Honestly i'm surprised it doesnt exist. Its the format i considered getting into until i realized that having a VCD collection is very difficult here in the USA: they are nearly impossible to find.

Still I find it to be a very interesting format, i'm sure others do... Right?

I'm not surprised.

There are a lot of titles on VCD. A LOT. Maybe a million. It was the number one format for most people in the eastern hemisphere for a decade. It would be a huge project you'd never complete.

%99.999 of the library is bootleg. Possibly more.

While there may be a few kung fu movies with special edits not seen on any other format, VCD was rarely if ever a enthusiast's choice. A $100 Criterion LD might still have some exclusive content. A VCD is usually just going to be a terrible copy of a standard edit.

It's a terrible terrible format. Only CED comes close to the crappiness of VCD. This isn't because it's old, VHS, LD, and Betamax all look much better and predate VCD by 10-15 years. It was just a terrible format. The packaging is usually junk, just a disc in a plastic envolope with an insert Photoshopped from a poster, which is all I expect from a pirate copy of anything.

I have seen a few VCD discs that looked OK. They even had animated menus like DVDs. Although unadvertised those could have been S-VCD with enhanced resolution.

Other than being lower resolution it was similar to LD in operation. Most movies were on 2 CDs about an hour each. You would have to switch discs every hour. No flippers as far as I know. 2ch Dolby surround audio like on LDs but in lower quality(highly compressed). Almost always no extras. You could skip to the film just like LDs. They came in CD cases. Subtitles were burned to the image(if there is any) like on LDs. They were generally 1/4 the cost of the DVD version. Later on most VCDs disappeared and DivX discs started becoming popular. DivX discs were also burned on blank CDs. 1 disc could hold over 2 hours of video in acceptable quality. AC-3 audio and subtitles were available like on DVDs. I am pretty sure all DivX discs were bootleggers ripped from DVDs.

Signofzeta is right. There is probably more VCDs out there than all other home video formats combined(you could even throw in music formats). Some bootleggers were made so well you couldn't tell if it was a fake or an official release. That's due to even official releases being crappy in quality(cover art, paper, case, disc) it didn't take much to clone it.

We could probably make a short list of significant VCDs. Something like Blade Runner, Godfather, Dune, Star Wars and such original official releases with photos. So people collect those movies could be interested in VCD version for the sake of being completest:)

On the plus side, there are probably more VCD-compatible DVD and (edit: some, not all) BR players made this year than all produced LD, CED, and Betamax players, combined.

Not so many blu-ray players do VCD!
Most DVD players do (not all!)
Some LD players do also!

But the quality is really bad!

Have some VCDs in my collection. Mostly due to being a collector (Queen related memorabilia). Packaging is pretty good on most. Some actually look OFFICIAL. Of course the video quality isn't great. Alright from a collectors standpoint though.

One big advantage of VCD is that there are – literally – tens of thousands of films available on VCD that are not available on any other
format (almost all of them in Asia). Films made in countries like:
– India
– Pakistan
– Bangladesh
– Hong Kong
– Thailand
– Cambodia
– Indonesia
– Malaysia
– Philippines
– Turkey
All of which have a HUGE (India, Hong Kong, Thailand, Indonesia, Philippines, Turkey) to at least a considerable (the others) film industry.
Most of these are not subtitled and have never been shown outside their countries of origin.

I once read a thing that said that movies made in India were designed, fiscally speaking, to make back their budget in a week. The reason for this was that within a week pirate copies would be on the streets for $0.80 each and nobody would go to the theater.

To a big budget film director this might sound like a nightmare, but honestly I like the idea.

not about the pirating, but I too agree this would be great if Hollywood would get back in the cheap game.
I actually just watched some of this Little Shop of Horrors, The (1960) [SF050-1360] last night.

now I read on imdb that the budget was 20 or 25,000 and finished in 2 days.
why can't they make cheaper films now that are fun rather than 2 categories, art house and big budget scifi golden flops.....


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the rein-o official signature:

Yes, filmed in 2 days, or rather nights, in the sets of another movie.

I really think the previous statement by one of our dear forum members VCD being 99,9% bootleg releases is a bit ignorant. That is not true at all !

