VisorCentral.com - Homemade DVD's

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Posted by MarkEagle on 12-31-2001 01:43 AM:

Homemade DVD's

We just got our first DVD player for Christmas (I can't believe we waited so long ). My wife has a huge collection of old movies on VHS and wants me to figure out if we can make our own DVD's to convert (and preserve) some of them.

I've got an ATI All-in-Wonder Pro 128 video card with video capture capabilities so I know I can create MPEG and VideoCD files. My question is, can you make a standard CD in a CD-RW that will work in a DVD, or, would you need a DVD-R device?

I guess the next toy's going to be DVCam...

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Posted by Thunderbird291 on 12-31-2001 01:49 AM:

You need a DVD-RW . Note the price tag...

Posted by PlantATree on 12-31-2001 02:20 AM:

No you can make standard CDRs or CDRWs that will play in your DVD player, provided the unit will read those type of disks. Its kind of a crazy process though. You cant simply write the disks and bingo. A bunch of conversions need to be done to get to the final product. Here is a great site that explains how to do it. Hope this helps. Payback for the Outlook help.

VCD Help

Posted by homer on 12-31-2001 03:38 AM:

I thought a VCD was just a CD with an MPG file on it?

Anyways, it should work just fine, though note that you will not have a DVD-quality using VCD format. Of course, you couldn't have DVD-quality going from VHS in the first place.

Anyone have a slick way to convert Super8 movies to digital in one step?

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Posted by miradu on 12-31-2001 04:14 AM:

Check out this site for disc compatibility with your drive..

\We bought a crappy toshiba SD-1600 for a good price, but it ONLY will play a DVD - not a DVD-R, not a CD-R it sucks.. me mad.. me very mad. A video was made of me at Comdex saying some Nasdaq ad (ok it was market trac, and it was pretty cool) but I can't watch it, case my DVD player no work with it! BE WARNED

http://www.vcdhelp.com/dvdlist/dvdplayers.html

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Posted by Keefer Lucas on 12-31-2001 04:23 AM:

Me Too!

I got a nice DVD player for Christmas too. I am interested in the VCD process too; I have Adobe Premier and am wondering if it has the tools to accomplish the task without having to invest in a multi-hundred dollar plug-in.

While we are at it, is there a way to process pictures onto a CD and have them "play back" one at a time by clicking the forward or play button on my DVD player's remote? That'd be real cool.

Posted by jeff318 on 12-31-2001 02:31 PM:

try http://dvd.da.ru/

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Posted by ernieba1 on 12-31-2001 03:04 PM:

I think Easy CD Creator 5 Platinum can make VCDs.

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Posted by MarkEagle on 12-31-2001 03:25 PM:

VCDHelp rocks!!! Tons of useful info, tips, etc... like a VisorCentral for DVD/VCD!

I successfully burned my first sample VCD this morning using some freeware called VCDEasy (Keefer, it can also do your photo album slide show ). I have a few problems, mainly sound quality, but it's passable for now.

From what I read at VCDHelp, I think I'm going to invest in Nero CD. Everyone says it's the best CD-RW software and it supports VCD.

Thanks everyone!

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Posted by JHromadka on 12-31-2001 10:34 PM:

For Mac users, Toast from Roxio makes VCDs. One of these days I'm going to transfer North to Alaska from tape to VCD so I can watch it on my DVD player (I no longer have a VCR -- Love that ReplayTV!).

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Posted by volcanopele on 01-01-2002 12:22 AM:

quote:
Originally posted by miradu2000
Check out this site for disc compatibility with your drive..

\We bought a crappy toshiba SD-1600 for a good price, but it ONLY will play a DVD - not a DVD-R, not a CD-R it sucks.. me mad.. me very mad. A video was made of me at Comdex saying some Nasdaq ad (ok it was market trac, and it was pretty cool) but I can't watch it, case my DVD player no work with it! BE WARNED

http://www.vcdhelp.com/dvdlist/dvdplayers.html

I feel your pain. I also have an SD-1600. I tried to make a video of a family reunion taken earlier this year and put it on CD-Rs to give to the attendants. Well, I found out that my DVD player doen't like CD-Rs. GRRRRRR.

