Greater Sites
Digital Video
VCD & SVCD

VCD stands for 'Video Compact Disc' and basically it is a CD that contains moving pictures and sound. If you're familiar with regular audio/music CDs, then you will know what a VCD looks like. A VCD has the capacity to hold up to 74/80 minutes (on 650MB/700MB CDs respectively) of full-motion video along with quality stereo sound. VCDs use a compression standard called MPEG to store the video and audio. A VCD can be played on almost all stand alone DVD Players and of course on all computers with a DVD-ROM or CD-ROM drive with the help of a software based decoder / player. The quality of a VCD is about the same, but usually better than VHS tape based Movies.

VCD PAL
Video:1150 kbit/sec MPEG-1
352 x 288 pixels
25 frames/second
Audio :224 kbit/sec MPEG-1 Layer2

SVCD stands for

SVCD stands for Super Video CD. A SVCD is like a VCD but the video are stored in MPEG-2 Variabel Bitrate(like DVD Movies) and in higher resolution. A SVCD can contain from about 35 to 80 minutes video/CD(740 MB on a 74 min/cd and 800 MB on 80 min/cd)and therefore most movies are on 2-3 CDs. The quality is worse than DVD but better than VCD and VHS. SVCD also supports up to 4 subtitles to choose from.

SVCDs can be played on

- Stand alone VCD/SVCD Players (common in ASiA)
- Many stand alone DVD Players, check here for compability list
- All CD-ROM/DVD-ROM can play SVCDs with a software DVD/SVCD-Player

SVCD PAL
Video: max 2600 bit/sec MPEG-2
480 x 576 pixels
25 frames/second
with up to 4 Subtitles

Audio:
from 32 - 384 kbit/sec MPEG-1 layer2 or MPEG-2
with up to 2 Audio Tracks'

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