Producing VCD's on a Mac - what a pain....

I have tried the VCD Jelly 2 (beta) application and have not been able to get an MPEG file to convert to the format needed for B's Recorder GOLD 1.0.8 B. VCD Jelly in conjunction with B's Recorder (a Japanese application) was supposed to work but I couldn't get it to. Has anyone seen this and have been able to get it to work?

I have been able to get the MPEG converted to a toast format on MPack but when I try it in my DVD/VCD player, it doesn't work. Should I use CDRW discs? The CDR discs I use work on my Mac when I play it back.

I have also run into a problem with file size. I had a 6 gig file which I wanted to convert to MPEG-1. I could only get a 2 gig segment to convert. What would I need to do to get an entire movie to compress? Would I create segments and then burn the segments to disc? Do I need to convert each segment to MPEG without the toast compatibility and then combine all the files, convert to toast and then burn?

Other software/hardware recommendations.... What is the best software to use for making VCD's on a Mac/PC? Would anyone recommend a PC to do this instead of a Mac? I want to make VCD's as compatible as possible to DVD/VCD players and computers (Mac and PC) as possible so that is my goal.

Are there any good books or other web sites which may help with the Mac VCD issue?

Is there something else I can use to write the MPEG file instead of toast which is better or more compatible with DVD/VCD players...

Sorry for all the questions, it's been a 2 week battle to get it to work and each time I try something, something else seems to get in the way...

If there are any other Mac people that want to get together on this, email me.

Thanks for your time.

-- Joe Yale (joeyale@yahoo.com), November 13, 2000

Answers

I assume you have firewire so skip the PC and check this out. www.dvrecorder.com I have been following this product (Just came out in oct) and think it has great potential. I even got a hold of some demo disks but they were made in China for product promo and not very well done. They also have a new model coming out next year?

-- teeball (tlbake@earthlink.net), November 13, 2000.

This is my experience with VCDs:

First I tried M.Pack and Toast. Toast accepted the files made with M.Pack but my DVD player didn't play them correctly. In a local store I tested several players. Some played it, some not. I did some research and found, that M.Pack encodes video for VCD with 1120 kbps by default where others do it with 1150 kbps. I tried these settings in M.Pack but the multiplexer didn't accept these settings. Searching for a freeware multiplexer, I found tMPEGenc (among others) and also VCDimager, both for windows. tMPEGenc could multiplex my M.Pack encoded files and VCDimager made VCD image files that could be handled with Toast. tMPEGenc is also a great mpeg encoder (it's the best!). It codes everthing from mpeg1 VCDs to mpeg2 SVCDs. Great quality with default settings. But if your input videos are prepared right (denoised, resized etc.) you get equaly good results with M.Pack. So you can choose between lomger preparation and shorter encoding on the Mac, or no preparation and longer encoding with tEMPEGenc and VirtualPC. I found out, that "HEURIS MPEG Power Pro" (a Mac program) makes Toast compatible mpeg files, although I haven't tested that, bacause I don't have that program. I also found the "Digigami MegaPEGB Demo" which makes Toast compatible files. I havn't fully tested it, because it's a Demo and I didn't buy the full program. There is also Media Cleaner, don't know anything about the new Version. Forget version 4. And I heard that there will be a Mac version of "Nero burning Rom" which can burn VCDs and alxo SVCDs. So all I can say: there's hope for the Mac comunity

-- Michael Strohm (MStrohm@t-online.de), November 15, 2000.

I've gone through the same experience you have. I also found IDiscWriter (http://www.netviewdisc.com/idiscwriter.html) which I purchased. It can either write directly to a limited number of CD burners or output a Toast 4 file (and you use Toast to burn the CD). It only supports VCD but creates very compatible disks - I've taken them to my local Tweeters and BestBuy stores and tried them in a number of DVD players succesfully. The M.PACK created disks worked in most but not all the DVD players iDiscwriter worked in. You can try idiscwriter out for free for 30 days. Give it a shot.

However, in all of this, I finally gave up on VCD - the quality is just too inferior. I have some sample SVCD disks and they were a bit better but not nearly as good as the same source simply copied to a VHS tape (I'm creating home movies with a Canon DV camcorder and iMovie). I want to be able to archive and share my creations. What I fianlly came up with is archiving the completed movie to DV tape and saving the movie to a VHS tape. That way I can share the VHS tapes now and have DV tapes ready to burn to DVD or whatever digital format becomes reasonably affordable and wide spread.

-- michael hackney (mljh@yahoo.com), November 15, 2000.