Mac OS X vcdimaging and binchunking and multiplexing

[paulhagstrom]

One of the complaints about making VCDs on the Mac is that we're limited to the options Toast provides unless we want to either use a PC or emulate one slowly.. but now that we have Mac OS X, we have access to some command-line tools that can do the same stuff. I'm posting this here because I found them and successfully got them to run, but I haven't really done any full testing. You will probably want to build these yourself, so you should install the Developer Tools for Mac OS X if you haven't already. Maybe later someone can make the binaries available. Maybe later someone can make a Carbon front-end so we can use it in Mac OS 9, even.

I'm something of a *nix ignoramus, so there might be things I've missed, but here's how I think you can get these programs up and running. First: know your root password.

For some reason, /usr/local/bin didn't exist and wasn't on my path when I installed OS X 10.0.4. It surprises me that this doesn't happen by default, but since it didn't for me, you may want to do this:

Open the terminal
ls ~/.c*

If you see .cshrc, you may need to edit it to have the line:

setenv PATH /usr/local/bin:PATH

If you don't see any files, you can create a .cshrc file to add /usr/local/bin to your path by doing this:

cat > ~/.cshrc
setenv PATH /usr/local/bin:PATH

and then hit Ctrl-C.

You may also need to create this directory; do this:

cd /usr/local
ls

If you don't see bin in the resulting list (you may see, in fact, nothing), you can do this:

su
<type your root password>
mkdir /usr/local/bin
exit

Preliminaries over, getting the files compiled and running works like this, as far as I can tell:


vcdimager comes from
http://www.hvrlab.org/%7Ehvr/vcdimager/

You can go to the FTP site and download the latest stable release (0.6.2) (although Mac OS X binaries do exist for the 0.7 series).

Installation is very easy. Unpack the tarball (drop the tar.gz file onto Stuffit Expander), go to the terminal application, cd into the new vcdimager directory, and type

./configure
<at which point a screenful of tests are displayed>
make
<at which point the program is compiled>
su
<enter your root password>
make install
<which will install the binaries into /usr/local>
exit
<stop being root>

At this point, if you close your terminal window and open a new one, you should find that you can type

vcdimager --help

at the command line and get the help screen. Again, I haven't tested it further than this, but it should be the case that you can now create bin/cue files from MPEG files for VCD or SVCD formats. When I compiled, I got a couple of warnings about integer formats, and I don't know if this is a problem -- you could also try using the precompiled 0.7x binary or compile your own 0.7x binary if the 0.6.2 one doesn't work.

The next point of interest is bchunk, which comes from

http://hes.iki.fi/bchunk/

Download this, and unstuff it. This will convert bin/cue files into .iso files (like you'd do with FireBurner if you used an emulator). After using this program, you should be able to burn the ISO files as tracks with Toast without having to interact with its VCD checking.

To compile this, you need to edit the Makefile, which you could do in the terminal, or you could actually do by opening it in TextEdit. At the beginning, there are two blocks of lines involving CC, LD, and CFLAGS. The second block of lines has a "#" before it -- you want to change it so that the first block of lines has a "#" before it and the second block of lines does not (leave the "#" before the "For systems..." line, though). Save it, go to the terminal, get into the directory that had the Makefile for bchunk in it.

Type this:

make
<the file is quickly compiled>
su
<enter your root password>
cp bchunk /usr/local/bin
<copies the binary file>
exit
<stop being root>

Now you should be able to type

bchunk

and get the help page for bchunk.

Lastly, there is a program called vcdmplex that can multiplex elementary MPEG streams into a system stream, part of vcdtools. This is retrievable from the GNU-Darwin package ports page at

http://gnu-darwin.sourceforge.net/packages/pseudo2/graphics/

Scroll down to the bottom, and get vcdtools, and unstuff the file. This one requires no compilation (these are the binaries -- it's actually kind of hard to find the source code for this anymore). Inside, there is a "bin" folder. Copy the two programs there into /usr/local/bin using the same procedure as before (in the terminal, get into the vcdtools bin folder, become root with su, cp vcdmplex /usr/local/bin/vcdmplex, exit). The mkvcdfs program is I think obsoleted by vcdimager (I believe it makes the filesystem for a VCD suitable for burning).

