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Creating (and sharing) your own Video CDs

Thanks to ZDNet - Feb 2002

With DVDs in every video store and library, it's plain to see those shiny little discs aren't just for music anymore. If you don't mind investing in some not-so-inexpensive hardware, you may want to burn your own DVDs. Otherwise, you may find CD-R or CD-RW discs can hold all the video you need.

With a capacity of roughly 650MB, CD-R and CD-RW discs can accommodate about 74 minutes of video at a resolution of 352 x 240 - about VHS quality - and 15 to 20 minutes at 720 x 480 - the resolution of DVD. The 352 x 240 resolution, referred to as Video CD (VCD) format, is widely used in some parts of the world and has built up steam in the United States since CD recorders began selling at mass-market prices. Unless you plan to show hours of home-video footage at a time (to the horror of your stupefied audience), CD-R and CD-RW should prove just right for preserving precious moments of everything from birthday parties to school assemblies. They're also perfect for sharing clips with family and friends because you can play them on just about any home computer, and even on some stand-alone DVD players.

Making VCDs isn't as easy as burning your own music CDs, but the combination of inexpensive, high-quality video-digitizing hardware and improved CD-writing software makes it much less complicated than you might think.

In this Tune-Up, we'll lead you step-by-step through the process.

Check Your System
You don't need an extraordinary computer setup to create VCDs, but having a fairly current computer will help.

You should have at least a 300MHz processor for low-resolution MPEG-1 videos or a 500MHz processor for DVD-quality MPEG-2 videos.
A minimum of 1GB to 2GB of available hard drive space is necessary to create low-resolution videos, and up to 10GB is handy for high-resolution videos.
You'll want at least 128MB of RAM,
as well as a graphics card that supports DirectX overlays; most current cards do.
Any CD-R or CD-RW drive will do to create the discs, but if you plan to play them back right off the CD, you'll want a 32x or faster CD reader.

Select a Target Format
Your choice of video resolution and compression will determine how much video you can fit on a CD-R or CD-RW disc and how good that video will look. Choosing a target format early in the process will help you make intelligent decisions as you move forward.

Video CD 2.0 (VCD) is a recognized international standard for video on CD that predates DVD and is widely used in some countries, such as China. It uses MPEG-1 compression at a resolution of 352 x 240, so the picture quality is about the same as VHS (a little worse, actually). Almost all stand-alone DVD players will play these discs as long as they can read the media, and Windows Media Player will play MPEG-1 files without additional software or decoding hardware.

Super Video CD (SVCD) uses a higher resolution than VCD - 480 x 480 - and MPEG-2 encoding to deliver a better picture, but fewer DVD players play SVCDs. To play SVCDs on a computer, you need a software DVD player. Playing time is as little as half that of VCD.

Extended formats (XVCD and SXVCD) aren't true standards, just discs with the directory structure of VCD or SVCD that contain video files encoded at 720 x 480. XVCD uses MPEG-1 compression, while SXVCD uses MPEG-2, giving it the same resolution and compression scheme as DVD video. Only a few stand-alone DVD players play these discs, which contain as little as 10 to 15 minutes of video. You can play them back on all computers using a software DVD player.

The format you select depends on what you value most - compatibility and long playing time, or video quality. But the procedure is much the same for creating discs in any of these formats. Here we'll use the VCD format.

Capture Your Video
You can convert video footage into digital format and transfer it onto your hard drive in a number of ways.

One way is to digitize VHS or 8mm video footage using a video-capture card. We used the Dazzle Digital Video Creator II.
If you have a digital camcorder, you can import the digital data directly into your computer using the IEEE 1394 (FireWire) interface.
Or you can capture new videos directly to your hard drive using a Web camera.

Before capturing your video, you'll need to choose a resolution and compression scheme. Capture devices typically offer default capture settings at "standard" resolutions, such as those laid out in step 2. If disk storage isn't a problem, consider digitizing at the highest-quality setting your equipment supports. (We used a DVD preset of 720 x 480 with MPEG-2 compression.) This approach gives you the flexibility to use the video at a higher quality later - if you invest in a DVD writer, for instance. It may even yield a better result writing to CD now, because it gives your re-encoding software more information to work with.

