now obviously import into Nero and burn a VCD. but the end result is a shaky picture, with skips and pauses... not smooth like the AVI. I think it's not doing the conversions proper.... any clues? perhaps i should conver t to a MPEG or something and then burn to VCD.... what software sould i use for this.. virtual dub seems onto to convert to AVI.

thanks...

got his link for a AVI to MPEG converter from the SOS forums. will give it a shot tonight.

http://www.tmpgenc.net/e_main.html

Sidhu

i think download.com has lots of little programs that will do this kind of thing, some even called avi2vcd etc.

Whats the advantage of having VCD instead of a AVI?

Most domestic DVD players will play a video CD. If you want to watch on your big telly, you either have to burn to VCD or buy one of those KISS DVD players that plays DivX files.

Your best bet for burning to VCD is to use TMPGEnc to convert the avi to MPEG files - it has templates for VCD and SVCD - then use Nero to burn the mpegs to VCD. This will give you far better conversion quality than Nero's built-in jobbies.

visit http://www.afterdawn.com for all your DVD/VCD/SVCD/blah needs.

Quote:

Whats the advantage of having VCD instead of a AVI?

Distribution. Im trying to get a show reel together... now i can give them AVI's but i dont bank on them copying the files on to their hard disk. AVI's dont stream from the CD. too much data. Also some slower machines (even P3 500's) cant seem to handle AVI's of the Hard disk even. Not to mention file sizes. And then just in case someone doesnt have access to multimedia computer.. there is alwaz that cheap VCD player...

but other than that... not worth it... it's like listening to a mp3 at 96kbps.

scuzzphut wrote:

Most domestic DVD players will play a video CD. If you want to watch on your big telly, you either have to burn to VCD or buy one of those KISS DVD players that plays DivX files. Your best bet for burning to VCD is to use TMPGEnc to convert the avi to MPEG files - it has templates for VCD and SVCD - then use Nero to burn the mpegs to VCD. This will give you far better conversion quality than Nero's built-in jobbies. visit http://www.afterdawn.com for all your DVD/VCD/SVCD/blah needs.

I see, thanks for clearing that up.

If you distribute AVIs then you will need to provide the CODEC that it uses. AVI isn't a standard encoding format.

If you are putting together a show-reel, then I wouldn't recommend using AVIs. What happens if the recipient doesn't have the CODEC installed? Anyone accepting show-reels will have Quicktime available.

The conversion problem will most likely be CODEC-related. Perhaps Nero defaults to using its own CODEC, or a fixed frame-rate. Best to use the CODEC that encoded the original AVI. There are tools to extract this info if you don't know what was used.

HTH

mpg1 (vcd) should play in any dvd player.

thats what we use for cd-demos.

sidhu wrote:

Quote: Whats the advantage of having VCD instead of a AVI? Distribution. Im trying to get a show reel together... now i can give them AVI's but i dont bank on them copying the files on to their hard disk. AVI's dont stream from the CD. too much data. Also some slower machines (even P3 500's) cant seem to handle AVI's of the Hard disk even. Not to mention file sizes. And then just in case someone doesnt have access to multimedia computer.. there is alwaz that cheap VCD player... but other than that... not worth it... it's like listening to a mp3 at 96kbps.

Quote:

If you distribute AVIs then you will need to provide the CODEC that it uses. AVI isn't a standard encoding format.

windows media player / QT... im quiter sure both of em can playback AVI's from their dafault installations.

Quote:

Anyone accepting show-reels will have Quicktime available.

Id bank on Windows media this side of the world...

Quote:

Best to use the CODEC that encoded the original AVI. There are tools to extract this info if you don't know what was used.

thats what i think too. But i dont know off any tools that can give me such info. ?. I was thinking ill use the above mentioned toll (tmpgenc) and convert to mpeg.. then use that to burn a VCD .. whatttasay?

the best application to tell you what codec and avi was compressed with (and much more) is called gspot.
again - look on afterdawn for it.

on the subject of avi files, sidhu -

yes, wmp will play a "straight" avi file with it's default installation. provided you are the one creating the avi files and you know you used a basic, standard codec, that will work.

however, the heavy compression standards, like Divx, Xvid and 3ivx are all avi files too, but wmp (or anything else for that matter) won't play them without the installation of the proper codec.

best to stick to mpeg. it's uncompressed and , as I mentioned previously, a VCD can be played in most DVD players, as well as computers.

it would be best NOT to go for SVCD, though. This is an MPEG2 format which (a) doesn't come free with TMPGEnc and (b) isn't guaranteed to be on the end user's computer, unless they have a DVD playing app like winDVD installed.

confused? you will be

I seriously thought that AVI files were of one kind (straight)... and thay were uncompressed. and that is what is played by the default codecs of most players...

Div X and etc...i understand that one needs plugins or special readers installed.
]

Quote:

best to stick to mpeg. it's uncompressed and , as I mentioned previously, a VCD can be played in most DVD players, as well as computers.

I was also under the impression that it is not mpeg's that get burnt onto a VCD. The extension is a *.dat (though renaming it to a *.mpeg works) and also that *.dat is a lossfull compression format.

It is a vcd that i plan to through in... and a need a good AVI>mpeg codec for that. Read my first post. Perhaps u can throw some light on the realtion between AVI-*.dat and MPEG-*.dat

thanks
Sidhu

When you burn a video CD (VCD) your source file needs to be a MPG video file. Otherwise your burning software will probably convert it to mpeg and that will make it suck

It is the mpg file that gets burned directly to the CD, provided it is in the right format - TMPGEnc has templates that will help you convert the avi file to the right format for VCD.