Anyway, these are my discoveries for today. I haven't gotten a chance to do any real testing, but I plan to. It would be nice if these programs were given a quick-and-dirty Carbon front end so that you don't have to be running Mac OS X to use them, but at least it now appears to be possible not to have to resort to VirtualPC. Once I've done more tests, I'll post the results; anyone else is encouraged to do the same.

BTW: Questions about how the Mac OS X command line or compiler works, etc., probably shouldn't go here. If somebody sees a mistake in the information I gave here, though, please correct me.

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: paulhagstrom on 2001-08-07 11:10:29 ]</font>

[griz]

Great to see someone else trying this!

If you haven't already, check out
http://www.pxh.de/fs/svcd/software/content.html
Lots of good links to source there.

I've been able to build both VCDs/SVCDs without TOO much trouble. Still have to
go back to 9.1 to burn them since the Toast Preview doesn't seem to like the
images. I'll give bchunk a try and see if it helps.

The only stuff I can remember needing are:

vcdimager 0.6.2
quicktime4linux 1.3
libmovtar 0.1.2
glib 1.2.10
zlib 1.1.3
png 1.0.8
mjpegtools 1.4.1

Most of them built with few problems - a few byteswapping issues are about the
worst I can recall. A bit of tweaking on the configure scripts were needed as well.

My biggest complaint is that it takes SO LONG to encode, especially SVCDs.

[paulhagstrom]

<TABLE BORDER=0 ALIGN=CENTER WIDTH=85%><TR><TD><font size=-1>Quote:</font><HR size=1 color=black></TD></TR><TR><TD><FONT SIZE=-1><BLOCKQUOTE>
Most of them built with few problems - a few byteswapping issues are about the
worst I can recall. A bit of tweaking on the configure scripts were needed as well.
</BLOCKQUOTE></FONT></TD></TR><TR><TD><HR size=1 color=black></TD></TR></TABLE>

The trick seems to be to know how to tweak things. I haven't had a very easy time getting many of these to compile, except vcdimager. If you have any hints to get things to autoconfigure and make without major modifications, they'd be welcomed.

My initial attempts with mjpegtools required installation of glib, and cc couldn't compile it (it dies compiling something like iounix.c with errors about bad macros). Should I have attempted to install a different compiler? Or are there options that should be set for cc that aren't? (I don't think gcc is included anywhere in the Mac OS X distribution, but maybe I'm wrong). Is there some magic you can do with /usr/libexec/config.* and autoconfig to make these things just "make" on their own?

Sadly, this all seems harder than it should be and makes me wonder if I've really got the time to get these things working.

[griz]

I hate to get off topic here. Is this acceptable or should we be taking this level of discusion elsewhere?

<TABLE BORDER=0 ALIGN=CENTER WIDTH=85%><TR><TD><font size=-1>Quote:</font><HR size=1 color=black></TD></TR><TR><TD><FONT SIZE=-1><BLOCKQUOTE>
The trick seems to be to know how to tweak things. I haven't had a very easy time getting many of these to compile, except vcdimager. If you have any hints to get things to autoconfigure and make without major modifications, they'd be welcomed.
</BLOCKQUOTE></FONT></TD></TR><TR><TD><HR size=1 color=black></TD></TR></TABLE>

I'll see if I can put something together. My first attempt was a real hack - I really should clean it up, if only to make is easier to update.

<TABLE BORDER=0 ALIGN=CENTER WIDTH=85%><TR><TD><font size=-1>Quote:</font><HR size=1 color=black></TD></TR><TR><TD><FONT SIZE=-1><BLOCKQUOTE>
My initial attempts with mjpegtools required installation of glib, and cc couldn't compile it (it dies compiling something like iounix.c with errors about bad macros). Should I have attempted to install a different compiler? Or are there options that should be set for cc that aren't? (I don't think gcc is included anywhere in the Mac OS X distribution, but maybe I'm wrong). Is there some magic you can do with /usr/libexec/config.* and autoconfig to make these things just "make" on their own?
</BLOCKQUOTE></FONT></TD></TR><TR><TD><HR size=1 color=black></TD></TR></TABLE>

I made symbolic links from /usr/bin/cc to /usr/local/bin/gcc and g++.

