I was thinking of buying an external CDR drive, (as far as I can tell, you can use CDR drives to record VCD), I was thinking of just hooking it up to an external source like, this question may have already been answered, but, Is there an external CDR drive / VDR standalone that I can us without the pc turned on ? In was thinking of getting an amoisonic VDR2000, but im getting some kind of cdr drive anyway, and the price tag is too hefty, Any ideas, ( P.S already got a vcd player (in the form of a dvd player) )...

-- Chris (thats all, just chris) (chris2048@hotmail.com), December 11, 2000

Answers

No, a CDR drive is not the same as the amoisonic VDR2000. The VDR2000 is basically a PC with an isolated function to create VCD so to speak. It has more then just a CDR drive in it. Go to www.vcdhelper.com and look at the "How to make VCD" section first, then decide what CDR drive to buy later. After you read through it, then look at the "Compatible DVD player list for VCD". There are more to it then just a CDR drive in making VCD, unless you also purchase a DVD drive unit....but then you have to turn on the PC anyway :)) and I do not suggest you go that route either.

-- lnguyen (wingstarzz@hotmail.com), December 11, 2000.

Ok then, So I need the cdr, but also a capture card, right ? could you suggest a cdr/card ?

-- Chris (thats all, just chris) (chris2048@hotmail.com), December 12, 2000.

There are so many choices out there, and they are depending on your "quality" taste. CDR drive wise, HP is the better of all the burner out there. Just choose a CDR/RW that is 8x 4x 32x at minimum. I choose the HP because, the driver for it is readily available for any burning softwares out there (no hassle of looking for driver upgrade). As for video capture card, that depends on what you want to do. If you like to spend hours of encoding then don't bother getting the most expensive one, just get a WinTV pro with S-video (89.99) or WinTV Go with composite video(59.99) as video input. Use VirtualDub as your capturing software, and HuffYuY codecs or Divx codecs as the compression algorithym. I use DivX simply it create small avi file with qood quality equal to the original. TMPGENc12b(if you can find it, otherwise 12a version is ok unless you want to make SVCD ) to encode the AVI to VCD afterward. My systems are 900Mhz AMD K7 and 900Mhz AMD T-bird, and they capture and compress divx on the fly without any issue. The VCD encoding is 1:2 ratio. I burn the mpeg1 VCD file to CDR at 8x with Nero5.x.x and the disc plays flawlessly on my Pioneer 302 and 525.

-- lnguyen (wingstarzz@hotmail.com), December 12, 2000.

Hmmm, thanks, I'll probably need another hard-drive too though, but do I really need to use all that stuff? Isnt there an exellent quality all in one software grabber/compressor/compressor out there, or anything supplied with a card already ? All I'll be needing is a video card, not bothered about wintv, but Ill obviously need one good enough to grab at the appropriate rate (eg. not a max FR of 15, for example) And also, grabber software seems to use a lot of processing power, arent there any cards out there that can do the math themselves ???

-- Chris (thats all, just chris) (chris2048@hotmail.com), December 12, 2000.

Oh, and I'd just like to add, The ATI Tv Wonder claim real time Mpeg-1 compression, would this mean RT VCD compression, like, no need for a compressor, would there be any loss of quality, how can I be sure of a lossless process ? my video source is crap enough, Id rather it not get any worse, and whats vcr-1 ???

-- Chris (thats all, just chris) (chris2048@hotmail.com), December 12, 2000.

hehehe...

There are no such thing as one card that will do it all, even the most expensive card out there will need help from your PC :) if you must use a one system that'll do all then the VDR2000 or Gestapin (something like that...look up in this forum for URL) units are what you'll need without the use of the PC. They are what we used to know as a VCR for CDR instead of tape (I'll wait for more to get on the market, since the first model release is always not the best). As for ATI TV card, you'll need a fast computer to perform a good capture in real time, since it is using your CPU to do the encoding! The quality of ATI is quite good in real time if three elements are present: One is a 750Mhz and above CPU, two is a good video source, and three a software that will fix the video/audio packing size for you afterward. Nevertheless, there is an issue with mpeg1 realtime capture on most of the consumer grade software/hardware that i've encountered, and that is the video/audio sync. The higher dollar ends of the mpeg1 realtime capture cards do not have this issue. Anyway, if you don't want to spend 1000.00+ dollars, then stick with software encoding instead. The end results are similar. What i have said before, is still the best way to go around for cheap.

-- lnguyen (wingstarzz@hotmail.com), December 13, 2000.

Bah ! I was looking at the VDR, but 500 seems a little pricy for a one job system, I was looking at getting just a CDR drive and *fairly* (under 200) cheap capture card, the video source is bad to exellent, depending on which I use, but Im looking for a lossless setup, that delivers vcd/svcd EXACTLY, As for cheaper systems, I dont exactly see vcd becoming anymore poular, VHS still rules on the video recording front, and no doubt it will be dvd that eventually succeeds it... Could you suggest anycards under 200, that capture at just enough for svcd quality, totally lossless otherwise, possibly compresses avi itself, even better if it converts it to mpeg as well (mpeg2 maybe), ah, but it will have to run on a 600-650 mhz processor without any frameloss, ah, but does such a card exist.....

-- Chris (thats all, just chris) (chris2048@hotmail.com), December 13, 2000.

oh, and BTW,"http://www.blazemp.com/", d'ya know if its any good ?

-- Chris (thats all, just chris) (chris2048@hotmail.com), December 13, 2000.