magix Movies to CD/DVD. If you've got a player installed and registered on your PC (i.e. you can double-click a file and it starts playing it in something automatically) Magix M2CDDVD will import it directly, let you generate menus, cut scenes, insert audio, re-encode the video/re-sample the audio, AND burn it to either CD or DVD in one process--just import it, cut your scenes/choose your multi-disk split point, create your menu (or use no menus), use the auto quality settings (or you can configure the bitrate, GOP arrangement, and/or quantization details manually), insert your blank media (or a used RW--it will even erase it for you before it burns it!), click Encode and walk away. Great proggie---but it's not available for free. (It says it imports .vob's directly as well--but their is a 2GB limit on the file sizes, so you can't directly transcode a ripped DVD's files if they exceed 2GB combined, unless you want to transcode every 2GB to a seperate CD-R--which is still MUCH easier than the old manual process!)

Raist

[ShArKeY2k2]

VCD Is easy to get to play on a dvd player, simply rencode the audio and burn to dvd-r, svcd is a no go thought!

[trumpetguyscw]

SVCD is MPEG-2 like DVD, so its easier, but VCD is a beotch cuz it has to re-encode from MPEG-1 up to MPEG-2. I would go for it if you have a DVD burner and download SVCD rips of movies, but don't do VCD unless your comp has a super processor to re-encode that shit.