I recently heard about the new VCD format "Super VCD" being used in China. I understand the quality is much better than standard VCD (mainly because it uses a high bit rate for encoding). And I was thinking of buying a SVCD player.

Question: Does anyone know what the standards are for this format, and if I can convert my existing MPEG-1 collection to this format. When I encode MPEG, I tend to use high bit rates for better quality--which of course won't work in standard VCD players (And DVD writers are a bit "pricey" yet). It would be nice to take advantage of the SVCD capabilities, with my existing videos, so I don't have to always just play them on my computer.

If anyone can help, please let me know. I've tried finding information on SVCD, but what little I've found, a lot of it is in Chinese (which is understandable, since they created the format), and since I don't speak that language ...

-- Patrick Kelley (pjkelly@cvikota.com), September 15, 1999

Answers

Good luck making your own. SVCD does not work in stand alone DVD players, VCD players or PCs. You need a new SVCd player to view them. Second it is MPEG2 video. If you can find an MPEG2 encoded cheap then more power to you. Third the quality is better because of MPEG2 new format not bitrate encoding. Fourth...have you got a lot of money to buy CD-Rs? MPEG2 takes up a lot of room.

-- The Lone Ranger (rutger_s@hotmail.com), September 15, 1999.

As I mentioned in my post, I am in fact looking to purchase a SVCD player; they have a nice one as Asia CD (www.asiacd.com). And I was more interested in a software solution to convert my existing MPEG videos into whatever format SVCD uses, MPEG-2 in this case as you mentioned. Any suggestions? The software would either have to directly support SVCD, or allow me to manually specify the parameters- -this is what I'm really looking for.

-- Patrick Kelley (pjkelly@cvikota.com), September 15, 1999.

First the good news: You can buy an SVCD player and use it for whatever you like.

Now the bad news:

NO SOFTWARE ENCODERS EXIST FOR MPEG2. The ones that do produce very crappy quality movies. YOU NEED HARDWARE THAT STILL COSTS ABOUT $500 OR MORE.

No one really knows the standard for SVCD yet. Sure burn some MPEG2 clips on there but lots of luck getting them to play. Also why would you want to use three or more disks for an hour's worth of movies? The high bitrate is not going to help the quality. I am sure you might want to make your own but having to get up at most four times for regular VCD is enough but to get up ten times to watch a two hour movie? Better to go to DVD.

-- The Lone Ranger (rutger_s@hotmail.com), September 15, 1999.

Well, the DVD encoder I want is over $3,000 and the cheapest DVD writer I've found was about $5,000 ... Maybe when the price becomes more reasonable, I'll consider it. I guess I was looking for an intermediate step, that was more cost effective.

-- Patrick Kelley (pjkelly@cvikota.com), September 15, 1999.

Creative DVD-Ram is only $500.00!

-- The Lone Ranger (rutger_s@hotmail.com), September 15, 1999.

DVD-RAM? That plays in DVD players? I thought you needed a special drive for that.

The whole point of this "experiment" of mine is to be able to play my MPEG videos on something else, other than my computer.

-- Patrick Kelley (pjkelly@cvikota.com), September 15, 1999.

DVD ram is virually useless.

The installed base is minimal, so you would only be using them on the computer that made them. They will not play in any commercial DVD player, or any mainstream PC DVD drive.

So if your objective is to watch your videos on your home entertainment system you have to either run cables from your computer to your TV or build a dedicated system for your entertainment unit with another DVDram drive.

In a year or so we may see the DVD+RW format coming into play. That will change everything.

-- Sean (sean@magnuminvestments.com), September 15, 1999.

Easy solution...make you VCD files whitebook complient and use a regular VCD player.

-- The Lone Ranger (rutger_s@hotmail.com), September 15, 1999.

Get a super VCD player that support Mp3

-- vm (v_i_d_e_o@hotmail.com), September 16, 1999.

SVCD is far superior to VCD and can be played in some DVD Players (Scan SC-2000, Megagata etc). The quality is almost that of DVD. Nero 5 and WinOnCD 3.8 (German edition) can create SVCD Easy as that

-- Phil (reddit@hotmail.com), December 28, 2000.

svcd in vcd

-- Karl Schwipper (karl.schwipper@t-online.de), February 09, 2003.