like most people, ive used VHS, its an industry standard. VCD however, is not.
from my experiance, VCD is a way to lower the quality of a DVD to VHS quality and then put it on several standard CDR CDs.
if your converting from DVDs(not saying you should do it as its illegal)to VCD, then it`ll go one of two ways. good quality picture & sterio sound, or crap washed out picture, and fuzzy sound.
if your makin home movies & stuff, then VCD, IMHO, VCD is they way to go as you can play it on any PC with or without DVD Drive, and in DVD Players with your TV.
with VCDs, as long as you know how to do it propely and use a decent program to make them, and write to the cd, then you`ll be fine. but dont rush, otherwise you`ll get a crap VCD that wont allways work and/or abismol quality.
hope this helps