Please let me know if anyone has been successful in producing vcd/svcd's and there quality. Should I capture right to mpeg1/mpeg2 then import to ulead(4.01) and output vcd/svcd compiant(with built in templates. thanks, Mark

-- Mark Salzan (GEEIAMBORED@YAHOO.COM), June 12, 2001

Answers

Hi Mark, I have the ATI All-in-Wonder Radeon card. I use it all the time for SVCD. I find quality to be acceptible. I don't make VCDs because I don't think the quality of VCD is acceptible, but that's just my opinion. Plenty of people here would disagree with me. I do recommend you capturing directly to MPEG-1 or MPEG-2 instead of recording to AVI and converting. You need a LOT of time to do the conversions and in my opinion, it's not worth it. Some people agree with me on this, others do not. For example, I record The Simpsons in reruns twice a night. I don't have time to record them in AVI and then spend 6+ hours per episode to convert to MPEG-2. I should add that the quality of cartoons under SVCD is really good, almost as good as the original broadcast. I think Ulead Video Studio sucks big time. Again, there are people who use it, but I think if it's so good, why is it free? I thought it was truly awful, so I bought the Womble MPG2VCR editor (www.womble.com - $249 though :-( ) which I use for all my MPEG-2 edits. I love the MPG2VCR editor and I think it's worth every penny I paid for it, but there are cheaper alternatives. TMPGenc (www.tmpgenc.com) is free and can be used for editing, but it's kind of painful and time consuming to do so. I have no idea if the Ulead templates actually work since I don't use their product. You might find the following web pages helpful: members.home.net/richa - good source for ATI stuff www.pcphotovideo.com - newer site by the same guy as above www.doom9.net www.vcdhelp.com www.digital-digest.com www.labdv.com - I'm a minor contributor here. Not sure how much we have right now that will be of help, but you could look. If you are using MMC 7.1 with your AIW 128, you should check out the first 2 sites I listed to see what kinds of weird problems 7.1 introduced and fixes for them. MMC 7.0 is a bit more reliable, but it lacks VBR (Variable Bit Rate) recording, which is the main reason to use MMC 7.1. I wish I could be more definitive in terms of giving you answers, but I do think it's fair to warn you that there is no real consensus about what is best for VCD/SVCD making, so you're probably best served to try several things and see what you like. I think it would be great if you can get Ulead Video Studio to work for you, but I have an alternative with MPG2VCR and I'm never going to use Video Studio myself. Good luck.

-- Jason (Jason.Shumate@sita.int), June 12, 2001.

If possible get rid of any ATI stuff... I had lots of trouble with ati products. ATI customer service really sucks, Their solution for some issues are uninstalling windows "almost equal to formatiing".. Need more information?? send me mail...

-- Aji Paul (ajipaul@yahoo.com), June 18, 2001.