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Video CD

Video CD (aka VCD, VideoCD, View CD, Compact Disc digital video) is a standard digital format for storing video on a Compact Disc. more...

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VCDs are playable in dedicated VCD players, nearly all personal computers, most modern DVD-Video players, and some video game consoles.

The VCD standard was created in 1993 by Sony, Philips, Matsushita, and JVC and is referred to as the White Book standard.

Technical specifications

VCD display resolution is 352 × 240 pixels (NTSC) or 352 × 288 pixels (PAL), approximately one quarter of full TV resolution (720 × 480 and 720 × 576 respectively). VCD video is in MPEG-1 format, and the video bitrate is required to be 1150 kilobits per second. Audio is encoded as MPEG Layer 2 (MP2) at 224 kbit/s. Overall picture quality is intended to be comparable to VHS video, though visual artifacts may be noticeable in some cases. Poorly compressed video in VCD tends to be of lower quality than VHS video, but exhibiting blocky artifacts rather than analog noise. 352 horizontal pixels was chosen because it approximates the resolution of a broadcast video signal, assuming a 5 MHz bandwidth. Any more than this would be wasted in the RF modulator, which was the usual means of video input for domestic television receivers at that time.

Since the overall bit rate of VCD is approximately equal to the bit rate of an ordinary audio CD, the length of video that can be stored is similar to that of a CD; but since VCDs are recorded in Mode 2, which throws away a layer of error-correction, an 80-minute 700 MB CD can hold nearly 800 MB of information. The extra space gained allows extra bits to be devoted to the video image, improving the picture quality. Unfortunately, the missing error correction also makes the VCD very susceptible to scratches and fingerprints. Also, variable bitrate encoding (VBR) can be used to make non-standard VCDs that hold two hours or more and play in ordinary DVD/VCD players.

Similar formats

Designed to squeeze the most out of a CD is the DVCD or Double VCD where a non-standard CD is overburned to include up to 100 minutes of video. This format is seen only in China and the DVCDs are playable on many DVD or VCD players though some CD-ROM drives and players have problems reading these CDs mostly because the groove spacing is outside specifications and the laser servo is unable to track it.

A variant of the standard Video CD encoding known as KVCD is also supported by most (but not all) standalone DVD players. Not actually a standard as such, KVCD is really nothing more than a template for the ubiqitous TMPGenc MPEG 1/2 encoder. As well as VBR encoding, KVCD also uses a reduced audio bitrate and a 'magic' quantization matrix to allow more than two hours of surprisingly good quality video on one CD. Players known to have trouble with these are mainly confined to older ones which are often fussy about standards compliance. The same scenario applies to the SKVCD (or KSVCD) which does much the same thing as KVCD, but uses MPEG2 and adds some luxuries such as multiple audio streams and chapters. Most current standalone players now support (K)SVCD, as the format has been endorsed by Philips, the custodian of all the CD standards.