How to create VCDs using the Philips Video CD 2.0 Toolkit

[RFontenot]

Want to create VCDs with advanced features, like multi-level menus, chapters, PowerPoint or digital picture slide shows, all set to music ripped from your favorite CD’s. Want to create VCD movies with sophisticated title menus, just like those on commercial DVDs!

You can do all of this and a lot more, and no, you do not have to be a programmer. If you can point, click, drag and drop, you can create VCDs with these advanced features. Plus, if you have any creative talent, you’ll be able to create professional looking VCDs that will impress your friends and family AND will play on any VideoCD 2.0 compliant player.

Best of all, the tools used to create the VCD images file are free. The only money you may have to someday spend is for the software to burn the image to a CD-R or CD-RW disk.

The Philips Video CD 2.0 Toolkit is software that does all these wonderful things. The Video CD 2.0 Toolkit is now available to the public for FREE from the New International CD-i Association’s website:

http://www.icdia.org/

You can download the Toolkit directly from this link:

http://www.icdia.org/sw_pc/vcd2tk.zip

Unzip the file and install the software on your Windows PC.

The Video CD 2.0 Toolkit was designed for multimedia professionals, who originally paid $1500 per copy. Below are links to Philips original sales brochure describing the Toolkit’s features:

http://www.icdia.org/brochures/authoring_sw/vcd2tk_a.jpg

http://www.icdia.org/brochures/authoring_sw/vcd2tk_b.jpg

http://www.icdia.org/brochures/authoring_sw/vcd2tk_c.jpg

http://www.icdia.org/brochures/authoring_sw/vcd2tk_d.jpg

Below is a link to PC Magazine’s review of the Video CD 2.0 Toolkit:

http://www.zdnet.com/pcmag/issues/1507/pcmg0089.htm


The Toolkit was originally written for Windows 3.1, but it runs fine under Windows 2000, which is what I’ve been using. I don’t see why it wouldn’t run Windows 9x. The software was never updated for Windows 95, so it doesn’t support long filenames, just the old fashioned DOS 8.3 filenames. Be prepared to rename some of your files or get used to using the dir /x command from the command prompt. (dir /x lists the 8.3 short names of files with long names for W2K.)

Philips discontinued this product years ago, so there is no technical support. Nor is there a manual. The software does have a help file and the sales brochures have some useful info too. The CD-i Association has also resurrected the former Philips/OptImage/PMpro CD-i Technical Support website. There is a lot of good information there and also some useful utilities that can be downloaded. The link to the PMpro archive is:

http://www.icdia.org/cdprosupport/index.html

Of particular interest to Toolkit users are the Video CD 2.0 (White Book 2.0) Articles:

http://www.icdia.org/cdprosupport/vcd/vcd2x/vcd2x.htm

One very useful link on the White Book Articles page is the short tutorial for the Toolkit. The tutorial steps you through the creation of a simple VCD that has menus, an MPEG-1 video clip, and a PowerPoint presentation. The link to download the tutorial is:

http://www.icdia.org/cdprosupport/files/pc/shortst.zip


The tutorial is how I got started and is how I recommend anyone else to start. Unfortunately for me, there were a lot of gotchas which weren’t explained anywhere. Fortunately for you, I’ve figured most of them out, so everyone should be able to focus on completing the tutorial and burning their creation to a CD. Once you see the results, I think you’ll want to use this tool to author VCDs with.


Toolkit Gotchas
-------------------
The first gotchas are with the tutorial. The supplied menus are corrupted, and there aren’t any MPEG-1 video or audio clips to use. So you’ll have to roll your own. In Toolkit lingo, MPEG-1 A/V files, digital audio, menus, and still pictures are known as assets. Creating asset files should be easy, but unfortunately a lot of the popular VCD tools are barely White Book compliant. The Toolkit, on the other hand, demands strict White Book compliance. This shouldn’t be surprising, considering Philips helped to write the White Book standard.

