There is a new form of VCD called Double VCD. Currently it is a china only format. A friend of mine has a DVCD, in which the whole Bug's Life Movie fit on one disc. As of now, all I know about DVCD is that it cannot be played on a CD-ROM player but can be played on a dvd player and and a vcd player. I was told that it was recorded on a 1.2gig disc but don't quote me on that.

If anyone has any more info on DVCD's and the creation of DVCD's please email me mrvcd@juno.com

-- Mr VCD (mrvcd@juno.com), June 17, 1999

Answers

You need an MPEG2 encoder. DVCD and SVCD use MPEG2 but different pressing processes. So far if you want to make a DVCD, kiss universal use goodbye. They do not work in DVD/VCD Stand-Alone Players, VCD Stand-Alone players, Philips CD-I, and for PC use, you have to open the file manually. If the disc can be played on a DVD/VCD player then it is DVD disc, and you can not make those yet. DVD-RAM does not work in regular DVD Players but works fine in a DVD-RAM drive(DVD-RAM media is enclosed in a shell like VHS cassettes).

-- the Lone Ranger (rutger_s@hotmail.com), June 17, 1999.

DVCD is not MPEG-2. You have confused that with SVCD (super vcd). DVCD is same bitrate and resolution as VCD exept it's double the length.

-- Mr VCD (mrvcd@juno.com), June 17, 1999.

I own a copy Rush Hour on DVCD and it runs fine on my VCD version 3 sytem. It is indead only on 1 disk I beleave its 84 mins. Prety cool.

-- jonathan dale (jmdlord@ukgateway.net), June 23, 1999.

Yet again I ask, is there any way to create a DVCD?

-- Mr VCD (vgman128@collegeclub.com), July 13, 1999.

the short answer: You can not do it but the pirates can.

-- The Lone Ranger (rutger_s@hotmail.com), July 13, 1999.

I've just got possession of a DigitalVCD movie called "SOLDIER". I think it may also be called a DoubleVCD. It comes in 1 disk only and can be played on a stand-alone VCD player and also on PowerDVD & XING 3.30 on the PC. Checking its contents by Windows Explorer showed that the movie .dat files took only 533MB total space. Extrapolating this to ~730MB (most movies take up ~1,460MB on 2 disks) of music capacity on a full disk would mean you can have a ~140 minute movie on a single CD-rom disk. How "they" do it, I don't know. The .dat file was made as late as January 1999. Of course the packaging is all in Chinese.

-- Tomo (ong@worksafe.wa.gov.au), July 14, 1999.

Like everyone else, I am quite confused about this DVCD thing. I suspect it is using some variation of MPEG 2 encoding to compress more minutes into one disc owing to the higher compression ratio. DVD players shouldn't have problem reading the disc as such because they are already MPEG2 compatible. For VCD players and CDROM drive to play the disc, I suppose, a copy of mpeg 2 decoder can be put on the disc and played automatically when the disc is loaded. I figure this is the way it is done. In China, one company is marketing a software it claims can play DVD, DVCD, CVD, VCD and etc. Believe it or not, the price is only 39 reminbi. Their software is probably the trick in DVCD disc.

Forgive me if you find what I said is utterly rubbish.

-- Daniel Lee (siangneng@sp.edu.sg), December 06, 1999.

Here's another thought... As one of you guys said up near the beginning of this, there IS a new kind of CD coming out, called DCD, I believe, DoubleCompactDisc, it is about 1.2gb, obviously, the tracks are written either twice as tight, or one OVER the other, I don't know how it's done, or whether it's backwards compatable, but I know it's the next thing as far as CDs go, Sony's developing the technology.

-- Steve (forcedude@email.com), December 21, 2000.

They must have found a way to layer the mpeg-1 files to get more video on a standard disk. I know they do that with DVD because I have read about it. That is how they fit the longer movies and all the extras on one DVD disk. I think it's called layering but back to the original question. How do we get ahold of this technology?

-- Al McCraw (amccraw@yahoo.com), December 21, 2000.

the layer idea doesnt seem feasible because existing dvd/vcd players couldnt read such a disk - some have trouble with 80min cdr/rw simply because the pits are tighter, so how could they read such a deviation from standard? if it works on existing players, its got to be a standard cd. auto playing a software mpeg2 decoder is another impossibility with existing players.i think the disks just use a lower bitrate, hence the longer run time. or tighter pits, but tighter pits would give alot of drives trouble......

