VCDs

VCD, short for Video CD, is a format for storing video on compact discs using MPEG-1 video compression. Introduced in the early 1990s by manufacturers including Philips, Sony, and JVC, VCDs provided affordable home-video distribution and playback on dedicated players and many computer systems, achieving particular popularity in East Asia before the advent of DVD.

A typical VCD disc stores about 74 to 80 minutes of video on a 650-700 MB CD-ROM. Video is encoded at 352×240 (NTSC) or 352×288 (PAL), with a frame rate of 29.97 or 25 fps, using MPEG-1 at approximately 1.15 Mbps. Audio is MPEG-1 Layer II at 224 kbps in two channels. The data is arranged in a VCD format that includes a playback control system to provide basic menus and scene selection. The disc generally uses the ISO 9660 file system for data structure, but playback relies on the VCD video stream rather than file browsing.

Structure and playback: A VCD contains a video stream that is read by a compatible player; many standalone VCD players and DVD players can read VCDs, as can software players on PCs. Playbacks often include simple navigation through a menu or chapter points, and some discs offer still-image menus.

Variants and legacy: A higher-quality alternative, SVCD, uses MPEG-2 and greater resolutions, but saw limited uptake compared to DVD. Beginning in the early 2000s, VCDs declined as DVDs and later streaming became predominant. Today VCDs are primarily of historical interest and remain in some markets as a low-cost medium for archival video or retro playback.