Making VideoCDs on a Buget
Using a BT848A/849A Video Capture Card

What You Will Need

• A Bt848/848A/849A video capture card ($50)
  [I have a Pinnacle Studio PCTV card]
• VirtualDub (free)
• Panasonic MPEG-1 Encoder ($89)
• PICVideo Motion JPEG Codec (free)
• CD-RW drive with VideoCD writing software (<$200)
  [I have CeQuadrat WinOnCD 3.5]
• 300MHz Pentium II (min) with a fast hard drive (IDE OK) and lots of disk space (several GB)
• DVD Player that can play VideoCDs on CD-RW or CD-R media (<$250)
  [I have a Pioneer DV-525, which can read everything]

Step 1: Capture

Use VirtualDub to capture video at a resolution of 352x480, 29.97 frames/sec, and save the result as an uncompressed AVI in "YUY2" format. Audio should be captured at 44,100 Hz, 16 Bit, Stereo 172 KB/s. You may have to enable the spill system to get around the 4GB file size limitation.

More Information:

The BT848/848A/849A video capture chips can do a good job scaling in the horizontal direction. They automatically sample the video signal every 63.5 µs (910 samples/line), and then use up to 6 samples to interpolate each scaled down pixel. It is therefore not necessary to capture at a higher horizontal resolution and then rescale down later using bilinear resampling. You can capture at the target width of 352.

The BT848/848A/849A does not perform deinterlacing. It is recommended that you capture the full 480 lines (2 fields) of each frame, and then scale down to 240 lines using bilinear resampling. The bilinear resampling effectively deinterlaces the frame, and reduces noise by 50%. The NTSC frame rate is always 29.97 frames/sec.

Since the BT848 internally captures using YUV 4:2:2 format, the color resolution is only half the luminance resolution (horizontally and vertically). This is acceptable because the MPEG-1 format also uses YUV 4:2:2 format, and any additional color information is unnecessary. Therefore, you can save the capture in a file format that uses YUV 4:2:2 format, such as "YUY2" or "UYVY". This saves disk space compared to the uncompressed RGB format.

Step 2: Deinterlace and Cleanup

Use VirtualDub's smart deinterlace filter (optional) and my 2:1 vertical reduction filter. You should add any additional filtering you need here (e.g. sharpening or noise reduction), and clip the ends of the segment if necessary. You may also want to use my Frame Tweaker filter to correct frame glitches or add fade-ins/fade-outs.

Save the result using the PICVideo Motion JPEG Codec at the lowest possible compression (luminance quality 1, chrominance quality 1, subsampling 1:1:1). You will need to do this in order to fit your file in less than 2GB. Most of the currently available stand-alone MPEG encoders will only allow AVI source files up to 2GB.

More Information:

Deinterlacing lowers the video noise by up to 50% and also decreases aliasing effects.

Step 3: Encode

Use the Panasonic MPEG-1 Encoder to encode the video to MPEG-1 format. Make sure you select "VCD/NTSC Stream" under Output File Type.

More Information:

I've found the Panasionic MPEG-1 Encoder to give the best results.

Step 4: Burn

Use your CD burning software to create the VideoCD from the MPEG file.

Step 5: Play