The glib compile errors can be eliminated by tweaking the header with the macros and forcing the inline code to be used instead of the macros (something to do with GCC being defined). Apple's version of gcc (well, cc) seems a bit picky about what it will accept.

autoconfig/automake is available
http://www.publicsource.apple.com/projects/darwin/projects.html
(requires registration, I think)

I think our problem is we are on (or a bit ahead of) the bleeding edge.

<TABLE BORDER=0 ALIGN=CENTER WIDTH=85%><TR><TD><font size=-1>Quote:</font><HR size=1 color=black></TD></TR><TR><TD><FONT SIZE=-1><BLOCKQUOTE>
Sadly, this all seems harder than it should be and makes me wonder if I've really got the time to get these things working.
</BLOCKQUOTE></FONT></TD></TR><TR><TD><HR size=1 color=black></TD></TR></TABLE>

Well, it's just because MacOS X is so new. It's BSD, but just different enough that things break.

Back on topic:

I have to say I have been pleased with the final results. I had made a bunch of VCDs using Toast 5, and the SCVDs from these tools were MUCH better. Yeah, SVCDs are
supposed to be higher quality, but this was the first chance I had to see any.

I tried bchunk. It did not appear to ouput tracks that Toast was happy with (no big suprise there).

[paulhagstrom]

<TABLE BORDER=0 ALIGN=CENTER WIDTH=85%><TR><TD><font size=-1>Quote:</font><HR size=1 color=black></TD></TR><TR><TD><FONT SIZE=-1><BLOCKQUOTE>
On 2001-08-10 11:08:19, griz wrote:
I hate to get off topic here. Is this acceptable or should we be taking this level of discusion elsewhere?
</BLOCKQUOTE></FONT></TD></TR><TR><TD><HR size=1 color=black></TD></TR></TABLE>

You are probably right -- there are just too many off-topic things involved in taking this much further. I've put together a summary of my notes to date on my web page at

http://www.bu.edu/linguistics/UG/hagstrom/vcd.html

and I will keep updating them as I try things (though I think my current enthusiasm is about at its end). Many things have me somewhat stumped, but I'm sure that you're right that things can only improve with time. BTW, my test of bchunk failed too (wrong block size?) and I haven't looked into it.

Perhaps this topic should be reserved for posting things that work once they've been tested, rather than for questions about how to make things work -- I'll move on to Darwin/Mac OS X development/porting forums for that.

[hvr]

btw, is there something like a real cd image format on macos (x), I mean, not that splitted image format without a cue/toc file you get by binchunking the bin file... but more like the bin/cue, cdrdao-style (btw, using this in newer vcdimager supported image format should keep you from having to use bchunk...), nrg-style and so on...?

having to drag all tracks one by one into toast does not sound like a reliable way for generating a really accurate SVCD (I'm thinking about sector addresses becoming invalid if the tracks don't start at the expected offsets...)

[paulhagstrom]

Interesting idea. I can't think of any format in Mac OS 9 other than a Toast image, but it might not be too hard to reverse-engineer one and write a little converter in RealBasic or something. (Seems to me you could write a couple of short (S)VCDs, create Toast images of them, and then compare the images to the bin files and see what's different and how it relates to the cue files)

Do we have any evidence that Toast is messing up CDs by just dragging .iso files, though? I'd think as long as the tracks are even multiples of 2352 long, there shouldn't be a problem.. (this was where bchunk as described previously in this thread seemed to fail, though, so it's not yet a replacement for FireBurner).

[hvr]

well then... can anyone provide me with some small toast images?
possibly with a few very small tracks... VCD2.0 would be enough...

I don't need the corresponding bin/cue images, since I can figure out that myself...

the reason why I'm a bit worried about giving toast single tracks is, that I'm not sure if toast will insert a 150 (or any other amount) sector gap by itself or not... and this information is very important to know...

[major]

hvr.. i can upload u some SVCD Toasted files (MPG2 file -> .bin/.cue, -> Toast XA tracks) if u email me some temporary FTP address

I dont think Toast will accept anything other than XA tracks for making a SVCD, as its VCD mode checks for the file structure and will only make VCDs. However I can also upload u a small Toast VCD image.

