I have been making VCDs for some time now. I am using a buz card to make AVIs but I have had a problem with dropped frames (may be related to my PCCHIPS motherboard) unless I capture at 23.976. Using Panasonic MPEG encorder (excellent encorder except it washes out the colors in which I compensate by increasing the saturation of colors at capture), I encoded NSTC VCD at either 23.976 or 29.97. The lip sync is fine at both rates. Presumedly encoding up to the higher rate is similar to what is done with DVD going from 24 to 30 by adding a frame after every 4th frame encoded. When burned to a CDR and played on my SONY DVD, the movie at 23.976 stutters continuously but plays smoothly at 29.97. This suggests that when there is stuttering and non smooth playing on a DVD standalone player, it may be related to the frames/sec not being accurately encoded by the MPEG encorder causing the DVD player not to decode properly. It appears that Panasonic is accurate enough for this.

-- K (klebsiella@visto.com), March 10, 2000