A standard for storing video on CD-ROM. Known as CVD for short, China Video Disc is essentially the same as Super VideoCD, but uses a lower resolution (352x576/480 versus 480x576/480 for SVCD). This means that the quality of each frame is increased because the same amount of data is used to store a smaller amount of pixels, increasing the amount of data "spent" on each pixel. Visually this can be seen in a smoother image and less video artifacts. CVD uses the MPEG-2 codec to store 35-60mins of S-VHS-quality video (although some users report fitting movies as long as 131mins on a single disc with good quality) as well as up to 2 stereo audio tracks and 4 selectable subtitles on 74/80min CDs. While it can be argued that SVCD is actually better quality than CVD because of the extra 128 lines of horizontal resolution, this can only be noticeable if you have a widescreen TV. As with SVCD, CVD uses a variable bitrate so the less video there is on the CVD the higher the quality will be. CVDs are also capable of using menus and chapter stops in a similar manner to DVDs as well as a simple photo album/slide show with audio background. Unlike VCDs, SVCDs cannot be played using Windows Media Player or QuickTime and must be played using a software VCD player. Compatibility with standalone DVD players is not universal because it depends on whether or not your DVD player supports the Chaoji VCD standard (if it does then it should play SVCD, CVD and HQ-VCD discs).
Technical Details:
PAL:
- Video: MPEG-2, 352x576, 25fps, up to 4 subtitles maximum bitrate 2524Kbps with 224Kbps audio, maximum video and audio bitrate 2748Kbps
- Audio: MPEG-1 Layer II, 32-384Kbps, up to 2 stereo audio tracks
- Extra: menus and chapters, still pictures @ 704x576 and 352x288
NTSC/NTSC Film:
Source:
VCDHelp - http://www.vcdhelp.com