I HAVE BEEN MAKING VCD FOR A FEW MONTHS NOW USING AN ATI 32 MEG CARD +CREATIVE CD BURNER. I RECORD AT THE FOLLOWING SETTINGS MPEG-1 252 X 288, I FRAME ONLY,400,000 BPS, STEREO 224.RECORDING FROM A DVD PLAYER THROUGH A VIDEO COPY BOX (TO KILL MACROVISION)I RECORD IN 30 MIN SEGMENTS THEN USING TMPEG I JOIN (E.G 50 MINS PER DISC FOR 100 MIN FILM).TO AVOID BLIPS ON SOUND I DEMULTIPLEX, AGAIN USING TMPEG & FINALLY ENCODE VIDEO FILE + AUDIO FILE WITH TMPG.I THEN BURN WITH NERO 5.0 WHICH TAKES ABOUT 20 MINS PER CD.THE VCD I PLAY ON A PHILIPS DVD711( PLAYS VCD1,VCD2, SVCD). ON A 28" WIDESCREEN T.V I FIND QUALITY ACCEPTABLE.LIKE A LOT OF PEOPLE OUT THERE I WOULD LIKE TO IMPROVE THIS.ANY IDEAS!.ALSO I TRIED TO CONNECT MY DVD PLAYER TO ATI CARD USING SVHS LEAD BUT CAN ONLY GET BLACK AND WHITE PICTURE?.

-- PAT MURPHY (pmurx@oceanfree.com), May 11, 2001

Answers

Why do it the hard way? By capturing the DVD movie the way you do, you convert from digital to analog, and then to digital again. This is a sure way to reduce the quality of the movie.

Try ripping the DVD to your hard disk, and then use FlaskMpeg or DVD2AVI to send it to a good MPEG encoder like Tmpegenc. If you are not familiar with the process, you can read about it in many a many web sites dedicated to converting DVD to VCD.

-- Josh (none@none.net), May 13, 2001.

While I'm not familar with the ATI card you are using, the problem of getting a black and white signal when using the S-Video lead sounds like a format problem ie. your card is looking for a RGB signal instead of the YC signal which results in a black and white picture.

See if you can find some settings in the software you are using to capture with to change the incoming signal selection from Composite (RGB) to S-Video (YC).

Hope this helps.

-- Chris Kenny (findme@dove.net.au), May 13, 2001.

Aside from doing it the hard way (see www.flexion.org for derails on DVDSqueezer and DVD2AVI methods), one other thing to note about ATI capture cards is that they only allow one system analogue capture. THERE ARE separate models of ATI cards specifically for PAL/SECAM, and for NTSC. You can see this on the box. If, for example, you bought the card in Europe, the card only allows for PAL and SECAM capture and although NTSC is in the capture interfaces it is greyed out and can't be chosen. If you force an NTSC signal anyway you get weird bars and cut-off black and white video. This is the main reason I junked it and went for a Matrox Marvel G200 instead two years ago which allows PAL, SECAM, and NTSC analogue capture, together with an efficient MJPEG codec. For Chris above, RGB is NOT composite; it's one type of component video.

-- Mehmet Tekdemir (turk690@yahoo.com), May 13, 2001.