Hello, I hope anybody can help me with this!!! I've Adaptec 5.0 and when I produce a VCD the transfer rate is about 1150Mbits/sec and the final quality of the product is poor.

I need some advice because I'm thinking in buying a new software that can produce better quality VCD??? (Higher rate)

Thanks

-- Eduardo Arnouk (arnouk1@hotmail.com), September 06, 2001

Answers

1150 Mbit/sec is the valid bit rate for VCD. If you record VCD at a higher bit rate, you have made a XVCD, which means that you have not complied with VCD standards. Most DVD players that play VCDs (and CD-R media) will play XVCD, but be aware that you may have compatibility problems. Just my opinion, but I think that VCD is fairly poor quality at the standard bit rate. You can get much better quality with XVCD or if you go to SVCD. SVCD used MPEG-2 video and gives pretty good results. It's a lot more expensive and more trouble to make SVCDs, but you can get better quality than VCD.

-- Jason (Jason.Shumate@equant.com), September 06, 2001.

There are a few things: 1) what did you encode your video with ? the encoding method/software is very important 2) the quality of the source video ? is it VHS, Hi8 or DVD ? 3) you can also encode to XVCD (higher bit rate and VBR) will produce much better quality, just make sure your DVD player can handle it. This is my favorite method, VBR (1800-2500 kbps) produce very good result at the expense of movie length.

-- ktnwin (ktnwin@excite.com), September 06, 2001.