best quality VCD/SVCD encoding package

[Dionysus]

hey I'm trying to decide whether or not to buy a DVD player with VCD/SVCD to play my movies that I copy but I don't know what the quality is like compared to that of DivX 5.02. So inorder to try this I want to know what the majority is on the best VCD/SVCD package that doom9 has. So if you ppl could let me know that'd be awesome.

and does nero support svcd or is it just vcd??!!

thanks

[htc10825]

I recommend you to by a dvd burner too. Thus you can make 1:1 copy and the quality is much better than DivX5. It is much easier and save a lot of time(no need for re-encoding, you can even copy the menu structrue).
If you want to live easily, that is the solution!:D

[Dionysus]

but what's the point in buying a dvd burning when the price for a dvd-r cd is the same price as the actual movie?? I mean I would consider a dvd burner but I would be saving myself 500 dollars just on the burner when the dvd's are the same price are they not?

????

[RadicalEd]

actually you can get a burner for ~$240 and online the cheap media is under $1 a piece for DVD-R. Of course, htc's reply wasn't answering your question at all but instead spamming DVD-R ;P
The quality for CVD (variant of SVCD, NOT the same as VCD) at 2600 kbps will not be as good as DivX at 2600 kbps but will be good (after all, DVD standard average is 5000kbps and CVD is half the standard res, so it should be "dvd quality"). The best video encoders are CCE for SVCD and TMPG for VCD, best mp2 audio encoder is tooLAME (part of besweet), and the best muxxer is BBmpeg. In addition the best authoring package is VCDEasy and the best burner is CDRDAO.

you can even copy the menu structrue

so? you can do that with (S)VCD too, its in my sig ;P

If you want to live easily, that is the solution!

but if you want to live easy don't try to copy menus to (S)VCD :o

[Dionysus]

so your telling me that I can buy a dvd burner regardless of cost and buy dvd-r's for around a dollar and can do a 1:1 conversion? K if this is true I will never be encoding again!

[adam]

Originally posted by Dionysus
so your telling me that I can buy a dvd burner regardless of cost and buy dvd-r's for around a dollar and can do a 1:1 conversion? K if this is true I will never be encoding again!

Yes you will. You can only do a 1:1 conversion if the dvd is single layer, which most new dvds aren't. For most dvds you either have to split it onto two dvd-r's or cut the filesize down either by,removing extra's and/or audio tracks or by transcoding the movie down to a lower bitrate.

[Dionysus]

I hate all those extra's and stuff that come with DVD's I personally think they're a waste of space but each to there own. But if I took off all extras, menu etc, I could get a dvd onto a dvd-r with the same quality picture...?? k now that we've got that cleared up here's what else I need to ask then... who makes the best

dvd player

dvd burner

and where I can find those cheap dvd-r's as the cheapest ones I found were 10 bucks which isn't that bad but... hope you can get back to me soon and price doesn't really matter but I'm not looking for extra's on the dvd player that the common person wouldn't use just something that looks nice and does the job for doing (S)VCD's, DVD-R's, DVD's, MP3's etc.


thanks again guys.

[adam]

The largest dvd-r/w media you can buy is 4.7 gigs. Any single sided/single layer disk will fit on this so in this case you can do a 1:1 copy, minus the encryption of course.

Most new dvds, however, are single sided/dual layered which has a capacity of 8.5 gigs. For any dvd, the majority of that capacity is going to be used for the movie, not the extras. If the extra's only pushed the filesize a little over 4.7 gigs then they would probably have just used a single layered disk in the first place, so you can see that it will actually be fairly uncommon for you to find a dual layered dvd that will fit on a blank dvd-r/w disk just by removing the extras alone. Some dvds will have alot of extras and by removing them you will be able to fit the entire movie onto a blank disk without transcoding it. The point of my post was that to fit the average newly released dvd onto a blank dvd-r/w disk you will have to beg, borrow, and steal to get the filesize down to a manageable level. This usually means that you will either have to split the movie onto two disks or transcode it to a lower bitrate.

I don't have any recommendations for burners.

For media, the best deals are online. Check pricewatch.com. Buying in bulk gets you the best deals.

[Dionysus]

well guys thanks for your insight but it doesn't sound too promising the reason i wanted to go to DVD-R was to get away from doing 2 - 3 cd rips with DivX and being able to get better quality. I don't mind spending the money for the dvd burner and player but if I'm still going through the hassle of doing two cd mins then it's not worth it. I'm better off just running s-video all the way to my tv buying a 2x120GB harddrives and just keeping the the highest quality of a DivX rip on my computer... but as soon as i can put a movie with not as good as DVD but way way better quality than DivX5 someone tell me and I will invest.

And adam with what your saying if I just go to a lower bitrate quality of movie and sound, will I still be getting way way better quality than DivX 5 but not as good as DVD, cuz if you can tell me that I will continue with my research but if you can't than I'm going to stop here... thanks though man.

what i'm trying to accomplish here is that if I copy a movie and lower the bitrate etc will I notice the pixals etc on characters or objects when the view is from a distance in the movie. your average movie watcher wouldn't notice but when you've been doing this for over a year you begin to just watch for the quality of your rips rather than overall cuz none of my family/friends can notice any quality difference although i can.

thanks to all who contributed...

[adam]

After lowering the bitrate to fit the movie onto one dvd-rw you will still achieve quality which is much better than any divx. Think about it, two 80 min cdrs holds just over or just under 1.5 gigs, depending on which mode you are burning in. A blank dvd-r/w holds 4.7 gigs(actually 4.3 in this case.) Even though your bitrate is going to be less than the retail dvd, you are still getting a substantially higher bitrate. Right now dvd burners are the best solution for archiving video. I guarantee you won't notice any pixellation or artifacts on a dvd-r/w backup.

