Sega Saturn Video CD

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JerryTerrifying
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Sega Saturn Video CD

Post by JerryTerrifying »

I made a video showing the Sega Saturn Video Cd card. Just another quirky video format for me to collect.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y_kMkJ7XqCA

Let me know what you think guys.
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Xranger60
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Post by Xranger60 »

That's cool. I watched the video, and the quality is surprisingly decent. Of course it can depend on a number of things, but I've read VCD is somewhere between VHS and DVD. I was curious about the interface, that was a cool look at it. Is it easy to burn VCD format disks to be read by the card... is that possible?
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Post by JerryTerrifying »

Yeah it's very possible and very easy from what I hear. In the comments on that video a lot of people have been saying they burnt VCDs before getting a DVD burner and played them on their Dreamcasts or DVD players. Most DVD players will play them just fine too. After that video I realized I've got a DVD Recorder in here, that I only use for recording stuff not for watching stuff, and that VCD worked fine on it.

I believe A burnt Video CD will work just fine on a Saturn without a modchip just like an audio CD thats burnt will work. I'll have to test it out if I ever burn a VCD and of course will have to dig out on of my non modded saturns to test it on.
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Post by Xranger60 »

Hard to believe it was once a novelty to be able to watch movies on a console.
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Post by Warp2063 »

I burned a VCD back in 2003 or 2004. When I got a Saturn and an MPEG decoder for it a while ago, I scrounged up that VCD and popped it in. Played without a hitch!

Making a VCD isn't terribly difficult - at least I don't remember it being that bad. The trick back then was re-encoding the original movie file I had into something that the CD-writer program I was using could deal with.

I do know I botched a couple discs in the process because I wasn't encoding the file right.

As for quality - yeah, it's better than a VHS because it's all digital, but it's not as good as a DVD, because the frame rate and quality have to be dropped to fit it on a CD.

The reason I tried burning them back then is at that time, I didn't personally own a computer powerful enough to watch the anime series I wanted to, so I figured I could encode them as VCDs and watch them on the family DVD player. (Encoding was quite slow, but my computer could do it if given enough time.) After that one success, though, I decided it wasn't worth the effort involved in order to watch an episode once. Also, with the little pocket change I had back then, CD-Rs were EXPENSIVE!
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Post by Xranger60 »

Ah, memories of when DVD-R and DVD+R came out and they were crazily expensive. I would almost get a Saturn VCD card and watch a movie on it just for the awesomeness.
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Post by JerryTerrifying »

Yeah I just kinda did it for the awesomeness and to put it up on my channel. There's a few other videos but none of them really go into the depth of a quick glance at a Saturn FAQ and skimming of a wiki article like mine does!
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Post by Manji »

another great saturn video! thanks for putting it up :D

always watching your videos and i'm big fan of the sega saturn ones of course.
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Post by Macabre »

I have a victor vc2 & vc20 somewhere, I think the vc2 is still sitting in my saturn. VCD's are fun! Not all of the import ones are bad, you can find great humor in some movies like From Beijing With Love.

I didn't even consider the idea of burning movies to play back on the vcd card. Is there any good guides / facts I should know before trying this? I know the limit is like 55 minutes, but it would be pretty cool to burn all of my copys of Dexter episodes and watch them on my saturn :D
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Post by Krazystyle83 »

Epic videos Jerry!
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Post by Auto-Fox »

This is indeed an awesome video. Picture quality looks great, somewhere just behind LaserDisc, I'd say.
However, from what I know about VCDs (my brother has burned a handful of movies to them for the novelty value, and because CD-Rs are still cheaper), they don't do well with scenes with a lot of movement on screen. The picture tends to artifact if things get too fast.
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Post by alpha&omega »

That's true. I have the VCD card for my Saturn as well.

And it's funny because pretty much anything you watch on LCD TVs today will start to artifact anyway when too much motion is going on. I hate how modern LCD screens still can't properly display fast action like the old tube TVs can.
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Post by Warp2063 »

Tube TVs still do - you just can't tell because of the blurrier image and the way the screen refreshes. On a CRT, after an electron strikes the phosphor layer on the screen and lights the pixel, there's a moment before it fades that isn't there on the near instant-off of an LED. The screen then still carries part of the image of the previous one, and the new and old image blur together. Theoretically, you coul come up with some kind of additive image processor to simulate the effect of a CRT on an LED screen...

It isn't a defect, just a difference in the way the technologies work.
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Post by alpha&omega »

That's what I mean. LCDs need a higher refresh rate to hide the motion artifacts.

That's really why I haven't bothered buying an LCD big-screen TV yet. If I'm going to pay over $1000 for an LCD TV, it should be better than CRT in every way. I know technology is catching up, with LCD TVs that have 480hz refresh rates, but that gets even more expensive.

The very obvious artifacts from movies with lots of motion on LCDs makes it seem like I'm watching a VCD!
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Post by Warp2063 »

You aren't getting it. A normal NTSC CRT tv refreshes at 60 Hz. Most LCD screens do as well, or at least 50 Hz, which is faster than most people can distinguish anyway. Having a screen that refreshes faster doesn't change the refresh rate of the input source - or the quality.

The artifacting you see is due to the Mpeg2 compression scheme on a DVD, not the display type. Blu-Ray movies have them too, but because of the improved disc capacity, they can afford to store larger frames where compression artifacts aren't as easy to notice. On a CRT, because the frames blur together slightly, it's harder to see the artifacts, but they're still there.

If you don't want to see compression artifacting, go back to using VHS tapes. They're analog, so there's no digital compression artifacts to be seen!

I don't know of anything that even outputs 480Hz video. It's so much faster than a human can differentiate, it shouldn't even matter. I think it's just a ploy to sell more expensive TVs. I can see the value of a 120 Hz screen for stereoscopic 3D applications - 60 Hz per eye - but anything higher is crazy, and in my opinion, pointless.

It is possible that you're having problems with your LCD's blanking time... That could cause some blurring. But there are plenty of screens these days that minimize this. I have a decent gaming monitor, and really don't have any problems unless the game won't let me sync with the vertical refresh rate of my monitor. Then I just end up with split frames.

If I remember right, I use an Asus VH236.
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