[hvr]

<TABLE BORDER=0 ALIGN=CENTER WIDTH=85%><TR><TD><font size=-1>Quote:</font><HR size=1 color=black></TD></TR><TR><TD><FONT SIZE=-1><BLOCKQUOTE>
On 2001-08-12 05:14:16, major wrote:
hvr.. i can upload u some SVCD Toasted files (MPG2 file -> .bin/.cue, -> Toast XA tracks) if u email me some temporary FTP address

I dont think Toast will accept anything other than XA tracks for making a SVCD, as its VCD mode checks for the file structure and will only make VCDs. However I can also upload u a small Toast VCD image.


</BLOCKQUOTE></FONT></TD></TR><TR><TD><HR size=1 color=black></TD></TR></TABLE>

ever tried the incoming dir of ftp.hvrlab.org?

I'd just need some VCD toast images....

getting the XA tracks for SVCD doesn't get me any new information... I would need _very_ specific information about how toast handles the gap-issue when supplied with XA tracks... e.g. by looking at the resulting TOC of that CD... stuff like that...

[major]

huh, VCD Toast images.. in fact, there is no such thing
I mean, in VCD mode, Toast 5 accepts either :

- a whitebook MPG, OR a "Toast-ready" MPG (both works provided they comply with VCD spec).
- a .BIN file (from a standard .BIN/.CUE VCD package). Toast 5 doesn't need the .CUE. It automatically detects the tracks inside the .BIN and burns accordingly.

However, I will try to research further into SVCD field. I could try to read back a SVCD burned with Toast in multitrack-XA mode. I got a software to do it. More in the next post..

[major]

hvr.. so about SVCDs. I created a small SVCD from a MPG2 with VCDImagerGUI. Then I binchunked with Fireburner into two XA tracks and burned them with Toast 5. The result played well on my Pioneer DVD player.

This is the .CUE sheet generated by VCDImager:

FILE "testvid.bin" BINARY
TRACK 01 MODE2/2352
INDEX 01 00:00:00
TRACK 02 MODE2/2352
INDEX 01 00:06:00

I analyzed the burned CD and here the results :

LAYOUT

Trk Area Start Length Mode

Lead-In 00:00:00 Mode 2

01 Index 1 00:02:00 00:06:00 Mode 2
Post-Gap 00:08:00 00:02:02 Mode 2

02 Index 1 00:10:02 00:52:18 Mode 2
Post-Gap 01:02:20 00:00:02 Mode 2

Lead-Out 01:02:22 Mode 2


TOC

CNTRL ADR TNO POINT ATIME ZERO PTIME

04 01 00 A0 00:00:00 00 01:20:00
04 01 00 A1 00:00:00 00 02:00:00
04 01 00 A2 00:00:00 00 01:02:22
04 01 00 01 00:00:00 00 00:02:00
04 01 00 02 00:00:00 00 00:10:02

SESSIONS

Session #1 : Mode 2
First Track : 1
Last Track : 2
Audio Tracks : 0
Data Tracks : 2
Lead-Out : 01:02:22

Disc : 01:02:22
System : ISO 9660
System ID : CD-RTOS CD-BRIDGE
Volume ID : VideoCD
Preparer : GNU VCDImager 0.6.2rc2 cygwin/i586

Hope this helps.. let me know

[hvr]

btw, be sure to take a look at

http://fink.sourceforge.net/

this will be surely valuable information for your page...

<TABLE BORDER=0 ALIGN=CENTER WIDTH=85%><TR><TD><font size=-1>Quote:</font><HR size=1 color=black></TD></TR><TR><TD><FONT SIZE=-1><BLOCKQUOTE>
http://www.bu.edu/linguistics/UG/hagstrom/vcd.html

and I will keep updating them as I try things (though I think my current enthusiasm is about at its end). Many things have me somewhat stumped, but I'm sure that you're right that things can only improve with time. BTW, my test of bchunk failed too (wrong block size?) and I haven't looked into it.

