DVD2SVCD is excellent

[Executioner]

Just wanted to take the time to thank the author of DVD2SVCD for such a wonderfull job at combinding all the utilities in one simple program, and to introduce myself to the group here.

Yesterday and today was my first time using the program, and all aspects of the copying of "The Mummy Returns" worked without any problems of any kind. The entire copy from start to finish took ~16 hours on 2 CD-R's using:
Win2k pro
Dual PIII-550MHz cpu's
328MB ram
17 gig 7200rpm IDE HD with NTFS (used only for DvD processing)
9 gig 7200 rpm SCSI boot drive with OS and programs
CCE 2.50

All I changed was the bitrate from 3 CD's to 2 CD's. After completion, I could not believe the quality of the copy. It was not as good as the original DvD, but a hell of a lot better than a VCD, which is all I've done until yesterday.

I then attempted to make a VCD with DVD2SVCD using CCE, and noticed that the quality was not that good compared to my manual method of making VCD's. I had a lot of green blocks which I never had with TMPGEnc when making a VCD:
Smart Ripper
DVD2AVI (48KHz to 44.1KHz MID wav file)
Normilize
TMPGEnc 2.53.35.130
Chapter X Tractor
VCDEasy

So my questions to the experts:
1. It seems like CCE is not that good at making VCD's. Should I use TMPGEnc instead if I want to make a VCD with DVD2SVCD?
2. Why is it in DVD2SVCD that VCDXBuild is not available when making a VCD (only VCD Imager is available)?

I'm using version 1.0.9 build 3 of DVD2SVCD. Thanks

[UltimateDBZ]

1. TMPG is generally considered better at making VCDs, just as CCE is generally considered better at SVCDs.

2. Not positive on this one, but my guess is that VCDXBuild simply doesn't support everything that DVD2SVCD requires to make the VCD properly.

[Matthew]

In regards to #2, I believe it's because chapter support has not been implemented (generation of XML files). Similarly, there's no support for cd overlap. Making SVCDs is the main game so the same time hasn't been put into VCD support.

Also, for VCD I don't like the DVD2SVCD video encoding settings, so I favour cancelling DVD2SVCD and tmpgenc after it hits the video encoding. Then load own tmpgenc template and encode video. When that's done manually mux using bbmpeg (overlap is easy to calculate because of constant fixed bitrate). Then use VCD Easy to author with chapters.

It's a bit more effort, but still easier than doing everything from scratch ;)

[Executioner]

OK thanks for your input. I guess I'll stay with my current VCD method, but use DVD2SVCD when I want to make a SVCD.