Converting a Video CD (VCD) to DivX is usually easier
to do than converting a DVD CD. But why convert? Simple, VCD's take
up two 650MB CD-R's whereas DivX can fit on one CD-R with similar quality.
Open VCDGear 2.0 by double clicking on it. Up pops this:
Put your first VCD into your CD-Rom drive and choose the
'dat -> mpeg' option from the drop down list (A);
then press load (B). Make sure 'Fix
MPEG Errors' is ticked but uncheck the 'Remove CD-i MPEG Bumper'. Leave
the rest default. Bingo! You have and mpeg file!
Note: Many people are of the opinion that because
they can play VCD *.dat files in most Mpeg players the *.dat file is
the same as an Mpeg. This is not the case! A VCD mpeg is basically an
Mpeg-1 file but just like the DVD VOB files the *.dat file also contains
other pieces of information needed to play the VCD in a commercial VCD
player. These files need to be deleted otherwise you will not be able
to do anything with the Mpeg movie. This is why we need VCD Gear.
Converting the Video and Audio to DivX with VirtualDub
It seems that the latest version of VirtualDub does a
much faster conversion of Mpeg-1 to DivX so I suggest you try this first!
Also there is less chance of the audio going wrong this way because
VirtualDub usually sees to that.
Wait while it checks the movie to make sure its in the
correct format to convert.
Choose: Video > Full Processing
Mode (checked below with a black dot).
Video Compression
And then: 'Video > Compression...'
Up pops the following box below. Choose Mpeg-4 Low-Motion
and hit the configure button (highlighted in red).
The Up pops the codec options. Use one of the bitrate
calculators that can be downloaded from Digital Digest to make sure
the movie will fit into the size you need. 650kbps will usually fit
ANY movie on a single CD, but you can usually get away with between
900 and 1000kbps for a 352 x 240 VCD movie for better quality see my
quality guide if you are unsure about correct bitrate settings.
Audio Compression
Now select the audio settings by going to: Audio
> Full processing mode (so the black dot appears by it).
Then Audio > Compression.
Up pops this box below. Choose Mpeg Layer 3 or DivX ;-)
Audio 64kbps, 441 kHz, stereo. And press OK.
That's it! Save AVI...
Here we go! The picture on the left represents the original
VCD movie and the one on the right represents the DivX version. This
is great because unlike Flask Mpeg you can see what the quality will
be like and change it before the file is finished =^). For even faster
encoding you can set the priority settings to 'Highest' and turn off
the 'Show input' and 'Show output' video by unchecking the boxes. These
can be turned on at any time to see your progress.
Troubleshooting
Some VCD's are just badly encoded! I have even bought
"proffesional" VCD's that would not play on my VCD player!
The weird thing is they play back perfectly in Media Player but when
we encode them they sometimes have sections with pink and green blocks
in them.
On such substandard, or perhaps just corrupted mpeg files,
I have tried all the main utilities: Flask Mpeg, Mpeg2avi and
VirtualDub with no luck. I have tried fixing them with IFilmEdit,
VCDGear and a whole bunch of others. The only thing that did a
good job was Graphedit so check out my guide for converting "Stubborn
Mpeg's to DivX (AVI) with Graphedit".
Duplication of links or content is strictly
prohibited. (C) NICKY PAGE 2000
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