VCD Quality Matter

razugrg · Post by **razugrg** » Wed Mar 16, 2005 11:55 pm

I made a VCD of my finished video(*.avi) using Nero Burner Software. But I found the quality is less than VHS. Why it happen? And, is there any software which can produce quality video?

THoff · Post by **THoff** » Thu Mar 17, 2005 12:37 am

VCD resolution is only 352x240 or 352x288 for NTSC and PAL, respectively, with a fixed bitrate just above 1100kbps, which doesn't quite achieve VHS quality.

Furthermore, if the source material was transcoded or converted to VCD format, this process will likely further reduce the quality of the final product.

Where did the source material come from, and what output settings did you use? In your opinion, what is the area with the biggest quality problem you experienced: color fidelity, resolution, macro blocking / artifacts etc.?

razugrg · Post by **razugrg** » Thu Mar 17, 2005 1:35 am

Thanks,

Resolution and artifact.
Is there any software or hardware to get maximum quality?

THoff · Post by **THoff** » Thu Mar 17, 2005 3:08 am

If you are using UVS to produce the VCD-compliant MPEG file, don't use the standard VCD output option, select Custom, then choose MPEG as the output format, and customize the settings further. Use a Quality setting of 100% to allow the encoder to perform the maximum amount of motion search. Don't preview the MPEG file on your PC, or worse, in UVS -- the Preview feature in UVS will resize the low-resolution VCD video to fit the larger Preview window, which will cause macro blocks. If your standalone DVD player supports the VCD format (most do), use a CD-RW or CD-R disk to check the quality.

There is other software that can create better output than UVS, such as Canopus' ProCoder and Cinemacraft's CCE, but they can't work wonders -- their output will be similar to what UVS produces.