Perhaps this topic should be reserved for posting things that work once they've been tested, rather than for questions about how to make things work -- I'll move on to Darwin/Mac OS X development/porting forums for that.
</BLOCKQUOTE></FONT></TD></TR><TR><TD><HR size=1 color=black></TD></TR></TABLE>

[hvr]

as I feared the post-gap isn't exactly 150 sectors, but 152 sectors...

have you burned DAO or TAO?

btw, what were the file sizes for the XA track files outputted by the binchunking process?

ps: I was told that toast was able to create VCD2.0 toast images, which could be burned to CD-R lateron by toast... is this untrue?

<TABLE BORDER=0 ALIGN=CENTER WIDTH=85%><TR><TD><font size=-1>Quote:</font><HR size=1 color=black></TD></TR><TR><TD><FONT SIZE=-1><BLOCKQUOTE>
LAYOUT

Trk Area Start Length Mode

Lead-In 00:00:00 Mode 2

01 Index 1 00:02:00 00:06:00 Mode 2
Post-Gap 00:08:00 00:02:02 Mode 2

02 Index 1 00:10:02 00:52:18 Mode 2
Post-Gap 01:02:20 00:00:02 Mode 2

Lead-Out 01:02:22 Mode 2


...

Hope this helps.. let me know

</BLOCKQUOTE></FONT></TD></TR><TR><TD><HR size=1 color=black></TD></TR></TABLE>

[major]

I burned with the "Prefer Disk At Once" option checked which I always do when burning SVCDs. The file sizes were 1 058 400 bytes for the 1st XA track, and 8 862 336 bytes for the 2nd track. If u need them I can upload into your ftp site.

Concerning Toast and VCD images... yes! it's true! I definitely missed that option before, it is buried in drop-down menus. I just made a VCD disk image with Toast 5 -selected a MPG and then "Save as disk image"- and just uploaded it to your ftp. Filename is VIDEO_CD•image. Maybe is possible to tweak this format and finally output from VCDImager a single Toast image and burn SVCDs! Apparently Toast does some checks on the image, i.e. displays how many tracks, etc. but I hope this does not include checking the actual file structure to see if it is a VCD2.0 or i.e. a SVCD, or checking the bitrate of the MPG (eg. burning XVCDs authored with VCDImager).

Keep us posted about your findings..

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: major on 2001-08-13 05:17:47 ]</font>

[hvr]

well, this image is just a 2352 raw sector file....
(btw, it seems toast uses a wrong bitordering for the PAL/NTSC bitfield... just as a side note...)

I couldn't find any TOC information in there... only 2352 byte sized sectors...
is the TOC saved somewhere else perhaps? I hope it's not saved as meta-info...

or maybe there's yet another image format?

[major]

..this is what Toast 5 saves as VCD image BTW if I drop that file back into Toast 5, it recognizes it as VCD 'with one MPG track' and ready to burn, so the info must be there or is Toast rebuilding the TOC by looking at the data? No other file is generated when creating the disk image.

When saving that disk-image file, the Toast window acts like the program is burning a CD. So I guess it simply output on file the same data stream otherwise sent to the burner.

There're other image formats accepted by Toast (not sure if when saving it is the same or not), when NOT in VCD mode. E.g. when switching to "Disc Image" mode I can drop .iso files and burn them but apparently they must contain only one track (ISO9660 MODE 1 track, or XA track..). Dropping a .BIN containing one XA track works correctly. Dropping a .BIN containing a SVCD on two XA tracks doesn't work. Dropping the VCD disk image we were talking about before, works but it switches back to VCD mode.

Another try : I switched Toast in "Disc Image" mode, then dropped the 1st XA track that binchunker generates when preparing a SVCD (Disc Image mode said it is a ISO9660 CD-ROM XA) then again saved as Disk Image. I uploaded that one on your ftp as T01 Mode2 2352.iso•image. Just to see if it is the same type of file as the one generated in VCD mode. To me it seems that it is exactly the same file as the source binchunker's file.

Hope we will toast out some solution.

Again, to me it seems there is only an issue to solve with SVCDs, as a VCD or XVCD authored with VCDImager is already burnable in Toast by simply dropping the .BIN on the VCD window.

