Why won't my movie fit on a VCD?

[Gameshow Host]

Hi, I've never made a VCD before and I thought I'd give it a try, so I downloaded a VCD from the Internet. The file is a 667mb avi file (obvioulsy intended to be a VCD).

But when I try to make a VCD with Nero, it tells me the file is too big. Nero seems to show a limit of 80 minutes, and — being a feature film — my movie is obviously longer than that.

What's going on? I need help please!

[only_emo_kid]

You need to probably split it in half and burn it into 2 cd-rs..

[deckard8]

http://www.kvcd.net/portal/index.php
http://navasgrp.home.att.net/tech/video/xvcd.htm

[junkmalle]

AVI files are not intended for VCD. The size of your file might imply that it was meant to fit on a data CD simply as a data file.

A VCD file is always an MPEG 1 file of specific parameters. Nero need to convert the file from AVI to MPEG 1. And as you've seen you can only get 80 minutes on a VCD.

You will need to split the movie into two parts or create an out-of-spec MPEG 1 file (lower video bitrate) but then your image quality will suffer and it might not play right on a set-top player.

[Gameshow Host]

Thanks for the help!

I'm sure this has been said before but: only 80 minutes!? Why is VCD so popular when you can't even fit a whole movie on one? You can capture a movie at VCD resolution and get it down to under 700mb, and it'll look okay. So why dont' VCDs allow that?

p.s. This is obviously a rhetorical question!

p.p.s. No offence intended towards VCD lovers out there. It's just my opinion (and I am a newbie to VCDs).

edit: I've just read that all VCDs are CBR! I'm really starting to hate the format now. Seems pretty lousy to me. (Again, no offence to the VCD lovers!)

[Baldrick]

VCD was "popular" a looooooong time ago. No dvd burners back then.