First of all let me say why VCDs are not included on lddb.com:

VCD is not a dead video format. It is still very much alive in Indonesia where I most recently spent three weeks. If you go to one of the bigger super markets
out there you will find a lot of legit and official releases with nice coverart for very little money.

There are many releases in Hong Kong by companies we all know such as Mei Ah or ERA which is a big publisher over there. I honestly do not like the format a lot
as it has the worst picture quality of all video formats ( the sound quality can be good, MP2 224 kbit/s is even higher what a lot of TV broadcasters use nowadays lol ! )
but it has some good releases.

I have some very nice HK VCDs with very nice artwork from Warner Home Video and other companies. And on some releasses you can see that they really tried
to squeeze the maximum out of the picture quality.

There were also VCD releases in Europe or the UK in the early 90s such as A Fish Called Wanda or Queen Greatest Flix and other releases. I always buy those
VCDs if I can get them cheap. The last VCD I got was the German VCD of Flashdance. The sound quality is very good, the artwork and cover are very nice
and the picture quality is not great but most certainly the best you can get on VCD.

The most valuable VCD I would love to have is the French VCD release of Mylène Farmer en concert which was only released on LD in France and
on VHS Secam. This VCD is however traded for at least 300 € on ebay.fr and I have not been able to find a digital copy of this releases hélas.
This is the only digital release of this title it was never released on DVD.

Amusingly one of the leading VCD/DVD/BR brands in the Phillipines is called... Magnavision. Their VCD's at least carry on all the quality that brand was known for in 1980. (necro-edit: not quite. the disks actually play afterall...)

I found a couple of probably legit Magnavision VCD's at a thrift yesterday (~$2 for 3) - a 2002/3 English-only release of "Milk Money" (a 1994 movie) among them, with anamorphic trailers of newer Paramount releases. Their encoder didn't do VCD's any favors either - it didn't even set a new I frame on an obvious scene change.

They still release a few new titles on VCD - last month they put out Transformers: Age of Extinction. (more - I can't imagine the pixelation Bayformers has on VCD!)

I think Paramount had a deal with Philips to release films on Video CD in order to make the Philips CD-i more attractive. I know I've seen a Swedish VCD edition of Forrest Gump and Sweden is possibly the last country you'll find bootlegs in.

Best VCD edition ever made: Lord of the rings VCD complete boxset

http://www.scifimoviepage.com/dvd/lord.html

VCD format also is capable of Dolby Surround (2.0 worst than LD) but mpeg-1 codec video is poor and you must use a not bigger than 25" Crt

in Hong Kong they claimed VCD 5.0 version (s-vcd) was capable of DTS sound......then i suppose video lenght of each disc is reduced to 5 minutes :]

Maybe VCD 5 is 12 inch big, double sided and 60 min running on each side ? Coming in march 2015 =)

..LOL :]

Anyway it has its charm cause you can now make your own compliant VCD on cheap cd-rom using BD as almighty master
and play on these lovely Sony players
definitely the most compact format+player ever produced.....some japanese editions had obi , i will post some pics

Oh some pics of Japanese VCDs would be nice ! I actually like the format and I keep all my VCDs. I especially like early German VCDs from the 90s.
There are some good titles there and they really tried to squeeze the maximum out of the technical limitations. The sound quality is pretty OK.

I'm not sure I've ever seen a Japanese VCD. There certainly aren't very many of them. I'd sure like to though.

Looks like some were out there, there's someone who wants $69 for a Taxi Driver VCD...

"This Is Old Format "Video CD", I Think It's Very Limited Opportunities to Play It"

I'd be shocked if there were fewer than 100 million VCD capable devices plugged in and operational right now, and far less shocked if there was actually one billion. Even if most of the ones in US and Europe have never played one.

(Someone on Facebook posted that one Akhibara shop clerk said he had never seen a VHD player there the whole 17 years he was working there. Now that is limited.)

I have seen pictures of a view Japanese VCDs online. There were some without any doubt. VCD was in Korea quite popular for some time.

I do not think VHD was a really big hit in Japan. Personally, I have never seen any for sale. However I did see several shops with Laserdiscs for sale in Osaka.