A Burning Question - DVD --> VCD

[atom22]

I'm new to the burning world and need clear, easy to follow instructions on burning DVD to VCD. I'm working on a G4 with a Superdrive and have DVD Studio Pro, Toast, iDVD and 3ivx currently at my disposal. Please mention any additional software I may need with the instructions and thanks in advance for any help you may be able to provide.

[galactica]

Well.... you can search the forum for dvd to vcd. Look above and make it look like this:

Search [] all forums or[*] this forum: _DVD to VCD_ Advanced [search]

Then click search. You will get lots of replies.


Since your new, ill just give you a real quick what you need thats the easiest way (there are lots of ways and as you get more experienced i suggest trying them to see the differences)

ENCODING
1. Forty-Two (homepage.mac.com/kaicherry) Good page to bookmark
--- download this first, and install it. http://homepage.mac.com/chris.long/forty-two-v1-5.dmg.bz2
----download this second and install it
http://homepage.mac.com/chris.long/forty-two-v1.5.2b.dmg.bz2

2. Once installed properly, open Forty-Two, drag your mounted dvd to it, let it prescan. then click VCD and start.

Thats it (well for standard settings) but again when you get more experienced you can change the CUSTOM RATE to get different quality.


BURNING
1. Missing Media Burner
----downoad this http://homepage.mac.com/rnc/.Public/MissingMediaBurner.sit
install it.

Once your vcd is finished encoding you will then get an image output (.bin/.cue) which will be the vcd (usually split into two) so you will have 2 .bin/.cue's

Missing Media Burner (also called MMB) will burn these files to cd-r and you hae your vcd.

Hope that makes since?
Here's a guide to Forty-Two
http://homepage.mac.com/tgpo/fortytwo.html

it does a lot more than just VCD also if you are interested.

ps. since you have a superdrive, have you thought of doing dvd to dvd?? dvd to vcd will work of coarse, but you are going to loose quality. Think it over, thats why you have a superdrive right? to burn dvd's. Check out this site www.dvd2one.com to get some info on a new program thats the rave right now on this forum.

[atom22]

Hey, thanks for the help. I've been searching throught the site, but couldn't find exactly what i was looking for, or the language was a little over my head in terms of technical directions. I also forgot to mention I have Quicktime which I thought would help, but what you wrote seems pretty clear and managable.

Good point aboit the DVD's, but it seemed to me like one DVD wouldn't fit directly onto another, and someone mentioned to me that I could compress a full DVD into a VCD. I'll check out your suggestions before going the VCD route. Also, I just want to make sure that all this works with 10.2.6 and not OS 9. Sorry for not making that clear earlier.

[galactica]

Hey, thanks for the help. I've been searching throught the site, but couldn't find exactly what i was looking for, or the language was a little over my head in terms of technical directions. I also forgot to mention I have Quicktime which I thought would help, but what you wrote seems pretty clear and managable. .

Good, glad I could help.

Good point aboit the DVD's, but it seemed to me like one DVD wouldn't fit directly onto another, and someone mentioned to me that I could compress a full DVD into a VCD. I'll check out your suggestions before going the VCD route. Also, I just want to make sure that all this works with 10.2.6 and not OS 9. Sorry for not making that clear earlier.

Well the dvd2one program at www.dvd2one.com does just that compresses a dvd such that it will fit onto a dvd-r

typically dvd's are well over 4.3 gigs, but this app is great for compressing the dvd folder down to exactly the max dvd-r size. Its well worth the cost and is REALLY fast.

DVD to VCD on one disk! Possible - Yes Plausable - NO!
you are talking some SERIOUS loss in quality! DVD to 1 SVCD (which is 2x the quality of a vcd) is REALLY bad, so just image DVD to 1 VCD.

Typically, VCD woudl be 2 or more disks. Thus to keep the quality to a devent leve.

SVCD (with is super VCD) has a higher bitrate and thus better quality, but not all dvd players will play these. THis woudl be the best quality for dvd to non dvd method.

DVD to DVD would obviously be the best quality (and maintains more of the dvd structure (menus, chapters..) and can be done with dvd2one. However, its not freeware like the apps for dvd to vcd.

hope thats enlighted you.

[atom22]

Hi again. Followed all the instructions for DVD+r and VCD burning and here are the results:

I tried the DVD burn first. Your instructions were great but for a few complications on my part. I used the demo version of DVD2one to create the VIDEO_TS folder for the DVD. It took very little time to create and it looked like it was on the way to working. Unfortunately I think I used too high a speed to burn and it aborted. Since I only had one DVD-R to experiment with I've yet to see how well it burns. However I played the files on apple's DVD player and they look great. The only other problem is that I realized that my DVD player only plays VCD as an alternate video format, so I looked into other DVD players that play DVD+R and found the Apex AD-1100W. It has great ratings, but there seemed to be some contradictions as to whether it actually plays DVD-R's or not. Some reviews say yes, some no. Any opinions on this or other players that are highly recommended for viewing DVD-R?

The VCD burn on the other hand took an absurd amount of time, about six hours to convert with forty-two, on a dual 1.42 drive. Once completed it did exactly what you said and split into two bin/cue files (great instructions again), but unfortunately the files sizes were still too large for my CD-R's: CD-R=700 mb - bin/cue=805.7 mb. I was also wondering if I could use Toast to burn instead of MMB. Either way it doesn't burn on either at the moment.

Thanks again for your prior help. Any other input/advice you may have to offer is more that welcome.

[tgpo]

The VCD burn on the other hand took an absurd amount of time, about six hours to convert with forty-two, on a dual 1.42 drive.

It use to take two days!!

Once completed it did exactly what you said and split into two bin/cue files (great instructions again), but unfortunately the files sizes were still too large for my CD-R's: CD-R=700 mb - bin/cue=805.7 mb.

It should still work. 700mb is only for certain burn modes

I was also wondering if I could use Toast to burn instead of MMB.

Toast is not the first choice in bin/cue burning. If MMB didn't work give Firestarter FX a try.