vcd is b;ack & White

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I just created a VCD and went to play it on my APEX DVD player. When the video shows, it shows only in black and white. However, when I click to the index page, it shows a small image in color. How do I get the full screen image to show in color. If it helps, my writer software is NERO. Also, what are the differences between VCD and SVCD?

-- Eric R Hann (eric@prodirectcom.com), December 27, 2001

Answers

what resolution are you making your VCD in? What is your TV standard? NTSC or PAL? The black and white problem could be that your TV can only handle one standard and your APEX is outputting a different standard which is conflicting with it. i.e. PAL signal is being output to a NTSC TV.

VCD specification standard that could possibly causing issue like that frame size = 352x240 NTSC, 352x288 PAL frame rate = 29.97fps NTSC, 25fps PAL

-- (wingstarzz@hotmail.com), December 27, 2001.


btw

VCD = mpeg1 using 352x240 framesize, while SVCD = mpeg2 using 480x480 frame size. Of course these are specification standard, but you can always experimenting with their variances :)

-- (wingstarzz@hotmail.com), December 27, 2001.


wingstarzz response is very good. Just to add to this, usually black and white problems with VCD are caused by the DVD player sending a signal to your TV that it can't understand. I have an Apex, so I might be able to help. Check your setup on the Apex. Unless you have a multistandard TV that supports PAL and NTSC, you should NOT use the AUTO setting for TV output. You should use either PAL or NTSC as appropriate. If you live in the US, Canada or Japan, NTSC is correct, most of the rest of the world uses PAL. I had a similar problem when I set my Apex to AUTO for TV output. I live in the USA, so it looked great for NTSC DVDs, but when I first played a PAL DVD on it, it was black and white and scrolled constantly. Setting the TV output to NTSC fixed the problem. What AUTO does is it sends the same signal to the TV as the source. You play a PAL disc, you send a PAL signal to the TV. If you change TV output to NTSC or PAL, it causes the DVD player to send everything out to the TV in that format regardless of the source. The Apex does the conversion if necessary. You might also possibly have a PAL/NTSC mismatch in what you burned where part of it is PAL and part of it is NTSC.

VCD uses MPEG-1 video at a constant bit rate os 1150 Kbps, audio at a constant bit rate of 224 Kbps, 352x240 NTSC or 352x280 PAL resolution. The video must be non-interlaced. SVCD uses MPEG-2 video (DVD also uses this) with the video bit rate not being above 2600 Kbps, but the video bit rate can be variable and anything below 2600 is compliant, the audio bit rate can be anything from roughly 64 Kbps to 364 Kbps (224 is the most common), the combined audio+video bit rate should not exceed about 2724 Kbps. 480x480 NTSC and 480x576 PAL are valid resolutions. Interlaced video is acceptible for SVCD. SVCD supports multiple audio tracks and multiple selectable subtitles. VCD only supports onscreen subtitles (they can't be turned off) and one audio track. VCD video is completely valid for DVD as the DVD standard was designed to support it. SVCD resolutions are not valid for DVD. All DVD players that I know of will play VCD. Many do not play CD-R or CD-RW media, but they will play commercial VCDs. Many players do not support SVCD. I have seen DVD players that supported CD-R fine and played VCD and would not play SVCD at all. It is possible with SVCD if you know what you are doing and have a good, clean source to get DVD-like results. I have a SVCD rip I made from an episode of Star Trek on DVD that looks as good as the original DVD. I can't tell them apart just by watching. VCD generally is not as good, although again, if you know what you are doing and have a good, clean source, you can get excellent results, although typically SVCD would be better given its higher bit rate.

-- Jason (Jason.Shumate@equant.com), December 28, 2001.


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