This is a serious enquiry,and i am not trying to upset anyone,i just wan't to understand.

I capture in MPEG 2 720x576 8000KBPS Using ATI MMC 7.0 i then open Ulead video studio 4.0 to add Fade ins or to trim etc,I then open Tmpgenc 12a and i encode

Result is True DVD like quality video about 15-20 mins per CD-R.I admit that my completed video discs will only play back on my Pc,but i can connect to a tv,plus i have all the editing options with the extra bonus of downgrading to SVCD format if i wish.

This new DVD-R format will not give better video quality than i can get,the plus is that you can play back on DVD drive and DVD standalone recorder,but this is all and they cost big bucks.

So why will this DVD-R be popular?

Just asking

emma

-- emma b (emys17@hotmail.com), June 07, 2001

Answers

Trust me, no matter what is said in this forum and others, THERE IS NO VCD THAT WILL EVER MATCH THE QUALITY OF A DVD!!!!!!. I have original VCDs of a couple movies and they only look as good as VHS, plus they dont have surround sound either and neither can your home cooked vcds ever have that either, or not without a lot of effort. They will never have the user menu control that dvds offer either. VCD support in standalone players is also very ify...about half the players out there handle it ok, the rest cant, so compatability is a problem. DVD-r IS going to be fully supported cause consumers want this. VCD is a relic from the early 90s brought back from the dead due to chinese piracy.

The real benefit of DVD is storage size and flexibility. Instead of 15 minutes of your footage, you could put several hours or more on a DVD, so while you are switching disks every 15 minutes, a dvd can sit there and play for hours. Instead of being stuck at stringent specs, DVD allows a wide range of bitrates and audio formats. Your entire collection of vcd movies could probably fit on a couple dual sided dvd-rs. You could put 5000 pictures on one...it goes on and on.

I dont mean to knock vcd, it has its place, the cds are cheap and so is the software to author them. but considering that you can fit the equivalent of 4 cd-rs to one dvd-r (2 gb general purpose media), at say $1.25 each, thats 5 bucks right there, and the general purpose dvdrs will go for about $15 starting, so its not that far off yet. The big expense is still the dvd burners, they are still $1000 bucks.

-- tygrus (tygrus2000@hotmail.com), June 07, 2001.

I am amazed that you can capture MPEG-2 video directly at those settings. Do you drop frames? I have a 1 GHz Athlon CPU with 512 MB of memory and I can't record 720x480 MPEG-2 video without dropping frames. I've tried a bit rate of 3000 Kbps and I still drop frames. I haven't tried anything lower as if I can't record MPEG-2 video at DVD resolutions and better than SVCD bit rates, it won't be of much use to me. I also use MMC 7.0. What kind of CPU do you have? Personally, I'm not going to touch DVD-R until the price comes down and there is better support for it. There are 3 incompatible formats fighting it out right now and I'm not willing to gamble on picking the winner, although if I had to guess, I would pick Pioneer.

-- Jason (Jason.Shumate@sita.int), June 07, 2001.

Hi,

This is how i can capture at 720x576, infact it was 8999KBPS Yes 9Mb per Second Mpeg 2 Interlaced,RADEON ALL IN WONDER 32Mb DDR RAM,this has to be it because i couldn't before even at 720x576 2.5mbps,so it has to be this new card with Windows 98Se reinstalled and all the drivers working perfectly.

Bad news is at this quality i can only fit 8Mins of video on a single 650Mb cdr.

-- emma b (emys17@hotmail.com), June 07, 2001.

What kind of cpu do you have, I know some ATI boards have problems with AMD chips especially there capture boards ? are you using a pentium?

Thanks

Alan.

-- Alan (alansam@lineone.net), June 08, 2001.

And on DVD-R also you can pack up at least 240 pieces of music coded in 2 channel Dolby Digital with the navigation and play order whatever you want to program. Believe me I have been struggling with this Win On CD Music album feature for VCD and then I tried to use Sonic DVDit and this was pleasure. You may put pure wav or DD file behind the any graphic (like name or whatever). Only obstacle is DVDit do not accept samples of 44.1 (although manual says it does) so you use CD-DA extractor to convert it to 48. OK there is one more obstacle – I did not lay my hands on this new Pioneer, below$1000, recorder but it will come soon. Regards. Marek

-- Marek (marek.malinowski@skanska.pl), June 11, 2001.

emma b is right. In the computer field advances are measured by quantum leap ie at least twice the capacity for same price. A DVD-R is worth 6 pieces of CD-R and cost $15 a piece. Six pieces of CD-R cost total of .25X5=$1.50. Until price of a DVD-R cost below $1.50/2=$0.75 a piece, it is not considered an improvement.

-- cdr (cdr@cdr.com), June 11, 2001.

Using ATI Multi Media Center I can capture at high res (720x480) and high data rate (~10 megabit) by checking I-frame only. The quality is good but the file size is big because you're not really getting MPEG compression. I capture this way then use Tmpgenc to create a VCD. It works quite well for my home movies.

-- Bill (williege@hotmail.net), June 13, 2001.