Video CD - a good medium for evangelism and teaching

A Video CD (VCD) is an ordinary CD but with an hour of video rather than music. It is not used much in US or Europe, but the format exploded across Asia and the 10-40 Window. The film 'Titanic' was available on VCD in Cambodia only five days after being premiered in US. The quality is not quite as good as VHS video tapes but it has a many advantages. It is not the same as the more technically-advanced DVD. But until everyone has DVD players - realistically not for several years - it is a useful stopgap format.

A VideoCD is very light and doesn't go moldy - a big problem with VHS tapes in parts of Asia. Copies can be made simply on a personal computer and every copy is an exact clone of the original - there is no loss of copy quality as with pirate videos. In Asia, videos are widely pirated - it has become a useful means of distributing Christian material! You can play a VCD on almost anything - VCD player, personal computer, DVD player and sometimes (but only in certain circumstances it seems) Playstation 2. Instructions on playing VCDs on computer:here.

Several outreach groups have realized that VCD offers enormous opportunities for Christian outreach into the hard-to-reach 10-40 countries and films are now being put into this format.

The speed of Internet access in many of these countries means that online video is not likely to be a realistic option for some years to come. But here is a cheap and cheerful method of distributing evangelistic videos to some of the neediest countries in the world.

Technical information on VCD

VCD is different from DVD. It uses MPEG-1 compression and the resolution is only 352 by 288 (PAL). Nevertheless, starting with a good analogue master and with a good MPEG encoder you can get very acceptable results from VCD. A VCD can hold up to one hour of video. VCDs will play on many DVD players, VCD players, Super VCD players, PCs, Macs and the Playstation 2 - so it is a good format for Christian media!

To start producing VCDs, you need a good video capture card and a fast pentium - P600 or better with lots of RAM (256 megs) and a good deal of hard drive space. I regularly fill up a 20-gigabyte hard disk when producing a 45-minute MPEG. If your video masters are Betacam SP, I strongly recommend a component capture card - I use the Miro DC50 - expensive but very good.

Capture your video at the final resolution - 352*288 (for PAL - I don`t know the NTSC resolution). You may need to do this in segments due to the Windows 2GB file-size limit on AVI capture.

Import the captured video into Premiere (comes bundled with the Miro), and then export the movie as a VCD-compliant MPEG-1 file using an MPEG encoder. I think the Panasonic MPEG encoder is the best - it costs about 75 USD and you`ll find it on the web: search using "Panasonic MPEG encoder" and check price comparison sites.

When you have your MPEG-1 version of the video, you must save it on a CD using the "White Book" standard which is used for Video CDs. Many CD-burning software packages claim to do this - the only totally-reliable one I have found is "CD Maker Pro" from http://www.ntius.com.

Important note about CD-R discs:  because the dyes used in protecting CD-R discs vary in colour, some CD-Rs will not work when you record VCD material on them and try to play them on commercial VCD players. Also, the faster you burn a CD-R, the more read errors the machine will get - often causing the video to stutter. The only solution is to use good CD-R discs (I have found that Sony CD-R are the best) and record the VCD at single speed (150 K per second).

Using this method, I can create very acceptable VCDs (recorded on CD-R discs) which play well on my DVD, VCD and super-VCD players.

When you have done all this and are confident that your VCD is right, then you ask a commercial company to stamp several thousand copies - these of course will play back even better because they have minimal read errors - they use a highly reflective surface.

If you are seriously and genuinely interested in producing evangelistic Video CD, Nick, the writer of this feature, may be able to give further advice and even a sample evangelistic VCD to demonstrate its potential. .

Related video pages...

• Create International
  Culturally-relevant evangelistic Video CDs for Asia and Mid-East.
• Communication Resources International
  Videos and videoCDs for Asia.
• Appeal for film and internet outreach for India
  Two key Indian Christians highlight the needs of their country.
• International Conference on Computing and Missions | Visual Media Evangelism
  Two-way email discussion lists and other helps.
• The World Christian Video Directory
  Need a video in any language? Look here.
• Christian Media News
• Galilean International Films & Television Services (GIFTS)
  Indian audio-visual outreach ministry.
• DaySpring
  Video in Indian languages.
• Other ways of using CDs for evangelism
  Evangelistic CDs, PowerPoint, and links.

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