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: major on 2001-08-13 11:50:34 ]</font>

[apt]

It seems a lot of people of starting to compile applications for Mac OS X which is great. Would it soon be possble to combine all our efforts in one place and start to distrubute an application that does the job?... I'm working on a front end for VCDimager (with help from Paulhagstrom) if you'd like to contribute go to http://uk.clubs.yahoo.com/clubs/vcdsvcdcreationonamac

apt

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: apt on 2001-08-17 14:44:06 ]</font>

[hvr]

btw,

the problem at the moment with the binchunked bin/cue's dragged into toast is, that toast seems to insert (post-)gaps of 152 sectors between each XA track... (this feels very much like TAO...)

I'm working on some workaround for spitting out individual tracks which can be safely dragged into toast... I'll try to have it ready for the next 0.7.10 pre-snapshot...

[major]

that would be great

btw I'm amazed by the number of GUIs to VCDImager already released or under development on Windows..

so where are the mac wizards able to release a port of VCDImager and GUI for MacOS?

[hvr]

vcdimager for macos; not that easy... maybe when the rewrite to C++ has been done... the problem is, that under macos there's nothing like a command line application... you have to wrap it into a GUI, and the libvcd backend is not ready for this yet... and then there's the question, whether it makes sense anymore to support MacOS 8/9 by writing a GUI for it, now that X is going to replace it....

vcdimager for macosx; already there....
GUI for MacOSX; well someone in this thread was mentioning some RealBasic (?) effort going on?...

anyway, should the java GUI become ready sometime (it's becoming a neverending story... a few developers are working on it, but I haven't been presented anything yet... I guess I'll phone one of them today
should a linux GUI become available, then MacOSX will be able to use it as well by installing the flink environment...

[paulhagstrom]

Getting back to a previous topic, I was just looking into bchunk again, and comparing its output to Fireburner's. After some trial and error, I did wind up finding one thing that worked for my single test so far.

In the cue file, change MODE2/2352 to something garbled, like MXDE2/2352, so that bchunk doesn't know what format it is. bchunk will then assume 2352-size sectors and produce one ".ugh" file for each track. Toast will burn these .ugh files as if they were .iso files, and the resulting VCD I made this way appeared to work.

Comparing the output of bchunk and Fireburner I found that on my one test, the track 1 .ugh file actually contains one more sector (an extra 2352 bytes) than the Fireburner .iso file, and my track 2 .ugh file was exactly like Fireburner's track 2 file. Running bchunk with an unaltered cue file seemed to either cut the sector size down to 2336 (although not in "PSX" mode) or 2048 (by extracting only the data from byte 24 to byte 2352, as I understand it, and writing it out as a 2048 byte sector).

It's mysterious to me, one who doesn't understand the full ins and outs of the ISO format, but this nevertheless does seem to alleviate the need to use Fireburner via Virtual PC. Maybe this can tide us over until vcdimager can output files that Toast can burn all at once...

[hvr]

0.7.10pre4 is ready... I've even build a macosx binary (you can use the win32 as well....)

see also this thread for getting a download link
http://www.vcdhelp.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?topic=55706&forum=1


how to proceed

1. create a XML description for your (S)VCD
2. insert a line <option name="track pregap" value="152" /> into it
3. run vcdxbuild with the --cdrdao-file option
4. drag the ..._##.img files into toast (but omit the ones ending with _pregap.img!)

a sample commandline for vcdxbuild would look like

vcdxbuild -p videocd.xml --cdrdao-file videocd

this would lead to the following files (assuming you had 2 small mpeg tracks)

<TABLE BORDER=0 ALIGN=CENTER WIDTH=85%><TR><TD><font size=-1>Code:</font><HR ></TD></TR><TR><TD><FONT SIZE=-1><PRE>
-rw-rw-r-- 1 hvr hvr 357 Aug 25 12:47 videocd.toc
-rw-rw-r-- 1 hvr hvr 352800 Aug 25 12:47 videocd_02_pregap.img
-rw-rw-r-- 1 hvr hvr 705600 Aug 25 12:47 videocd_01.img
-rw-rw-r-- 1 hvr hvr 352800 Aug 25 12:47 videocd_03_pregap.img
-rw-rw-r-- 1 hvr hvr 11571840 Aug 25 12:47 videocd_02.img
-rw-rw-r-- 1 hvr hvr 13902672 Aug 25 12:47 videocd_03.img
</PRE></FONT></TD></TR><TR><TD><HR size=1 color=black></TD></TR></TABLE>

you only need the videocd_01.img, videocd_02.img and videocd_03.img image file...

if you succeeded so far, please take the time to extract the TOC of the burned CDROM (just as has been done earlier in this thread) and post it here... so I can see whether the TOC looks exactly as expected....

