what is the best format to convert to from vcd.dat file to other video format file which is small in size n good in quality?> thanks !

-- steven (huatz83@lycos.com), January 09, 2004

Answers

To be blunt, you can't do this. VCD bit rates are pretty low to begin with and objectively, the quality is at best comparable to VCR quality. If you convert VCD to another format to save space, you are going to lower the quality no matter what you do. MPEG-1 video, which is used by VCD, is a lossy codec, which means that it throws away part of the video information to save space. MP3 works in a similar fashion for audio. The formats that give the smallest sizes all use lossy codecs and converting from one lossy codec to another is never a very good idea if you care about the quality of the final result. If I had to recommend doing something, you could try converting to DivX as it seems to offer the best compromise between quality and file size, but whatever you get in the end will be at least a little worse in quality to the original VCD.

-- Root (root@yahoo.moc), January 09, 2004.