You are right in that this MPG file does get renamed , but that's all. This is part of the formatting process for a VCD. You will also notice that the Nero VCD template will produce a folder structure and stick some small files on the video CD.

MPG is an uncompressed format. A video CD uses MPG video at a small size (320*240 or something) and that's why it may seem compressed or lossy. In fact it's just reducing the data, not compressing it.

AVI , on the other hand, is a compressed format. That's why AVI files are the norm for transferring video over the net. You can get some excellent results using the divx or xvid codecs to produce avi files which are small, but still retain decent quality and frame size. The downside of this is that the decompression process to play the video puts load on the cpu.

If you take a divx encoded avi file and convert it to the equivelant mpeg file (same frame size) using TMPGEnc, you will see that the resulting MPG file is about twice the size of the avi.

To go back to your original question.....

When I am burning VCDs from an avi file, I use this process :-

Use gspot to determine if the original avi is Pal, NTSC or NTSCFilm.

Load the appropriate template into TMPGEnc (i.e. VCD-NTSC, VCD-NTSCFilm or VCD-PAL)

Click the "setting" button at the bottom and select the motion search precision as "highest quality(very slow)".

Run the conversion

Load the resulting MPG file into a VCD template in Nero.

Burn.

(just remembered - before you do anything, go into TMPGEnc, go option/environmental setting/VFAPI tab. Right click on the directshow multimedia file reader and increase it's priority until it's at the top of the table. You only need to do this once.)

Hope this helps

thanks for that info Scuzz, i was looking some facts for copying DVDS on my PC.

whoa scuzzphut


thats a total contradiction to what i know... I have been under the impression that *.avi files (the regular ones. no DivX etc..) are uncompressed... infact it was on on of these forums (and the DUC and Nuendo.com) that they mentioned that using *.AVI was the norm.... cause u dont need xtra processing power to decompress the file in real time.... and to prove that fact i have had AVI files of a size of 600MB which when written on to a VCD getrs converted to a fraction... aslo nuendo only works proper with *.avi files. It will NOT extract nor replace audio from a mpeg file 95% of the time.

now unless ure genrelizing all formats as AVI i need to read up some...

Just adding to the noise...

I'm sure everyone knows, but lossy and compressed are different things. The contents of an AVI can be compressed or uncompressed. An uncompressed AVI will tend to get very large (100's of Mb) very quickly.

Nuendo only works natively with DirectShow and Video for Windows. If you load QuickTime, then that becomes available, and is what I use. DirectShow supports MPG, which versions will depend on which version of DirectShow you have loaded.

Whatever format you use will be encoded and decoded by its codec (though not necessarily the same one). The amount of CPU overhead will be determined by the necessary decompression and the quality of the CODEC. For example, TechSmith's Camtasia screen-capture product relies on a very fast codec. Without conversion, you won't be able to read it unless you have their codec.

Try this link which might clear-up some questions and provide a useful bit of free software.

Krim - If you are looking to back-up DVDs, but don't have a DVD writer, then I can heartily recommend a programme called eazyvcd.

This prog automates the process of ripping the DVD, converting to MPEG, splitting the MPEG up into files etc. Dead easy to use and gives cracking results.


<edit> http://www.eazyvcd.tk/ - Copies DVDs to VideoCDs or SuperVideoCDs - top stuff! </edit>

Quote:

and to prove that fact i have had AVI files of a size of 600MB which when written on to a VCD getrs converted to a fraction

sidhu - if you converted an avi to mpg (vcd) and the mpg was smaller, you reduced the frame size and therefore the quality.

NOTE you didn't *compress* it, you just reduced the quality to a smaller file size.

unfortunately, that doesn't prove your fact


It's a confusing field, with lots of issues, as auxbuss points out. Best of luck with your project [/url]

Quote:

The contents of an AVI can be compressed or uncompressed. An uncompressed AVI will tend to get very large (100's of Mb) very quickly.

i understand that... and also that lossy and compressed are 2 different things.

[/quote]Nuendo only works natively with DirectShow and Video for Windows

Quote:

yes, i know... just that when u try and import a MPEG file ure bound to run into trouble... It will not extract nor write audio to the file.(most of the time) works excellent with AVI though. to Scuzz

AVI , on the other hand, is a compressed format[quote]

Now that blows away my presumptions.. i cudve sworn it was mpeg that was compressed and not AVI. Like i mentioned. taking the file sizes and quality into consideration. But then what u said bout reducing the pixels and not the quality they reduce size, makes sence.

Quote:

That's why AVI files are the norm for transferring video over the net

cant dream of sending AVI's over the net... even when zipped... at 500*400 a 30 sec. file is rather bulky.

also what is the extension for Div X files... no chance that they too are *.avi ? i ask cause i have yet to come accross a machine that cant play *.avi files by default...

Ill read up and get back on this...

thanks a ton ppl.

scuzzphut wrote:

Krim - If you are looking to back-up DVDs, but don't have a DVD writer, then I can heartily recommend a programme called eazyvcd.

I got a DVD RW, Pioneer DVDR-106D, i just wanted a quick free solution to copying films

sidhu - the file extension for divx, xvid, 3ivx files are all avi. so the only way to tell someone what the compression used is , is to mention it in the filename.


Dave
http://www.dvdshrink.org/what.html

Quote:

sidhu - the file extension for divx, xvid, 3ivx files are all avi

that Explains It !!!! i dint know that Divx and other also shared the same extension... of course a DivX file will not play with the default installation...

now if u wud be kind enough to detail the standard *.AVI file that playz bak on all windows media...


thanks a ton...

and u ppl. have seriously been a lotta help..
Kudos


sidhu