[major]

that's great, it works!!


i built this xml file first :

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<!DOCTYPE videocd PUBLIC "-//GNU//DTD VideoCD//EN" "http://www.gnu.org/software/vcdimager/videocd.dtd">
<videocd xmlns="http://www.gnu.org/software/vcdimager/1.0/" class="svcd" version="1.0">
<info>
<album-id></album-id>
<volume-count>1</volume-count>
<volume-number>1</volume-number>
<restriction>0</restriction>
</info>
<pvd>
<volume-id>VIDEOCD</volume-id>
<system-id>CD-RTOS CD-BRIDGE</system-id>
<application-id></application-id>
<preparer-id/>
<publisher-id>VCDImager Easy</publisher-id>
</pvd>
<filesystem>
<folder>
<name>SEGMENT</name>
</folder>
</filesystem>
<sequence-items>
<sequence-item src="testvid.mpg" id="sequence-00"/>
<sequence-item src="testvid.mpg" id="sequence-01"/>
<sequence-item src="testvid.mpg" id="sequence-02"/>
</sequence-items>
</videocd>


then in MacOSX I installed your 0.7.10pre4 OSX binaries. Launched vcdxbuild and got this output :

[localhost:/] root# vcdxbuild -p videocd.xml --cdrdao-file videocd
++ WARN: initializing libvcd 0.7.10pre4 [darwin1.3.7/powerpc]
++ WARN:
++ WARN: this is the UNSTABLE development branch!
++ WARN: use only if you know what you are doing
++ WARN: see http://www.hvrlab.org/~hvr/vcdimager/ for more information
++ WARN:
++ WARN: mpeg stream contained no scan information (user) data
INFO: scanning mpeg sequence item #0 for scanpoints...
++ WARN: mpeg stream contained no scan information (user) data
INFO: scanning mpeg sequence item #1 for scanpoints...
++ WARN: mpeg stream contained no scan information (user) data
INFO: scanning mpeg sequence item #2 for scanpoints...
INFO: cdrdao-style image requested!
INFO: writing track 1 (ISO9660)...
INFO: writing track 2, MPEG2, PAL 2/3 D-1 (480x576/25fps), audio[0]: l2/44.1kHz/224kbps/stereo ...
INFO: writing track 3, MPEG2, PAL 2/3 D-1 (480x576/25fps), audio[0]: l2/44.1kHz/224kbps/stereo ...
INFO: writing track 4, MPEG2, PAL 2/3 D-1 (480x576/25fps), audio[0]: l2/44.1kHz/224kbps/stereo ...
INFO: finished ok, image created with 12054 sectors [02:40.54]


I obtained the four XA tracks you mentioned (videocd1/2/3/4.img). Dropped these 4 files on Toast XA mode, burnt successfully, and the SVCD works on my Pioneer DVD player.

Analyzed the CD and here is the result :

LAYOUT

Trk Area Start Length Mode

Lead-In 00:00:00 Mode 2

01 Index 1 00:02:00 00:04:00 Mode 2
Post-Gap 00:06:00 00:02:02 Mode 2

02 Index 1 00:08:02 00:50:18 Mode 2
Post-Gap 00:58:20 00:02:02 Mode 2

03 Index 1 01:00:22 00:50:18 Mode 2
Post-Gap 01:50:40 00:02:02 Mode 2

04 Index 1 01:52:42 00:52:18 Mode 2
Post-Gap 02:44:60 00:00:02 Mode 2

Lead-Out 02:44:62 Mode 2


TOC

CNTRL ADR TNO POINT ATIME ZERO PTIME

04 01 00 A0 00:00:00 00 01:20:00
04 01 00 A1 00:00:00 00 04:00:00
04 01 00 A2 00:00:00 00 02:44:62
04 01 00 01 00:00:00 00 00:02:00
04 01 00 02 00:00:00 00 00:08:02
04 01 00 03 00:00:00 00 01:00:22
04 01 00 04 00:00:00 00 01:52:42


SESSIONS

Session #1 : Mode 2
First Track : 1
Last Track : 4
Audio Tracks : 0
Data Tracks : 4
Lead-Out : 02:42:62

Disc : 02:44:62
System : ISO 9660
System ID : CD-RTOS CD-BRIDGE
Volume ID : VIDEOCD
Preparer : GNU VCDImager 0.7.10PRE4 DARWIN1.3.7/POWERPC


That's a great step forward for mac users!!!!