[htc10825]

My recommendation goes to the new SONY burner or the Pioneer 105, or at least Pioneer 104(which may be chaeper at some dealers). All(most) other dvd burners are only for DVD+R/RW which are slightly less compliant for playing back in standalone dvd players.
Another reason for DVD-R backups is the wider support for play back. DivX movie cannt be played in usual standalones but can be played back in any PC with DVD drive and CPU at least P2-266Mhz which is nowadays oldtimer. The most annoyance of DivX movie is the backwards search/playback. Due to the long interval btw. key frames(thus also better compression) the FF especialy the RW works very bad in DivX. But at dvd player you get the FF and RW at 2x/4x/8x/16/32x absolute smoothly. I guarantee you won't notice any pixellation or artifacts on a dvd-r/w backup This is true for all the new hollyword films. A lot of very old movie and non-film products(e.g. sightseeing, landscape, music, karaoke, or porn) are single layered which you can direct copy. But many music/concert dvds are dual layered(over 150 min., 8GB), 30fps ntsc interlaced video and some of them with much noise. This is not easy to reduce the size without pixellation. With some filters you can also reach very good quality. A real expert can burn 2-3 Films on one 4.7GB DVD-R.

[Dionysus]

htc10825; but all I'm really concerned with is if I reduce the size of one movie onto a DVD-R that it will be way better quality than doing a two or three disc DivX. I mean "adam" basically explained that i fyou think about it when most DivX are maybe 2gb when you can get up to 4.7 (4.3) GB sized movie which is more than 2 times better therefore the quality will be twice as good as DivX no?! That's all I'm interested in for now. and as for the pixallation, like the dvd-r should be two times as good as divx that I may notice but no one else will notice the pixallation. It would be a lot smoother than any sort of encoding that can be done other than the actual dvd itself right?!

you got any DVD players in mind that can play all formats of CD's??

one more thing... would anyone recomment waiting for the capabilities of the DVD-RW to reach the 8.x GB writing? as it currently is at 4.7GB right or is there such a thing of it ever getting that far to even worry about it?!

[RadicalEd]

No, a DVD9 burner is doubtful if possible at all, there are a few posts in the DVD Burning forum that go into detail about why it isn't possible. I've been told the Pioneer DVR-104 burner is the best and like adam said, keep tabs on pricewatch for the cheapest media.
Recompressing a movie down to fit on one DVD shouldn't give you any noticable artifacting on a normal TV set. And if you're real paranoid about artifacting you can always encode at half-D1 resolution (352x480) which would give you the same bit per pixel ratio that the original DVD9 had at the expense of vertical resolution (it's generally agreed that vertical res isn't all that crucial anyway, its horizontal that matters)

[adam]

Well you can't necessarily say that since the dvd will have double the bitrate it will necessarily have double the quality of the divx. Divx (mpeg4)compresses better at lower bitrate but mpeg2 has better fidelity at high bitrates, and even when transcoding a 2hr movie to fit on a dvd-r/w I still consider that a high bitrate.

I suggest you just do a test encode with a dvd source. Encode at 720x480 @avg 4mbits or so and see how the quality looks to you. If its acceptable on your pc monitor compared to the divx than it will probably be more than acceptable when played on your tv. If you like the quality then buy a dvd-r/w drive and just live with its limitations because it is almost certain that dvd recordable media is already maxed out in its capacity.

In a few years blue laser technology will be released and the burners will hold dozens of gigs per side and that will be the "be all and end all" of movie archiving, of course until the next big thing comes along.

[RadicalEd]

watch for the future release of the UV-DVD which will be burnt with a 100 nm ultraviolet ray and hold 2.62 TB of 8000 x 4500 480 fps video

:D

[SatStorm]

720 X 576 @ 4000 is the "standard" of many european DVB transmissions. The picture do have blocks and pixels most of the time. The picture is overallfar from perfect.
I believe that 4.000kb/s can be "enough" only with multipass CCE encoding of a good source. For quality freaks that is. Personally, I don't mind for some pixels on very extreme scenes. But many users do...

Also the 1/2 D1 resolution have great difference with a full CCIR - 601 one, on some situations. For example, for movies like Monsters INC or Star Wars Episode 2, the difference is very noticable. Expecially to plasma TVs, the new fashion in europe (here, we don't expect HDTV for the next 15 - 20 years, so Plasma Screens and Pal Pixel Plus technology are the new trades...)

I believe that 1/2 D1 resolution is good for back up VHS/SVHS/LDs and TV programs (DVB non 720 X 576, most of them are 544 X 576 for a strange reason). For DVD backups, keep the full CCIR 601 as is, if possible. And burn 2 discs if neccessary.

[htc10825]

720 X 576 @ 4000 is the "standard" of many european DVB transmissions. The picture do have blocks and pixels most of the time. The picture is overallfar from perfect.Keep in mind DVD is not DVB. The souce are allmost noisy and interlaced. For most DVD movies there is no such problem.I believe that 4.000kb/s can be "enough" only with multipass CCE encoding of a good source. For quality freaks that is. Personally, I don't mind for some pixels on very extreme scenes. But many users do... In my post above I've point the noisy video material need to special treated while transcoding. You can take some filter and do a 1-Pass CQ-VBR(or MP-VBR, but the quality will not visible better in you get correct settings for 1P CD-VBR).