-- ndumu (ndumu@hotmail.com), December 21, 2000.

more info.....http://www.ccs.neu.edu/home/bchafy/cdb/info/info.html

"There's a newer VCD format called DVCD (Double VCD, or "Super-Dense VCD"). A full-length film is packed onto a single VCD (~90 mins). The format appears to be the same as a standard VCD (White book, MPEG- 1, .DAT files). However, the data files are larger than a normal VCD. But it's a pressing trick (yes, the disc is really dense), not a new compression type, and they're not MPEG-2. (A copy of the .dat file to a hard drive will be a duplicate file of the same size. I've seen these disks hold over 97:00 minutes of 2352 byte sectors, yeilding a file just over 1.0GB. These discs play in standard VCD players (well, sometimes) and some CD-ROM drives. These discs are much more defect- prone than the standard VCD."

SMALLER PITS! mystery solved.

-- ndumu (ndumu@hotmail.com), December 21, 2000.

SMALLER PITS! This must be the reason why even Clone cannot duplicate a DVCD disk to a CD-R. Also, I believe, all burners burn large holes on CD-Rs.

Thanks for solving the long saga of the Double-VCD mystery for us, ndumu.

-- Tomo (ong@worksafe.wa.gov.au), December 21, 2000.

Since this thread was revived, I got interested in this mystery of the DVCD again and started looking deeper with the help of up to date information posted on this thread.

Now I think I have got it. The DVCD disc is actually stretched to the limit to hold say a 95 minutes movie. This is done in ways similar to the 80 minutes CD-R/W disc but extended even more so. The trick is to ensure that the extended track is within all types of limits set by international standards, so that any CD disc reader which complies with international standard is able to read this extended disc.

But the makers of DVCDs like to play games with us amature VCD makers. They will falsify the size of mpeg1 file as half the actual size to make the disc appears like a double VCD. However, the time of play repored will always be correct. Hence a 95 minutes movie that actually took up about 950 MB space, would be reported by the PC as only 475 MB.

My wish now is that I can buy 95 minutes blank CD-R and CD-RW.

-- Tomo (tomong@onenet.com.au), December 22, 2000.

DVCD are supported on the ARCAM DV88 player. 90 minute CDR's are available from my local supplier but they only can be burnt in certain players.

-- Niknik (nick@empire.com.au), February 13, 2001.

Making your own DVCDs ... it is as easy as getting a cd writer up to the task (i.e. overburning to 99 mins) & buying the blanks ... you can get 90min and also 99min ones in good ol' Europe ... use Nero for some serious overburning (specify 99 mins in the expert settings). Encode your video according to the VCD standard & you are set ... Most burners won't go signifcantly above 90 mins, though ... the Goldstar 8X will, as does an el-cheapo Mitsumi recorder. Be prepared for funny results with hardware that's not up to it ... CD-ROMs might not be able to read it at all, burners might burn, but not read the disc afterwards etc. Good luck,

Steve

-- Steve Miller (smiller667@hotmail.com), May 30, 2001.

READ THIS DEFINITIONS BELOW AND COMPLEMENT WHAT YOU HAVE MENTIONED. Now another important factor is that a VCD file does not occupy the same amount of sectors that a regular cd files do. That's why a 80 minute or more movie can fit on a 74min cd. Go to www.vcdhelp.com and search for more info about this...

VideoCD Guide VCD (VideoCD) is a CD format that was introduced by Philips, JVC and Sony in 1993. It's practically unheard of in North America and Europe, but very popular in Asia. Video CD is designed to store digital video sequences in the MPEG-1 format.

SVCD (Super Video CD) is an extension of the VCD standard which uses MPEG-2 compression with Variable Bit Rate encoding which means the quality is better than VCD but under DVD. Although it also means need more spaces for same the movie length. A SVCD can store 35 to 80 minutes of VCD.

XVCD is almost the same as VCD but with higher bitrate(up to 3.5 MBit/s). A XVCD can be played on many DVD Players and on all CD-ROMs.

DVCD (Double VCD/increases data density) has the same bitrate/resolution and features as VCD but the length is anywhere from 90-100 min. Playable on DVD and VCD players but may be incompatible with CD-ROM players.

-- FRND (DUVIS10@HOTMAIL.COM), June 02, 2002.