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Posted by EricG on 01-01-2002 06:15 AM:

I've been making video cds for years now...

(this is all windows software, sorry Mac folks, I don't own a Mac so I can't speak on it)

The best windows software I have found is Video Pack 4 (or now its 5.0), made by CeQuadrat (Adpetec now owns them ), Adpatec EZCD will *work* but its crude.. Anyway, when I first started the process, I picked up a Dazzle DVC (I found this was the best, easiest, fastest way to encode the video directly to mpg), you can use software to convert from AVI to MPG but it takes a VERY LONG TIME,, You may also need some odd editing tools, I later got IEdit (I think it has changed names now), for general editing (cut, splice, etc..).. My process was that I would use the Dazzle to encode directly to the mpg file, edit the file, then burn the file onto a disc using the video cd creation software (i.e. Video Pack)..

(and no, a video cd is not just an mpg file on a cdr - I wish).. One thing you will noticed is that the initial file seems to be larger than what will fit on your CDR, this is normal as the video part is recorded directly to the cd without error checking (like raw cd audio is ) (go by recording time not file size, i.e. 74 minutes not 640 mb) (data cd's have error checking bits added and there for take up more space). Video CD's make *look* like a normal data cd, but they are not!.. Also, don't try to copy a "dat" file from a video cd onto your pc's hard disk, that dat file is just a pointer to the raw video part of the disc, if your cd reader is smart enough you may get it to copy but you will have single bit errors in the file.. (it will be a mess, and you will need more tools to fix it before the mpeg file can be be used) (see FLASKMPEG and MPEG Corrector for these tasks)

All in all the process can be time consuming if you have a lot to put to disc. Recently I purchased a Terapin Video CD recorder http://www.terapintech.com/fea_cdaudio.html , this really speeds up the process (can you say warp drive for video cd creation) as it can be somewhat time consuming to , record, edit, burn, etc.. the terapin does this in one shot (its a stand alone self contained recorder), if I need to edit out commercials or etc, I burn the video a CD-RW disc then rip the video file from the terapin created cd, edit out what I want, then reburn it to a new cd.

I am waiting for recordable dvd to be cheap, for now video cd works just fine for me,

Also, as a final note, not all standalone DVD players can read CD-R's or CD-RW's!!

Keefer , for Christmas this year, I made Video CD's with all the digital pictures from our wedding (taken from all the various cameras at our wedding, I then collated all of them in chronological order - using the time stamp embedded in the jpg file), finally I added music tracks to them and gave them out to my parents and my wife's parents (I had verified earlier this year they had cd-r compatible dvd players).. They LOVED them..

Video CD does still pictures.. I recommend the Cequadrat VideoPack software, its the most flexible and offers the most video cd features, menus, etc.. (just like a dvd)..

James, a Terapin is a must for a ReplayTv owner!! (it was the purchase of my Replay that really pushed the issue of getting the terapin)

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Posted by ernieba1 on 01-01-2002 02:57 PM:

How much video can fit on one VCD?

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Posted by MarkEagle on 01-01-2002 03:53 PM:

quote:
Originally posted by ernieba1
How much video can fit on one VCD?

Approximately 70 minutes from what I've been reading. You're using standard CR-R or CD-RW media, so the capacity is approximately 650mb.

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Posted by ernieba1 on 01-01-2002 09:46 PM:

70 minutes!?! That's almost as much as the amount of CD audio you can put on! I'd think you'd be able to put on much more audio than video. That's amazing.

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"One word sums up probably the responsibility of any vice president, and that one word is 'to be prepared'.
-Dan Quayle

Posted by EricG on 01-01-2002 09:56 PM:

quote:
Originally posted by MarkEagle
Approximately 70 minutes from what I've been reading. You're using standard CR-R or CD-RW media, so the capacity is approximately 650mb.

