Okay, I've been looking everywhere!

I really need a step-by-step guide of how to create a VCD from MPEGs. What I have is Asarte MPack and Adaptec Toast. All versions. I just can't get any to work on my DVD player. Original VCDs work fine though.

Please, please he

-- Darren Strange (darren-s@lineone.net), June 17, 2000

Answers

I believe you are in the "Apple" world. I've had only experience (and a lot of it) in the PC world of VCD and video. But I think your problem is not the software, encoding or such but rather the "player".

Not all stand alone DVD players can properly "read" the reflectivity of the consumer CDR disc. Your commercially manufactured DVDs AND VCDs are not using the same type of disc media. That is why your player will play back commercial VCDs but not your CDR-based home made ones.

Some set-top players now are coming with DUAL lasers. One laser is optimized for reading standard DVD and VCD disc media. The other is used for the consumer CDR type media (which is what you are using to author your VCDs) These DVD players almost always work in both worlds.

Some set top players have special lasers and/or geometry that will "sort of" read your CDR media. You have a 50/50 chance with these.

A trick people have used, is to burn your home made VCD onto CDRW instead of CDR. Sometimes (if your player falls into the 2nd category) those discs "might" work.

Some help might be found on the below listed web site. It is an continually updated listing of set top DVD players and what player reads which kind of media. Check there FIRST and see if your player model is listed. It may be listed as just plain "not" compatible with consumer CDR and you may save yourself a lot of time. Good luck.

Site for VCD compatible DVD players:

http://www.redrobe.demon.co.uk/dvd/vcd.html

-- Rich (richa@home.com), June 17, 2000.

Thankyou for the info. You were right - my DVD does not work with CDR, but may with a few types of CDRW. So like you said, at least I've saved a lot of time and wasted effor

-- darren strange (darren-s@lineone.net), June 18, 2000.

You might have been infinitely even better off from square one had you considered looking first under the thread playing CD-R in this forum, where this subject matter has been thoroughly expounded on it's ready to scream.

-- EMartinez (epmartinez@yahoo.com), June 18, 2000.

I once spent at least 30+ hours trying to get a VCD made with Astarte and Toast and couldn't the audio to ever work in some DVD players, they played fine in computers(PC and Mac). I e-mailed Astarte and they said it is a known bug and are fixing it. I haven't tried in the last 6 months but I doubt they have fixed it. I haven't tried Heuris's encoder which has an option to export for toast or new Toast 5.0 which has a VCD encoder in it.

-- Gabe Ghearing (stylewriter@collegeclub.com), June 25, 2001.