But we still miss a simple GUI like i.e. VCDImagerEasy, as the average user can't really make it faster by doing all this in command-line mode than by running VCDImagerEasy under VirtualPC and then feed the .bin into Fireburner.

So.. please mac wizards think at an OSX GUI. As Toast 5 is now available for OSX. Also authors of GUIs for PC should include a 'Toast compatible' button in their future releases.

[hvr]

I forgot one small detail... could you also post the corresponding .cue file (which means, that you have to run vcdxbuild as if you wanted a bin/cue image...)

thats just to be sure everythings alright...

[major]

i got this .cue :

FILE "videocd.bin" BINARY
TRACK 01 MODE2/2352
FLAGS DCP
INDEX 01 00:00:00
TRACK 02 MODE2/2352
FLAGS DCP
INDEX 00 00:04:00
INDEX 01 00:06:00
TRACK 03 MODE2/2352
FLAGS DCP
INDEX 00 00:56:18
INDEX 01 00:58:18
TRACK 04 MODE2/2352
FLAGS DCP
INDEX 00 01:48:36
INDEX 01 01:50:36

[major]

hum, i also tried to binchunk the .bin with Fireburner to see if each tracks differs from the ones generated by vcdxbuild in cdrdao mode. I got the following :

Track 1 : Fireburner = 705600 bytes / vcdxbuild = 705600
Track 2 : 9215136 / 8862336
Track 3 : 9215136 / 8862336
Track 4 : 9215136 / 8862336

The pregaps are 352800 bytes so the maths are OK but how Toast can burn both tracks and the resulting SVCD play in both cases?

[hvr]

btw, you forgot the 152 pregap option this time
(I hope you added it when creating the cdrdao images... it´s quite important, to match the toast generated pregap length...)

but it´s ok, the TOC you have posted matches the .cue that would have been generated, if you had the 152-pregap setting active...

.i.e.: green light for proper vcdimager image burning w/ toast...

<TABLE BORDER=0 ALIGN=CENTER WIDTH=85%><TR><TD><font size=-1>Quote:</font><HR size=1 color=black></TD></TR><TR><TD><FONT SIZE=-1><BLOCKQUOTE>
On 2001-08-25 17:57:19, major wrote:
i got this .cue :

FILE "videocd.bin" BINARY
TRACK 01 MODE2/2352
FLAGS DCP
INDEX 01 00:00:00
TRACK 02 MODE2/2352
FLAGS DCP
INDEX 00 00:04:00
INDEX 01 00:06:00
...
</BLOCKQUOTE></FONT></TD></TR><TR><TD><HR size=1 color=black></TD></TR></TABLE>

[major]

the 1st time I used vcdxbuild -p videocd.xml --cdrdao-file videocd
the 2nd time I used vcdxbuild -p videocd.xml -c videocd.cue

what would be the correct command line?

[hvr]

<TABLE BORDER=0 ALIGN=CENTER WIDTH=85%><TR><TD><font size=-1>Quote:</font><HR size=1 color=black></TD></TR><TR><TD><FONT SIZE=-1><BLOCKQUOTE>
On 2001-08-26 05:05:41, major wrote:
the 1st time I used vcdxbuild -p videocd.xml --cdrdao-file videocd
the 2nd time I used vcdxbuild -p videocd.xml -c videocd.cue

what would be the correct command line?
</BLOCKQUOTE></FONT></TD></TR><TR><TD><HR size=1 color=black></TD></TR></TABLE>

both, but the important thing was to have the line
<option name="track pregap" value="152" />
included in the XML!!!!

looking at the cue file, the pregap was still 150 sectors... thus I assume you forgot about that pregap customization line...