My Dad has a lot of home video footage he’s taken over the past year. Is there any way of making it into a VCD instead of just transfering it to a large VHS cassette? Any is there any way for me to turn an old decaying VHS tape into a VCD before it disintergrates in the machine on me? I have a TV card that can record TV as MPEG (IIRC) files and my Dad has all the necessary hardware to take his home videos onto the PC. Any simple/cheap way of doing this?
Cheers
Pushkin
Yes; if you can get the video in as MPG or AVI files (and it sounds like you have that aspect covered), then all you need is some software to produce the VCDs - I’ve just made one using Cyberlink PowerProducer (which I got free on a magazine coverCD) - have a search for the term VCD on download.com or tucows.com - there’s at least one freeware offering (DVD Rip’n’Burn), but it has a fairly poor rating - some of the non-freeware ones aren’t too expensive though.
Most CD burning apps offer the ability to burn VCDs. In Nero, for instance, you simply create a new VCD project and then drag-and-drop the video file to the compliation. Just make sure that the video file meets the following specifications:
Horizontal width: 352
Vertical height: 240
Frames per second: 29.97
Color depth: 24 or 32 bits
(This is assuming that you’re NTSC - the US, Canada, Japan, etc). Google for “VCD Specifications” for more info. Nero will offer to re-encode the video if it’s out of spec, but I’ve always found the encoder to be “flaky” at best.
For more information than you could ever need about DVDs, SVCDs, and all kinds of video manipulation, see
That’s a great website!
No Way!!! “TSowell”?? Ph.D in Economics from the University of Chicago in 1968? “Call me Tom”??? I can’t believe that I (sort of) answered a question for THOMAS SOWELL! Talk about your brushes with GREATNESS!!!