I try to make a VCD-slideshow with NERO.

NERO accepts pictures with a resolution of max. 1300x576 pix without loosing a part of the picture or any black bars on the edge. I mean if you look at the right-clickes "property" of the picture. On 4:3-TV, you get of course black bars because the picture is too wide. But I also tried the standard 704x576 and (normally right 4:3 ?)768x576 pix (and why DVD is 720???). NERO burns these without any distorsion. With standard, I get small bars on the left and right side.

If I have the 1300x576, does VCD saves it in his 704x576 pixels in "anamorphic" or do I get effective a pictre of 704x(about)310 pix?

How many "real" pixels does VCD have.

Thank you.

Answers by eMail are welcome. Greetings from Germany, Tobias :o)

-- Tobias (tobias-albert@web.de), May 11, 2002

Answers

Resolutions are not always square pixels so when examining DVD and we see 720x576 or 720x480 one might thing picture will not be 4:3 on TV. But it is. The TV stretches or squeezes what is presented to it and VCD, SVCD, and DVD come out looking okay. Square pixels are used for defining resolutions on the PC, that's why we have 640x480, 800x600, etc., all perfectly 4:3. So with Nero, care has to be taken to give it picture files that have been resized to 4:3 to avoid distortion on playback. You DO NOT just crop a 720x480 image (extracted from a DVD), for example, to 640x480. If 720x480 is how the picture will appear correctly on TV, before giving to Nero, it HAS to be RESAMPLED to 640x480, or better yet 800x600. It will in fact look okay now on the PC. Nero doesn't care if the original picture doesn't use square pixels; it will put black bars as needed to get it to 4:3 square- pixel wise. It behooves one to present Nero with picture files, whatever their resolutions, that have been resampled/resized to reflect actual display with square pixels.

-- Mehmet Tekdemir (turk690@yahoo.com), May 12, 2002.

Hi Mehmet,

thank you for your answer. I do use pictures with square pixels (photographs from digicam) in 4:3 aspect ratio. If I got you right, 704x576 is only what a VCD stores the information. On TV, the picture will appear in correct 4:3. So, the best resolution the get a really full screen on tv screen (without any black bars) by using Nero is a picture of 4:3, e.g. 768x576. To store the information in VCD-standard, horizontaly 768 will be converted to 704 (not square) pixels. Played on TV, the 704 pixels will be appear as the former (square) 768 pixels. Right? It's a kind of small "anamorphic", isn't it?! ;-)) Why the hell nobody tells this to me in the NERO manual? ;-)

So, if you want to get wider picures e.g. on a 16:9-TV, the best way is: -have a (part of a) picture in 16:9 aspect ratio, eg. 1024x576 (square) pix -shrink it horizontally e.g. by Photoshop to 768x576 pix ("anarmorphicate";->) -burn it with NERO which stores in fact 704x576 (not square)pix -play it on 16:9 tv which first shows a distorted 4:3 picture (square768x576) -activate the "16:9" or "anamorph" mode of the tv to get the full screen picture without any distorsion(not square768x576). Better than giving NERO a 16:9-picture with e.g. 768x432 pix and then zooming in it to get 16:9 full screen, not? If your TV can "de- anamorph", you get more information and a better picture quality. RIGHT?

Is it right that you can save up to 1980 pictures on a VCD and only 99 by using menues (in both way if you work with NERO)? When will Ahead produce a really new version of NERO (6)(eg. with the option to set menues as I want or to make menues IN menues on a VCD or enable background music in photo-VCDs).

By the way: If I store films on VCD, I convert the data with TMPGEnc. Great! :-) By burning the *.mpg's with NERO, WinOnCD... you allways get the VCD 2.0 Standard WITH the socalled PLAYBACK CONTROL (PBC). On many DVD-players, you can't see the elapsed time in that mode (Pioneer, Yamaha...). So I use MovieJack to burn, because it doesn't has that PBC and I think it's VCD1.1. Has VCD2.0 allways the PBC or do only use the burning programs allways that format the ensable menues (no matter whether you have one or not on VCD!)? DVDs converted with MovieJack have quite good pictures (of course not as good as TMPGEnc), but sound is really poor. But for burning ("BURNING ONLY") it is ok. But you can burn only ONE mpg-track on one VCD and you allways get a MovieJack intro at the beginning (so two tracks total). I made my own intro with Premiere, converted it into vcd-mpg and renamed it as the MovieJack-intro. It works!

Greetings, Tobias

-- Tobias (tobias-albert@web.de), May 12, 2002.

Forgot something:

Do you know why VCD,DVD and DV (camcorders) have no square pixels?

Is it better to downsize the Photo-VCD pictures to 768x576 pixels with e.g. Photoshop or let this make NERO and so give it the bigger full data 4:3 image? I do trust more the downsize algorithm of Photoshop. ;-)

Tobias :o)

-- Tobias (tobias-albert@web.de), May 12, 2002.

I do not produce many still-only VCDs but in the beginning I always gave Nero 800x600 JPGs and BMPs. Sometimes I gave 1024x768 or even 1000x750. Either way I didn't see any difference in the picture quality on playing back the VCD and viewing on a 34in TV so I've made it easier on myself and simply follow two things: it's always 4:3, and it's never below 800x600. Nero resamples it to what it wants and I leave it at that. I've also tried the widescreen anamorphic thing by resampling 16:9 JPGs to 4:3 and giving them to Nero and on playing back activating the widescreen mode of the TV; of course they look better because the entire vertical resoltuion is used for the picture and no lines are wasted on the black bars. I don't know if ahead will or won't increase the sophistication of their VCD-authoring. It's fine for me as it is. With DVD-R media and h/w prices falling (Pioneer DVRA04) it's about time to slowly make the move. For just the still-image VCD thing you may find xatshow from www.xat.com better.

-- Mehmet Tekdemir (turk690@yahoo.com), May 13, 2002.

To answer why DVD and VCD do not have square pixels we have to get back to video standards. In NTSC the number of viewable lines is 480 out of 525, and 576 out of 625 in PAL. In the digital scheme of things it's easy and convenient to assign one pixel height per vertical line. If we set the same resolution hor as for ver then it follows we should use 640 for NTSC and 768 for PAL for a 4:3 display. But while we're stuck with the number of vertical lines the same is not true for horizontal resolution and various digital schemes have come that increase the 640 to 704 or 720. This may look better, hor. resolution-wise, but is not 4:3 anymore so squishing it back to the correct visual aspect ratio is best left to the display device (which is the principle behind anamorphic display), especially non-fixed- pixel displays (CRTs). But we're back it seems to square one (pixel - wise, in a manner of saying) with the new ATSC TV systems in the USA, which currently have two HDTV formats: 720p (for ABC) and 1080i (for all others). For example, an HDTV can be described as being able to display 1080x1920, so there u r.

-- Mehmet Tekdemir (turk690@yahoo.com), May 13, 2002.

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-- shadab ansari (teryfang@yahoo.com), May 15, 2002.