Question reference video types

[Dale Mox]

I want to send my friends in Canada a video of my family saying Happy New Year.
I wanted to know which format would a Panasonic video recorder would give the film in, which format is the smallest, which is the best quality and what software can I use to convert the formates.
Also which format is the format that when burnt on a CD is possible to see on a DVD home recorder. What software burns the cd in that way? Something about "VHS" format.

Thank you

Dale Mox

[mox358]

Ok... you kinda lost me on some stuff but I'll try it anyway...

The smallest would be of course MPEG-4... but I dont think that can be played on DVD players (yet). You would use MPEG4 if you were sending them the file over the web.

What you're looking for is "Video-CD" (Not VHS format). VideoCD can be played on set-top DVD players. The format for DVD / VCD is MPEG-2.

Here is an app that will build the VCD file for you, but you'll need Toast to burn it.

<a href="http://www.versiontracker.com/moreinfo.fcgi?id=15509&db=mac" target="_blank">http://www.versiontracker.com/moreinfo.fcgi?id=15509&db=mac</a>

I don't have Toast so I can't guarntee it for you. Hope this helps you in the right direction though.

[Dale Mox]

Thank you. So I need to convert whatever format I get through my video recorder to MPEG-2. Then use VCD Builder to prepare the file to be burnt with Toast.

What about regions? I live in Italy but they'd have an American region DVD (unless they enabled it to view all regions). How do I deal with that.

Another question: What software do I use to record the video through a webcam? What format would that put it in?

Thanks again

Dale Mox

(edit) Spelling

[ 12-29-2002: Message edited by: Dale Mox ]</p>