I have captured AVI's using an ATI AIW 128 I have tried several methods of converting the AVI to MPEG White book but Easy CD will not accept the format. 1. Used AVI2Mpeg using CD Video mode 2. used a Panasonic MPEG maker 29.97 fps , 1150kps, and all the rest of the white book settings. 3. Used demo of Ifilmedit , saving with Video CD settings to reprocess Mpegs All three methods end up with easy CD rejecting them. I am using Easy CD 3.5 c and tried 3.5b before with same results I have the latest MS media Player installed and associated my MPEG's to ActiveMovie I have also recorded from the ATI card directly to MPEG1 and same thing. Any ideas would be appreciated

-- Frayedknot (frayedknot@hotmail.com), August 15, 1999

Answers

Welcome to the club of disappointed Easy CD Creator 3.5xx users. I was using ver 3.01d for making VCDs and everything worked fine, and decided to get the latest ver 3.5c thinking it must be even better. In fact it absolutely refused to accept the very same .mpg files that ver 3.01 was allowing before. So, I uninstalled 3.5 and am back to using 3.01, which is a shame because ver 3.5 cost me $100. Adaptec has a number of fixes/patches and so on for the strange behaviour of 3.5xx where VCD creation is concerned in and out of its website, but I am through with that and will wait until ver 4.0 or whatever comes out, which, hopefully, will be better. So, for now, get ver 3.01, or better yet get CeQuadrat WinOnCD 3.6 (which doesn't support user selection VCD ver 2.0 creation, though), or if you like go the whole hog, get CeQuadrat VideoPack 4. Hope I've helped. Take care.

-- Emmanuel Martinez (epmartinez@hotmail.com), August 18, 1999.

Here is a copy of a email I sent to someone who sent me a private message asking questions. It covers some of these issues. I hope it helps.

Sorry for the delay in replying. I have been very busy. In my opinion, Easy CD Creator deluxe still has many bugs in it when it comes to making VCD's. The main problem I had was getting it to read the .mpg files. I installed it on three different computers, and got three different results.

Computer 1 - My laptop - Gateway Solo 5100 P2 266Mhz

On this computer I was able to get CD creator to recognize .mpg files with both version 3.5 and 3.5c. It was able to read both .mpg files I made with dazzle and the sample files they provide. But, I have a internal CD writer to make disks, and that only works in desktop computers. So, I could not use this method to make VCD's

Computer 2 - Desktop - Compaq Presario P200 MMX

This computer had my CD writer installed and I was using it to burn audio CD's. On this computer, CD creator version 3.5 and 3.5c would not load a .mpg at all. I would get an error saying that the file was not a valid .mpg format. This error would occur for both files created on Dazzle and with the sample programs provided by Adaptec. So, I removed the Cd writer from this desktop, and installed it in my new computer that just arrived.

Computer 3 - Desktop - Gateway P3 550 Mhz

When installed on this computer the system would crash because of a driver conflict. I tracked the conflict to a driver that was being used for the software DVD player that came with the computer. So, I removed the DVD player to avoid the conflict. Now, when I tried to load the files, I did not get a system crash, but instead was told by the CD creator software that I did not have a MPG player. I got this message even though I had both activemovie and media player installed, and both programs would play the mpg files I was trying to load into the CD creator software. I then bought a hardware board for my DVD player ( a Hollywood plus). After installing this, I tried again. This time, the CD creator software would load the files. It would load both files created by dazzle, and the sample files provided by Adaptec. And, I was able to make a VCD that worked. The only problem was the preview function that is provided when loading clips would not work, and the program was VERY slow.

I called Adaptec tech support with all these issues and they had no suggestions on how to fix this, and offered no help.

So, I then bought the Cequadrat CD creator software. I only loaded that on the new Gateway P3 though. This worked great, and I made a VCD with no problems at all, and very quickly. I then removed the Adaptec CD creator software from my system. The Cequadrat software is so much better for making VCD's. But, a few days later I tried to make a copy of a audio CD, and the Cequadrat software would not do it correctly. I then loaded the Adaptec software back on, and use that for my audio CD work. However, I found that the "de-pop/de-crackler" software from Cequadrat works much better than the Spin Doctor from Adaptec.

In conclusion, this is what I now use:

To make VCD's - Cequadrat To make audio CD's - Adaptec To clean audio tracks - Cequadrat

I was told that the Cequadrat software and Adaptec software can not both be installed at the same time. A tech support guy from HP (I have an HP CD-Writer and called them when I was having these problem too) said they had driver conflicts. I have not seen this, and they both seem to co-exist on my system without a problem.

I hope all this helps.

Bruce

-- Bruce Kuhn (bkuhn@westell.com), August 20, 1999.