What file type is used to burn to a DVD to play in player? MP2? (1 Viewer)

[Kyle McKnight]

Hey guys, I record a lot of TV stuff in VCD format, such as Boy Meets World, The Wonder Years, Saved By The Bell etc...
I'm curious, I'm getting a DVD burner as soon as the DVD+RW drives hit the market...if I start recording in MP2 format, will I be able to directly author these files to a DVD to watch on TV? Any help would be appreciated.
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Kyle³
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Yahoo Messenger - digitalkyle

 

[Steve Kramzer]

Well I don't know if you can just load up an mpeg2 file and burn it on a dvd, doing this would kinda be wasteful for what you're planning on. If all you want to do is burn mpeg2 files, then you can do this now with nero burning rom and an svcd compatible dvd player. Svcd is an mpeg2 based format. If you're just capping tv shows to archive, it would be kinda wasteful to cap them in mpeg2 as you're not going to see any real noticeable improvement over an mpeg1 cap bc regular tv resolution is so low. Now if you found a way to cap hdtv to mpeg2...well now that would be just plain phat.

 

[Jeff Kleist]

Actually, DVD is MPEG-2, and I notice a lot of difference. I'd cap at the highest res possible. Your DVD burning software will give you the specs the files need to match
Jeff Kleist

 

[Dominik Droscher]

It depends how you record your TV shows. If you record via VHS and then digitize the data I would stay with VCD. If you digitize directly off the TV the quality may be good enough to make a use of MPEG2.
Returning to your actual question. With the right software authoring MPEG2 DVDs should be absolutely no problem.
DVDCreation.com is a site which will help you finding the right software.

 

[Ken Chan]

First off, MP3 is actually MPEG-1 Audio Layer 3. If the term "MP2" was generally accepted (it isn't), it wouldn't be the same thing as MPEG-2, the format used for DVDs. (Sorry, pet peeve)
To answer your main question, yes if you do MPEG-2 captures at 720x480 or 704x480 (NTSC) at under 9.8Mbps, you should be able to burn those directly with DVD authoring software. Some capture hardware uses 12Mbps for those resolutions, so those would not work.
SVCD is not as good because the bitrate is too low for the resolution -- 2/3 the res of DVD (which itself is not bad) but at 1/4 the bitrate. So you get more motion artifacting.
I've made some pretty good looking VCDs, but when you consider the doubling of scan lines and general elimination of motion artifacting with DVD, the choice is easy, even from VHS.
//Ken