This is the most difficult part about using the Toolkit, it’s insistence on strict White Book 2.0 compliance. This means you’ll have to spend time making your asset files compliant before you can use them in your build. Don’t think you can fudge on compliance, because the Toolkit will NOT accept a non-compliant asset file in any way, shape or form. Once it accepts it though, you shouldn’t have any more problems.

Another gotcha is this program was written in the mid 1990’s, and was never updated. So it doesn’t support any of today’s popular standards such as MPEG-2, MP3 audio, Real, or Window Media files. However, it does support a lot of formats still popular today.


Supported Asset Formats
------------------------------

Toolkit supports VCD 2.0 compliant MPEG-1 files and some other video formats. It supports AIFF, WAV, and MPEG-1 digital audio, plus a few other audio formats. For still pictures it supports, TIFF, Targa, JPEG, GIF, Bitmaps, PhotoCD, plus other formats. Still pictures for NTSC must be sized as 352x240 or 704x480. For PAL, 352x288 or 704x576. You don’t have to convert your stills if they are accepted as assets. Toolkit will automatically convert the stills to MPEG stills during the image build process.


Creating Menus and Still Assets in PowerPoint
--------------------------------------------------------

I created all my menus using Microsoft PowerPoint 2000. Under File->Page Setup, I set the slide size to 7.34” by 5”. This will create a 704x480 file if you use TIFF. After creating all my menus and other PowerPoint slides and Saving as a PowerPoint file, I did a Save As using the TIFF format. PowerPoint then automatically created a TIFF file for each slide, i.e. slide1.tif, slide2.tif, slide3.tif, etc. Done this way, the Toolkit accepted my TIFF menus and slides without complaint.


Creating Digital Photo Assets
-----------------------------------

I’ve got a 2-megapixel digital camera that saves its pictures as JPEG files. To make these compliant, all I did was use Lview Pro v1.D2 to resize my digital photos to 704x480 and save them as JPEGs. Toolkit accepted them without complaint.


Creating VCD 2.0 Assets
------------------------------

For my MPEG-1 video clip, I used my ATI AIW Radeon video capture card and the MMC 7.1 software to capture a few minutes of an HBO movie. Unfortunately, even with VCD capture settings and the VCD registry hack, the Toolkit wouldn’t accept my capture as VCD complaint. Running it through TMPGEnc 12a didn’t help either. What did work was demultiplexing the capture file with TMPGEnc, and then remultiplexing it with a utility that came with the Toolkit called VCDMUX.

The VCDMUX executable can be found in the directory you installed Toolkit in. When you demux your *.mpg clip with TMPGEnc, it will by default create a *.m1v video file and a *.mpa audio file. VCDMUX, however, expects the video file to have a *.mpv extension. You can either change the extension before you demux with TMPGEnc, or you can use the *.* (All Files) option with VCDMUX. When you remux with VCDMUX, it will create a VCD 2.0 compliant *.mmd file which Toolkit will accept.


Creating Digital Audio Assets
------------------------------------

I don’t recall having any compliance problems with the MPEG audio files I used. Maybe I got lucky there. There are some special considerations if you want to build a VCD with songs you rip from a music CD, but you don’t need these CD-DA assets to complete the tutorial. In fact, the tutorial doesn’t even cover CD-DA files, but I’ll cover them at a later time.

Now you should know enough to roll you own asset files and complete the tutorial for the Philips Video CD 2.0 Toolkit. Good Luck!

In my next installment, I’ll cover burning the image file to CD-R or CD-RW. I’m sure the more adventuresome and/or experienced readers will attempt this themselves, and may even be successful. Good luck, but be warned I found a lots of gotchas here too!

RF

[aldus4]

Very interesting indeed. Maybe you should get Baldrick & Co. to include this "Guide" on the "How To" section, as I am sure that it will get lost in the forum section.

[TOMMO]

Excellent Work - I have downloaded the neccessary stuff and will give it a go. i had the SVCD designer but could not even make a menu page until -- well hopefully now after reading your article. Keep up the good stuff.

Yes - I believe this should be added to the tutorials.

