I'm using Nero to burn Divx/avi files to VCD. The files play fine (great quality) on my computer but when I burn them & play the finished VCD in my stand-alone dvd player, the quality starts off great for the first 5-10 minutes and progressively gets worse until there is heavy pixilation. I've tried burning at the lowest rate (the Nero version I have only goes as low as 2X) and using the best quality CD-R's I could find.

The file quality is great & plays perfectly on my computer & the VCD starts off great for the first few minutes. What can I do to improve the continued quality? Is Nero an inferior program?

I'd appreciate any info/help.

-- Kingfish (kingfish_75067@yahoo.com), January 17, 2002

Answers

It's not Nero's fault unless you are using Nero to encode your AVI files. Are you doing that? The best MPEG-1 encoder there is is TMPGenc (www.tmpgenc.com or .net - both are valid, .net is a bit more up to date). TMPGenc is free, but it's VERY time consuming to use. Nero is a fine program for burning, but it's not the best tool for encoding video. TMPGenc has a lot of filters you can use to improve quality, but they take a lot of time to use. If you use some of the filters, it will honestly take you several days, like 3 or more, to do your encodes to MPEG-1, but they will look really really good. If you're not encoding with Nero, it could be that your encoder is not doing an optimal job, or it could be that the source is not so good. Please bear in mind that at VCDs resolutions of 352x240 NTSC and 352x288 PAL that if you play these files in their default size on your PC, you won't see any problems at all. It's only when you expand the image to a larger size that you will start to see the defects. DivX is an extremely compressed video format With care and the right tools, it is possible to get truly excellent quality in DivX, but DivX is a lossy codec (that means it throws away video information to save space) and going from DivX to MPEG-1 (also lossy) often results in poor quality. Burning at lower rates rarely improves quality, although I think that using high quality CD-Rs is always a good idea. My suggestion is that you encode in TMPGenc without using filters. If you like the results, you're set. If you want better quality, use some filters like Noise Reduction, but be prepared for your encodes to take a very long time. www.vcdhelp.com has some good guides to encoding with TMPGenc.

-- Jason (Jason.Shumate@equant.com), January 17, 2002.

I've done all of the above, including noise reduction. Encoding a 1- 1/2 minute video took about 50 minutes. Quality on the PC is fine; on the TV, not so fine. I guess I can't expect anything better?

By the way, what is DivX?

-- dmlove (dlove@grmslaw.com), January 17, 2002.

It's hard to believe that you encoded the movie correctly simply because it think its almost impossible to encode that fast. I have a fast comp myself and it takes me around 6+ hours. Also look up on some pages not for the best quality cd's but the ones that are the most compatible with your player that will help a lot.

-- Dave Thomas (feetching@hotmail.com), October 07, 2002.