A VCD Question (1 Viewer)

[Ike]

I want to make a few VCD's, and have a question. Firstly, I will say what I want to do is not, at least as far as I know, illegal.

I want to make some VCD's of my own homemade videos. These are edited features I've made. Thing is, in their AVI format, many are 800+ plus, just for the final video.

I also want to make, and this I'm not sure of, a video/picture VCD, I.E. navigatable pictures, with a watchable feature. Is this at all possible?

My main problem is that with the few times I've attempted to make a VCD (with Nero 5.5), only one worked in my DVD player.

Is there a FAQ on how to do this sort of thing?

 

[Jeff Kleist]

http://www.vcdhelp.com
Shouldn't we make a sticky thread on VCD?

 

[Ike]

So my main problem was probably that I was using only .mpg's? I downloaded a program to convert them, so that should clear up most of my problems?

 

[Patrick Sun]

If you have Nero 5.5, you should convert your video files to mpegs (in the proper NTSC mode - 29.97 framerate, 352x240 resolution, 224KHz audio sampling rate) and then use Nero's VCD creator wizard (just drag and drop the mpeg to the proper window and then hit the burn icon on the tool bar. If the mpeg is not in the VCD compliant format, it will tell you. You should fix the mpeg file (re-encode again using the right template - TMPGEnc has built-in template that does a great job in producing mpegs in the right format for VCD creation), and then try dragging the file to the right window and burning the VCD.

You can elect to have Nero re-encode the non-standard mpeg file, but the results are unpredictable in the quality of the video playback.

 

[John Wilson]

I could use some help here. I recently bought a slightly used Dazzle Digital Video Creater II on Ebay. It is in great shape and the PCI card installed under WinXP Pro just fine. The problem is that the CD that contains Moviemaker, some drivers and things like DVDiT and a software DVD player is old. The Readme file says that it is version 4.0. Unfortunately, when I tried to install Moviemaker I got a Severe Error saying that this version does not support windows NT! I went to Dazzle.com and looked for downloads. There are patches there but they require that one have at least Moviemaker 4.21 or later.:frowning:
Does anyone have a copy of a later version of Moviemaker that will allow me to install and load patches so that I can run under XP?:b
OTTH, is there another software program that will run with the Dazzle H/W to do mpeg-1 or 2 video captures?
Thanks for your help.
John

 

[Alan Curry]

As far as I know there isn't any other software that works with the DVC II. You can get the lastest version for $29.95 from Dazzle. I wouldn't toss out the DVC II it's not bad for the money.

 

[Scooter]

Have you been to Dazzle's website? They have some patches and stuff there bringing the software to XP compliance.

 

[Ike]

I used TMPengc (or whatever it's called) and it just converted them to .mpg's, which is what they already were, and Nero gave me the same message. I then used the bar at the bottom (output source to) and changed the suffix to .mpeg. Nero wouldn't recognize this either. I'm currently having Nero re-encode the files for me, but I've done this before, and it doesn't ever seem to work. What am I doing wrong?

 

[Patrick Sun]

Are you choosing the correct template in TMPGEnc? It's the "Load" button on the bottom right hand corner of the program's interface. I choose the "VideoCD(NTSC).mcf" template to re-encode the mpegs/avi's. I haven't had a problem once I did this. If you want to create VCDs for PAL, you can choose a different aptly named template in the list. I'm using TMPGEnc version 2.51.

On the "Setting" button, click the "advanced" tab and make sure the source aspect ratio is properly set, and then make sure the "Video Arrange Method" is choosen correctly. I usually like to create a small black border (and to lessen the effect of overscan on my TV) so I choose "Center(custom size)" and then use something like 336x232 pixels. Then just hit "OK" and then the "Start" button.

 

[John Wilson]

As I stated above, in order to use the patches on Dazzle's website, I need MovieStar version 4.21 at the minimum. I have version 4.0. When it tries to install, it thinks I have Win NT and it come back with the Severe Error stating that it doesn't work with NT. I guess I need to get my hands on version 4.21 or higher. :frowning:
Is anyone willing to help me out? I'd really appreciate it.

 

[Ike]

I burned my first fully functional VCD, complete with photos, etc... Thanks for the help!

 

[Scooter]

Try using the Compatibility Wizard in XP. You can also get this by right clicking the program exe file...go to properties..then click compatibility..and choose whatever version of Windows you think will work best.

Hope that helps.

 

[Patrick Sun]

Ike, what's the 411 on setting up a navigatable menu picture?

 

[Ike]

I never did get a navigatable menu with pictures, but did get the pictures tacked onto the end of the video. (In fact, I'm not even sure I got a menu. I just get my DVD blue screen, with some info up at the top.)

 

[Patrick Sun]

*Chuckle* Well, I was going to try to check out VCDHelp on that navigation menu topic, but that website appears to be down for the moment. Oh well!

 

[John Wilson]

I should have been more persistant with my searches after the good advice given here.:b There was indeed a download for version 4.21 but it was located on www.snazzi.com. An email buddy hooked me up with Google Groups and that link was found in a thread under alt.video.desktop. Lots of good info there as well.
Anyways, I am now up to the current XP rev. 4.24 and things are looking good. Thanks for the suggestions and remember to be persistant in your searches. There is usually someone who has had your same problem and usually has a remedy.

 

[Patrick Sun]

Re: making menus for VCDs.

I was playing around with Nero 5.5, and it's got a place where you can tell it to enable "menus" (under file => compilation info). This entails pointing to a 704x480 pixel jpeg to be used for the menu background. Then you can select to list just the file names, or do scenes from each "chapter". I did a VCD with just lisitng the file names (2 columns to save menu space), and I did a VCD where you can pick a static shot within each chapter to be representative shot from the chapter (just like the chapter scenes on DVD menus). You can also edit the chapter title (so it'll fit correctly on the display). You can also specify the header text and the footer text and change the font/size as well.

All in all, it was quite simple to do to create the menu once you got the hang of it.

The trickiest part of actually using your DVD player to navigate the VCD menu (always look for the "return" button o the remote control which will return you to the menu). If you have more than one menu page, you just use the chapter skip forward/backward buttons for those menu pages. Then you can use the number pad to directly access the chapter by their chapter number.