Please, please help me with my Nero and NTI problems!

[dolphinboy]

I would like to thank anyone in advance for being patient enough to read my post and trying to help me. I haven't slept in 2 days trying to learn to do my own VCDs. I'm in a DVD group and they are really rough on "newbies" there.

I know almost nothing about what I'm doing. I'm very willing to learn. In fact, I am not trying to get things down prefectly right now. I just want to get it to work. I'm getting highspeed service on Tuesday and I'm practicing with music videos right now because they are small files.

So I went and got the Nero demo. Even their website is confusing. I use the Nero Express and it is very user friendly. I put 2 Shania Twain videos on a CDRW (I used this to practice on, I intend to use better discs when I know what I'm doing). I was amazed that it worked but the video and the audio were out of sync. I erased it and tried again and one video wouldn't play at all and the other was still out of sync. I tried a 3rd time and both videos played on both of my Sony DVD players, but the audio was still out of sync. The video was only average, but I'm ok with that for now as I am just getting started.

Then I went back here and tried another demo. It's called NTI Cd Maker 2000. It was not as user friendly as Nero, but it also wasn't too difficult to get the videos ready to be burned onto the CDRW either. It went fine, until I went to play the disc. I put it in and the video was only on the left side of the TV!! The other half (maybe slightly more) was black. But the audio was perfectly in sync and the video was crisper than with Nero. I was tearing out my hair at this point. I just want it to work ok and then learn about better quality as I play around more.

Is it because of the demos? I just see so many options, so I want to spend my money once I know something works, not before. Is there some other software that I should be using? Does anyone know why I'm having these problems or what the easiest thing to do might be? I'd pay a college kid to teach me at this point, but I've read a bunch of posts here and I'm lost pretty easily. I totally apologize to those of you who read this and figure that I should know how to do this stuff. I don't and it's hard for me. Other than helping me trouble-shoot the problems I've described above, is there one piece of software than might be the best for people who really don't know a lot and just want decent looking VCDs that are simple to make? I want to be able to paste a few music videos together for me and for friends and once in a while get a tv show that I really liked to be able to watch again. It doesn't have to be great at first.

Thank you so much.

[wulf109]

What is the source and file type of original file. Are you encodeing with Tmpeg? Nero will encode but very poorly.

[dolphinboy]

What is the source and file type of original file. Are you encodeing with Tmpeg? Nero will encode but very poorly.

I really don't even know that Tmpeg means. I've gotten the files I've used so far from WinMx, but they play fine with real player so it shouldn't be the files, right?

And the encoding is done automatically by Nero, right? Why would you use Nero if it didn't do everything for you? What would you recommend that I do? Does some program do everything (other than the capture) all in one? What about the NTI? With that I get picture only on 1/2 of the screen, yet the audio was fine.

Thanks for trying to help me, is there anything you think that I should do that is relatively easy to try?

[dolphinboy]

Ok, I spent hours and hours more.

I tried all different things and then tried to create bin files. I followed the instructions and then tried to burn with Nero. First of all, it wouldn't burn with Nero Express, it said the file wasn't right. The instructions at VCDeasy actually instruct you to just go the the standard Nero burner. For some reason this works.

When everything was done and I had followed all the instructions, I put my new VCD in and, low and behold, it did the same thing as the NTI CD maker 2000. I had video and audio and it was all in sync, but it was on the far left side of my screen. The whole music video was playing on just less than 1/2 of my tv screen, the left.

Can anyone tell me what I'm doing wrong? I've tried so many things and nothing has worked right and, worse than anything, I don't know why or what to do differently.

Can someone please help me?

[rhegedus]

Have you read the newbie sections on conversion or riping?

http://www.vcdhelp.com/convert

http://www.vcdhelp.com/dvdripping

Rob