You may also need to specify a bit rate at which to capture video, depending on your other selections. The VCD 2.0 standard calls for a fixed bit rate of 1,150kbps; other formats allow some flexibility. In theory at least, the higher the bit rate, the better the video quality.

Tip: If your digitizer uses a compression format other than MPEG-1 or MPEG-2, such as MJPEG, try to at least match the frame size to one of the standard settings, such as 352 x 240 or 720 x 480. This will make re-encoding your video later on easier.

Edit the Video
Now is a good time to edit the video you captured. Chances are your video-capture or DV card came with editing software that will at least suffice. If not, you can invest in any of several stand-alone editors.

Even if you see no need to edit your video, you'll probably want to divide your clips into scenes, to separate the birthday party from the trip to the zoo, for instance. Most editing software also lets you add special effects, such as transitions between scenes.

Tip: It's a good idea to save your edited video at the same resolution you captured it. This preserves the video quality of your original capture and lets you save the edited clip more quickly.

Encode to the Target Format
Unless you captured your video at the precise resolution and bit rate you chose for your target format, you'll need to re-encode your almost-finished video. The software that came with your video-capture board is probably up to the task, but video quality will vary depending on the software you use. We achieved excellent results from a freeware encoder that's been getting rave user ratings: TMPGEnc (short for Tsunami MPEG Encoder), available at the TMPGEnc Web site.

Using TMPGEnc is a snap.

First, load your video by clicking on the Browse button next to "Video source" and locating the file.
Next, load the settings template for your target format - in our case, "VideoCD (NTSC)" - by clicking on the Load button at the bottom right of the window. This template contains all the settings necessary to produce VCD-compliant video.
Next, click on the Browse button next to "Output file name" to name the re-encoded file,
then click on Start to begin the process.

Re-encoding is slow, even on a fast computer. It took us about a half hour to re-encode 5 minutes of DVD-quality video to VCD format on our 800MHz Pentium III test system.

After you re-encode your video, check it carefully. If it doesn't play back smoothly and clearly from your hard drive, it probably won't play well from a CD.

Tip: You may wish to divide long video segments into shorter clips before you encode. That way you can test one of the resulting files without waiting forever, and you can skip from segment to segment on your finished VCD.

Choose Your Media
When it comes to VCD compatibility, all CD-R and CD-RW media are not alike. If you care about viewing your VCDs on a stand-alone DVD player or letting others do so - or even letting others view your video masterpieces on older CD-ROM drives - you'll need to choose your output media with care.

Whether your discs will play in a given DVD player or computer system depends on two unrelated factors: the format of the information stored on the disc, and the physical makeup of the disc itself. Even if you choose VCD as your target format to maximize compatibility, you still have to make sure your friends and family members will be able to use the type of disc you provide. If possible, burn a simple video onto several brands of CD-RW or CD-R media (using CD-Rs of several different dye colors, if possible, such as gold, silver, blue, and green), then test each on the players in question.

Tip: To test-drive compatibility before you go to the trouble of digitizing and editing video, consider using a downloaded sample to burn your discs. VCDHelp (Web site) includes free samples of all the standard formats, which can also be handy for testing your system's video-playback capabilities.

Burn the Video CD
Each VCD and SVCD disc must contain a specific set of directories and files. CD-writing software such as Ahead's Nero and Roxio's Video CD Creator takes care of these details for you. Simply start a VCD project and drag your video files (encoded in the appropriate format) to the project window, and the program will create all the necessary directories and files.

We chose Ahead's Nero 5.5 software because it supports both VCD and SVCD discs, in standard and nonstandard formats. (At this writing, Video CD Creator, part of Roxio's Easy CD Creator suite, would create only VCD 2.0 discs.)

Once you've dragged all your video files into the project window, select File > Write CD. The options window lets you add a menu to your VCD so the viewer can select from several clips - select the Menu tab, and then check the Enable Menu box. You can also set options such as the layout of the menu. When you're ready to write the CD, pop a blank into the burner and click on the Write button.