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Make your own DVD's! (sorta)


bsbuckeye21

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Excuse my excitement if you have already heard of this, but anyone with CD-R capability can create Video CD's that work just like DVD's (minus the capacity of course) on any DVD or VCD player.

 

A great site for all of this is: http://www.vcdhelp.com/

 

Here's just a little quick-n-dirty run through to get you started:

 

First, make sure you have the appropriate software for writing VCD's. I have a year old version of Adaptec Easy CD Creator, but it didn't have the feature, so I had to download the Nero demo.

 

Coverter guide: http://www.vcdhelp.com/convert.htm

This freeware converting program is a must: http://www.vcdhelp.com/tmpgenc.htm

and a vital plugin for it to handle .mov files can be found here.

 

Go here for a nice walkthrough on creating a VCD compatable mpg file from a mov file in TMPGEnc. (What I did with the Episode I trailer for a test.)

 

Now, just load up Nero and follow this walkthough.

 

Too bad for me I don't have a video card with video-in, but I'm still gonna get a lot of use out of it. I'm sure there's a local market for a few trailer mix VCD's. ;)

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Guest Krayt Tion

There are three ways that I know to rip Divx, some of them require additional programs.

 

I just don't understand the point of putting Divx to VCD, why not just rip to divx and burn to CD?

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Guest Krayt Tion

I see what you mean...

 

But just to make sure you understand where I am coming from:

 

You rip your Divx and you burn it onto your CD just like any other bit of data. It's just a large .avi that uses the divx codec. That's all it is on a CD. It can exist on it without being in ths VCD format.

 

They say VCD is just any motion and pictures on a CD. This would be a general classification I think that oversteps it's bounds... They say "VCDs are in two format, NTSC and PAL (and a third one also, NTSC Film but that is almost never used)."

 

So VCDs like you mentioned are meant to be played most places a DVD can be.

 

My Divx avi on a CD, in .avi format, and is not a VCD. It is designed as far as I know to only work on computers with Windows Media Player and the Divx Codec. So when I originally said "I'll take my Divx" that meant 'I'm fine just watching DVD-ripped movies on my computer only because I don't own a DVD player and that's all I do anyways.' Much easier to say that I would just stick with my Divx, but I suppose I should have explained myself.

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Guest Krayt Tion

I understand that they can also be played on your computer, hell, I watched a sample myself. I wasn't that impressed with the quality example they gave... Do you have the option of storing those favorite flicks of yours on your HD with increased file size/quality like Divx? I'm talking about 2 hour movies you download that approach 1GB and cannot be put unto a single CD and that you don't want to put on two.

 

I wonder which format looks better when you rip from DVD to VCD, and when you convert from that format to VCD, if the loses any quality from that format (for example after you've ripped your DVD to Divx, and when you convert to VCD, it looks worse than the Divx did).

 

[ June 21, 2001: Message edited by: Krayt Tion ]

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  • 3 weeks later...
Guest Kurgan

Well there's a couple of things. DivX is getting a new version (versions? I've heard of DivX2 and 3ivx, pronounced "thriv-ex" but I haven't studied up on them, so excuse me if I miss any details), but for now, you can get a pretty good quality (better than VCD) movie onto one 80 minute disc.

 

Of course the nice thing about VCD is that you can play it on most DVD players, and some game consoles with special software (Saturn, Dreamcast). VCD is a bigger format in asian countries than here, and it's much lower quality than DVD of course.

 

Then again, if you have a decent PC, VCD is basically just like running a couple of big avi movies, and so DivX is better. But if you have a stand-alone player, VCD is just kind of nice. I can play VCD's on my DVD-ROM but they don't look any different than if I just open the file manually on my CD drive.

 

And about having a DVDRAM (dvd burner). For now you can't really author DVD movies (like you'd buy in a store, with menus and chapters and all that nice stuff) without authoring software. The Mac was having a new DVD authoring program that just came out (I haven't read anything about it lately though). It had some restrictions because of "piracy concerns" by the movie industry, such as that you can only burn 1 hour of video, and you can't take snapshots with the player (what would you do, copy a commercial DVD frame by frame??!!).

 

The big thing that stops DVD piracy is the fact that the media is so expensive. Think about it, you can get blank 80 minute CDR's for about 20 cents (see pricewatch.com for latest figures). Whereas the cheapest DVDRAM media I've seen costs about $15 per disc. When you consider the memory and time it takes to burn, having a movie on 2 cd's is a lot more reasonable than 1 DVD.

 

Once you buy the medi and the burner, it would probably have been cheaper just to buy the real thing (and chances are it would be better). Plus without the decent authoring software, your copy is always going to be worse than what the studio could do.

 

But, give it some time and eventually we may see something better. Personally there's stuff I'd like to make onto DVD (home movies, etc), but it's just too expensive right now.

 

All DVDRAM's are really good for (for consumers) nowadays are storing mass amounts of data on a single disc, but it's still cheaper to use CDR/RW's.

 

Kurgan

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