I have been making VCD's of stills for awhile but am unhappy at the end result. I've been using a simple video editor and "dropping" my photos in the timeline, adding transitions and music, then saving as an AVI using the indeo 5.06 codec. I have also used other programs and saved the AVI uncompressed and still have the same "quality" issues. I run the AVI through either Panasonic or TMPEG encoder for final VCD compliance.

What I am seeing as far as quality goes is that there is "ghosting" appearing in the pictures, obviously because of mpeg compression. This ghosting makes it difficult to see the detail that the pictures have. The pictures just plainly look like hell. The pictures are all high res originals that look stunning when viewed on a TV as a jpeg. What am I doing wrong? Is there a way to get GREAT results for still pictures with the VCD format? Do I have to progress to the SVCD format for better results? Should I use a different codec? How can I get better quality??

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

-- scot virnoche (scot.virnoche@med.ge.com), August 23, 2000

Answers

I use Nero 5.0 to burn JPGS directly to VCD format. The quality is excellent. Only problem is you have to click FF button to advance to next picture.

-- Shree Gayam (sgayam@hotmail.com), August 23, 2000.

How? Do you just drag and drop into the folder? What about background music and transitions?

-- scot (scot.virnoche@med.ge.com), August 23, 2000.

Hi

go.to./vcd.by.nt

I have a sample mpeg file uploaded so that you can see the quality possible when using still images for vcd. Download the file and burn it to CDRW if your player supports this media for playback.

A tutorial is on the way with tips and pitfalls to avoid.

Cheers, NT

-- NT (i1x@nightmail.com), August 23, 2000.

White Book does allow for hi-res (704x480/704x576) but only stills. That you are timelining your stills and AVI and all means that is video/motion per se and all your gloriously beautiful jpegs get cut down to 352x240/352x288 no matter how much higher the resolutions were at the start. The one part in a VCD where stills can be used is a menu in a ver 2.0 VCD. This one still can be hi-res, and an audio track can be associated with it. But that is all. If you want to preserve the hi-res for a sequence of stills, no transitions or audio is allowed. You either press NEXT on your remote to advance to the next still, or during authoring, specify how long each still displays. You are likewise not allowed to jump to any still other than NEXT and PREV. This method is exploited by Nero 5.0.1.8 and WinOnCDPE3.7, among others. You best start with jpegs at 640x480 or somewhere near, always 4:3. Less res makes the whole notion of hi-res pointless, more gives extra work for the encoder as it will always pare it down to 704x480/704x576.

-- EMartinez (epmartinez@yahoo.com), August 26, 2000.

Use Video WaveIII, it's easy and you can put your own sound. Use musicmatch to convert your sound to a wave file. It's so easy that you won't believe it plus you can play it in your Dvd player.

Have fun!!!!!

-- LWT (larry0120@pdq.net), February 05, 2001.