Job Discussion Forums

basiltherat · Joined: 04 Oct 2003 Posts: 952

sorry to be veering slightly off topic here but ...... can anyone tell me the essential differences between DVD and VCD ? This company's trying to develop its audio visual library and these 2 terms seem to banded about as though they're one and the same. Please help.
thanks loads
basil

yaramaz · Posted: Wed May 04, 2005 10:17 am Post subject:

DVDs are a lot more high tech than vcds, which are basically the video version of audio cds. You can adjust the settings on dvds for language or subtitles, isolate specific scenes, trailers (good for synopsis), extra info, added scenes, etc. Also, dvds hold the film on one disc whereas vcds usually need two discs for a full length film. I have found that vdc quality is pretty crappy actually, and after a few plays the cd deteriorates significantly (turkish vcds anyway). After showing my prep classes Pirates of the Carribbean, I found it almost impossible to hear the audio and the scenes kept freezing.

ls650 · Joined: 10 May 2003 Posts: 3484 Location: British Columbia

A CD-ROM disc holds roughly 640 to 800 megabytes of information. A VCD is a CD with a video file on it; typically about an hour of low quality video, so a two-hour movie usually takes two discs. The video quality is on a par with a VHS cassette.

A DVD-ROM holds about 10x the information of a CD, so a higher quality two-hour video can easily be stored on one disc.

VCDs were very popular in Asia, but they are rapidly fading away in favour of DVDs.

Most DVD players are backwards compatible with VCDs.

basiltherat · Joined: 04 Oct 2003 Posts: 952

ok. thanx a lot, guys. so i guess dvd is the one to use/get.
regards
basil

been_there · Joined: 28 Oct 2003 Posts: 284 Location: 127.0.0.1

A DVD uses MPEG-2 to compress video data, a VCD uses
MPEG-1.

The MPEG-1 standard provides a video resolution of
352-by-240 at 30 frames per second (fps).

MPEG-2 offers resolutions of 720x480 and 1280x720 at
60 fps.

copied off the internet somewhere......

Stephen Jones · Joined: 21 Feb 2003 Posts: 4124

A DVd can hold 4.7 GB whilst a CD holds 650-800MB. So you get six times the data on a DVD.

The problem with DVDs is that there are several incompatible standards, and its a bit of a toss-up if your disk can be read in a drive different from that it is created in. Whatever the media you finally decide on, do make a point of tesing it beforehand in all target drives.

It is also worth bearing in mind that recordable media of both types can degrade quite quickly so you will need at least two backup copies of each piece of material on different removeably media, as well as keeping two copies on two separate hard disks.

Also. always try to buy the best quality (normally most expensive) blank media, though even that is not a guarantee of cross-compatibility.

Stephen Jones · Joined: 21 Feb 2003 Posts: 4124

yaramaz · Posted: Thu May 05, 2005 3:25 pm Post subject:

I didnt buy it. It was in my school's library.

Stephen Jones · Joined: 21 Feb 2003 Posts: 4124

commercial CDs and DVDs are pressed. That is to say the pits the laser reads are actually indented into the material of the disk.'
Burnable CDs acheive their effect by changing a chemical layer through heat. This is much less reliable.

When you are talking about the difference in reliablity between VCDs and DVDs what you are in effect comparing are commerical DVDs which have been pressed and pirate VCDs which have been burned. The difference in reliability has little to do with the DVD versus VCD format.