Actually it doesn't work quite that way, a 74 minute cd-r will hold just about 74 minutes of video (about 73 mins and 40 secs) , an 80 minute cdr will hold just about 80 minutes of video (79 mins and 40 secs)..

Since the video part isn't stored like a data file on a cdr is, you can put what seems like a file on the cd-r that is bigger that what you normally would think it could hold, i.e. the mpg file for a 73 minute video cd is about 730 mb, this is actually normal since it is not written on the disc with error checking,..

If you format a cd-r for data storage all you can fit on a 74 minute cd-r is about 640mb (you loose a lot of raw space to the error checking bits)..

To tell how much you can put on the disc, go by the stated recording time, i.e. 74 minutes, 80 minutes, etc.. Just think of the video as if it were audio only.

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Posted by EricG on 01-01-2002 10:04 PM:

quote:
Originally posted by ernieba1
70 minutes!?! That's almost as much as the amount of CD audio you can put on! I'd think you'd be able to put on much more audio than video. That's amazing.

The audio data on a "normal audio cd" is stored in a raw format (i.e. no compression), Video on a video cd is stored in a highly compressed format, the compression is designed to take up the same amount of bandwidth (bits read per second from the disc) as raw audio (was done that way on purpose because the audio cd format was invented first, later they then tried to back fit a video stream into the same physical limits as an audio cd format).. If you didn't compress the video it could take hundreds if not thousands of "cd-r's" to store just 74 minutes of uncompressed video.

For those who like numbers, raw video (640x480 24bit) comes at you at around 23mb/sec or 1.5GB per minute, the specs for MPEG-1 (aka Video CD) compress this about 200:1 down to around 10mb/min.

Now, if you compress only audio in a similar fashion as mpeg-1 (aka Video CD) video streams (i.e. convert your audio cd's as mp3's), you can store alot more "audio" on a cd-r than "video", about 11 or 12 hours worth of audio only per disc (depending on compression quality, etc..)

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Posted by MarkEagle on 01-04-2002 11:30 PM:

quote:
Originally posted by EricG
Recently I purchased a Terapin Video CD recorder...

Having read this, I was ready to run out and buy one of these myself. I found a retail unit for $389.00 and also checked eBay, where they're going in the 300.00 - 400.00 range. Then I thought, why bother?. Within the next year, I expect the DVD-RW's to drop in price as they become more mainstream. Currently, they're around $600.00... in a year (maybe less) they should be comparable to the Terapin. It just seems that DVD-RW makes more sense in the long run (larger capacity, better quality, etc), especially since most of our VHS collection will require more than one VideoCD each. I'll still convert some of them the old-fashioned way using my ATI All-in-Wonder capture feature, but really think DVD-RW is worth waiting for (it's not like I need to convert my collection today, though my wife would disagree

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Posted by Keefer Lucas on 01-05-2002 01:57 AM:

Degree of Difficulty

From the hardware manufacturing standpoint is there any reason for a DVD-RW to be any more expensive than a CD-RW? The encoding process is more advanced, but once the encoded chips are manufactured and placed on the circuitboard I doubt there is any reason beyond economies of scale that these shouldn't be comparable in price to CD-RWs in the next couple of years.

And hopefully over that time period the good folks from Roxio/Adaptec will give us the ability to produce DVDs with the same ease that we now burn audio and data CDs. In fact, what I would really like is to dump raw video from my IEEE 1394 ported videocamera straight to DVD, with no editing involved at all. For 90% of my "home movie" viewing the speed of access via DVD would offset the need for editing.

Posted by MarkEagle on 01-05-2002 02:58 AM:

Re: Degree of Difficulty

quote:
Originally posted by Keefer Lucas
is there any reason for a DVD-RW to be any more expensive than a CD-RW?

Technically, I'm not sure, but I'd guess there is a big difference in the read/write mechanics because of the increased capacity of DVD's over CD's. Whether or not that justifies the bloated price, who knows?

They're probably more expensive because the manufacturers know they can get away with it for now. It's no different than when CD-R and CD-RW drives first appeared.

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