I just wanted to first of all say a big THANK YOU to this forum.I made a VCD on a Kodak Ultima Silver CD but alas it would not play on my Samsung 709 DVD player.I thought I was going to have to buy a Pioneer multilaser DVD player (dollars) but on reading your forum, found that people had had good results with Princo CDR's and so I bought some(pink label on case!).Low & behold they work fine.Now I can record my home movies to VCD and keep them forever.One question, is the Matrox Marvel G400 TV a good card to record in MPEG1 direct?It is about $650 in Australia.Also, does a VCD hold 1 hr of video?And, if I was to make a 3hr MPEG (from a 3 hr VHS tape), can I edit it into 3 x 1hr MPEG's & put them onto 3 VCD's?The test one I have done is a little high on the contrast & a bit pixellated in parts - is this due to the TV, DVD player or my cheap capture card at present(only captures in AVI.)? Mark.

Mark,

I think Matrox has a pretty good reputation when it comes to video editing but I think the G400 is too much ($650)?? It's an old card here in Canada and it shouldn't cost more than $250 Canadian. The new one is G450 and I don't think it costs more than $300 either. You can also look into ATI All In Wonder Radeon.

A standard NTSC VCD with Audio birate = 224 and Video birate = 1150 can hold a 1:14:15 long movie. You can of course divide your 3-hour long movie into different sections and burn them to 3 different CDR.

As far as pixellation and the contrast is concern, it's hard to tell with the information you have. What software do you use to encode the clip from AVI to MPEG1? It plays a great role here if it doesn't have good quality (bad quality = more pixellated). For contrast, is there anything you can control via the capture card software?

If you need more help, check out: www.vcdhelp.com