What's the advantage in burning a bin/cue file?

[keith]

Is there an advantage burning an bin/cue file instead of an mpeg2 file when you are creating a svcd?

[Craig Fuqua]

My personal opinion is that the BIN is better in that it's more convenient.
My completely subjective reasons are:
1. MPEG2s often don't play well on my computer, which doesn't have a DVD drive. Jerky motion, etc. So the file does me absolutely no good.
2. It takes my computer, a lowly PII 350, a long time to extract the MPEG from the BIN.
3. Having the MPG and the BIN doubles the drive space used, which increases fragmentation problems once the files are deleted.
4. With the MPEG, I have to wait for Nero to read through the file, regardless of whether standards-compliance is turned on (I think).
5. Repeat #4 each time I burn a copy of that file. Granted I could, according to this site, just disk-copy the original CD.
6. The extraction itself is a point of failure. People reported that VCD Gear deleted more than a minute of a particular movie if you left the repair feature checked. (I use ISO Buster now.)
7. The extraction process is also an extra step.
8. CDRDAO is a wonderful little program that has done a great job burning BINs for me so far. Too bad I can't say the same about Nero. (A friend said CDRDAO bombs out on him, but he's running Windows 2000 Pro.)
So, that's why I'm a BIN-burner now.

Disadvantages:
1. If the disc image has a Chinese beer commercial on it, you have to skip through it.
2. If the image or CUE has a defect, it may take a lot of skill to correct. At that point, I'd just extract and go through the creation process, and I'd probably create an NRG file or maybe use VCD Gear to create a BIN.

[dinesh]

keith,
Burning only MPEG2 will result in a data CD.
The disadvantages are:
Most (almost all) players will not recognize it.
No Menu, subtitle, or any other options.

The Bin/Cue contains the (S)VCD format which all players understand and is actually an image of the CD.

[vitualis]

Is there an advantage burning an bin/cue file instead of an mpeg2 file when you are creating a svcd?

You are actually asking the wrong question...

There is no intrinsic advantage in buring a CUE/BIN image as opposed to any other type of image.

The question is what advantage there is in using VCDImager as opposed to some other SVCD authoring/buring proggy (e.g., Nero).

VCDImager itself is just an authoring proggy, not a burning one. It creates disc images as an output so that you can burn it with a third party program. The CUE/BIN image format was chosen because it has the greatest compatibility across many platforms.

VCDImager is one of the most powerful and flexible S/VCD authoring proggies and is the only one of its class that is open source. If you want to create menus, chapters, or author your own content onto S/VCDs, VCDImager is highly recommended.

http://www.vcdimager.org
http://www.geocities.com/medinotes/vcd
http://www.vcdimager.org/guides (mirror)

Regards.