[kitty]

Great stuff! I'm chomping at the bit to know how to burn one of these images - Maybe with EZCD 4 or 5??

[rochkind]

Well, I downloaded it and fired it up. And, as you predicted, it doesn't like my video asset, which I created with TMPGenc. So... any ideas about how to feed it what it's hungry for? (Merely changing the extension from "mpg" to "mmd" wassn't enough.) Have you gotten it to eat anything that TMPGenc cooked?

[joe-mamma]

Yeah, I had the same problem, I had just converted swordfish with tmpgenc and it won't accept it. Do you know which encoding programs it will accept or is this program only good for pressed vcd's.

[zeppsstteerr]

Hi All, If you read the post by RFontenot you'll notice that he says to use the muxing utility that comes with the toolkit to create compliant mpeg streams. Here's the paragraph.

"Creating VCD 2.0 Assets
------------------------------

For my MPEG-1 video clip, I used my ATI AIW Radeon video capture card and the MMC 7.1 software to capture a few minutes of an HBO movie. Unfortunately, even with VCD capture settings and the VCD registry hack, the Toolkit wouldn’t accept my capture as VCD complaint. Running it through TMPGEnc 12a didn’t help either. What did work was demultiplexing the capture file with TMPGEnc, and then remultiplexing it with a utility that came with the Toolkit called VCDMUX.

The VCDMUX executable can be found in the directory you installed Toolkit in. When you demux your *.mpg clip with TMPGEnc, it will by default create a *.m1v video file and a *.mpa audio file. VCDMUX, however, expects the video file to have a *.mpv extension. You can either change the extension before you demux with TMPGEnc, or you can use the *.* (All Files) option with VCDMUX. When you remux with VCDMUX, it will create a VCD 2.0 compliant *.mmd file which Toolkit will accept.

I have not successfully created a VCD with this yet but am hopeful.

[TOMMO]

Same problem with video assets.

Took an existing compliant VCD PAL Mpeg. Open it in TEMPEnc, reencoded the Video and Audio seperately and then renamed the extensions. MUXed it with the tool that comes with Toolkit. But when I came to add it as an asset it would not accept it.

Damn.

[Branroyal]

The carrot is tied to our forheads. ive tried every encoded file to try to make this thing work! (even the formention splitting method) im sure a solution is out there, im just happy to finally have the missing link in VCD programs. i keep getting an error with the end of the mpeg file??? ive been able to build a CDDA track only VCD with no problem. the answer lies somewhere, and it its only a matter of time before the wiz kids of VCDHELP find out how to use this thing.

[Starfire70]

I've got my mpg files working by using the mpeg corrector on them. You can dl it form the files section on this site.

Some of my mpg's I have to run threw m1-edits repacktize then run the mpeg corrector on them.

So go dl then mpeg corrector and it should make 90% of your files vcd 2.0 toolkit compliant.

[Branroyal]

i just found that the heuris mpeg power pro make mpegs that will work once ran through the vcd toolkit's muxer, but upon building and burning the disc.... coaster if i have to use crapy encoders, ill stick with videopack!

[RFontenot]

The guide "How to burn the image file created by the Philips Video CD 2.0 Toolkit" has been posted.

http://www.vcdhelp.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?topic=49844&forum=1&0

[RFontenot]

Branroyal,

Your burner program probably can't read the sector format used by Toolkit. See the burn guide above for more info.

RF

[RFontenot]

The guide "How to use CD-Digital Audio files with the Philips Video CD 2.0 Toolkit" has been posted.

http://www.vcdhelp.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?topic=50500&forum=1&0

[RFontenot]

The guide "How to use TMPGEnc to create VCD assets for the Philips Video CD 2.0 Toolkit" has been posted

http://www.vcdhelp.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?topic=50504&forum=1&0

[RFontenot]

The guide "How to use ATI MMC 7.1 to create VCD assets for the Philips Video CD 2.0 Toolkit" has been posted.

http://www.vcdhelp.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?topic=50507&forum=1