Holy Jesus, when I wrote to CeQuadrat and they responded that VideoPack 4.0 was $900 I nearly cried. There are so many queries on this board but almost nobody talks about authoring software, and when they do it is in snippets. The Adaptec CD Creator Deluxe seems to the most popular, but I hear every so often somebody saying that VideoPack is the real deal. Let me explain my situation. I am hoping to burn VCDs of films that I have edited on Premiere. Premiere has a plug-in to convert my native DV footage to mpeg. I think at that point I should be ready to author something...correct me if I'm wrong. It is very important to me to be able to play my burned VCDs on other players(DVD, VCD set-top,etc. etc.), and VideoPack seems to claim that the Whitebook discs they created are very friendly to outside players. I would also love to add menus and chapters and such. Some claim that this is possible with some work through the Adaptec program. Are the discs created by these two programs really that different? The VideoPack sounds like a nice program, but is it worth it? You guys out there are smart, so please help me iron this out. Thanks a lot!

-- Zsolt Gaspar (zootmoney@aol.com), January 11, 2000

Answers

Hi Zsolt. Although I'm not smart, I can tell you that Adaptec 3.0d is a cranky software that likes a lot to ruin CDRs if the computer is not configured like a Stradivarius. But it's fair to say that it is very strict admiting a MPEG file before burning a VCD, but once the VCD is burnt, it will certainly play in any set top DVD that reads CD-R media. I once went to a store and tested my home-made VCDs in every brand of player within my reach. It is also capable of creating menus.

Be aware though, because I heard that the later versions have some problems, so lets wait for others to feedback on these versions, and especially on Videopack. You said $900?????????????????? I wouldn't pay that to rescue my mother from a kidnap!!!

-- Matias (petrellm@telefonica.com.ar), January 11, 2000.

Zsolt,

I haven't started using VideoPack 4 yet but have seen a demo only today. In terms of burning just a simple VCD, both VideoPack 4 and Eazy Creator 4 can perform equally well. VideoPack 4 allows for submenu structure whereas Eazy CD Creator only provides one-level menu design. If you are going to create very sophisticated menu system, don't waste your money on VideoPack. I have just done a VCD containing 32 mpeg sequences that are operated via 3 menu pages. I used Eazy CD Creator 4.0 Deluxe which costs less than $100. Really not worth to pay so much for VideoPack.

-- Daniel S Lee (siangneng@sp.edu.sg), January 11, 2000.

Hello

Video CD menus can be made with Win On CD's 3.6 or 3.7 Power Edition. Part of the essentials from Video Pack were incorporated into these Power Editions so that you can make menus and submenus.

However, Video Pack has more features which you can dictate and 'author'. Hence the $900 price tag. This software is more for production houses then for the home consumer.

A big difference in the menu created by ECDC and WinOnCD is ECDC accepts only a mpg file for the menu. WinOnCD accepts a mpg file or an image file (with or without audio) to be used as a menu. If you use an image file, you can specify the duration to follow the audio's duration or just specify the duration if no audio is intended.

ECDC version 3.0d onwards has caused all VCDs that I have burnt with it to have audio jittering even though the mpg files are all VCD compliant.

Win On CD has never failed me with this problem even when I write 'on the fly' with a Cyrix 300 machine.

NT

-- NT (i1x@nightmail.com), January 13, 2000.