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General discussion

VCD or SVCD

Dec 14, 2004 12:16AM PST

I made a slide show of digital photos for my Grandkids,
added some Xmas music and some narration using Photostory3.
It all turned out great when burned to a regular CD(to view on a computer)
But if I make a SVCD or VCD to play on a DVD player the quality suffers, a little better on DVD but still not good.
I have tried various ideas changed to mpeg, and used several free programs + Nero and XP and they all make a CD that works but with poor quality.
Am I missing a point or is that to be expected. I figured they would not be perfect when viewed on a TV but they are not good viewed on the computer either.

Thanks Gene

Discussion is locked

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Re: VCD or SVCD
Dec 14, 2004 12:38AM PST

The TV can be some 1/4 the pixels you get on the PC, so you may have to just accept this or wait for HDTV...

However, my compromise is to place the original pictures on the CD as well. This way, you pass along the original great content.

Another out is that some DVD players have a picture mode. Just toss all the .JPGs onto a CDR and the DVD has a slideshow. Not as spiffy, but as technology gets better (HDTV) then the quality will look better.

Bob

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Re: VCD or SVCD
Dec 14, 2004 1:16AM PST

It all depends on the quality you use when converting to VCD or SVCD. You are always losing quality when you re-encode, but you can keep the loss to a minimum.

I don't know how much you can configure the programs you use to give the video higher quality. You could use TMPGENC (if you have an avi file) to create the SVCD (SVCD is better than VCD) and there you can set the kbits/s, if you put this to a high value (2500 will do) then it should look good on a TV also.
Then you can burn the resulting mpeg file with Nero.