Please, need help with still menus

[LucasBuck]

I had asked about this several months ago, but nobody had any ideas so trying again. I have an Apex 1500. I'm trying to make a vcd with multi level menus. Like a main menu with a title, and branching off from that, one with scene selection, and one with a still shot (info page). I've tried with tscv and vcdeasy, but I get the same results. Sometimes, instead of the image coming up, it's a black screen. It's still navigating okay, and at the right position (because the appropriate buttons work) but the scene will be blank. The odd thing is, if I go forward and back a couple times through the menus, it will show up. So sometimes the screen shows, sometimes it doesn't. I've tried different ways to make the screen shots, using jpg and mpg's made from still images. This is driving me nuts, so if anyone can help, I'd really appriciate it. Let me know if it sounds like a problem with the player.

Another odd point, if it makes any difference. Could just be I'm going nuts. But I've usually set it up like this.
Title menu
|_Info shot
|_Scene selection
|_Video clips
Like I said, unless I'm nuts and it's luck, that Info shot page always seems to come up fine. Maybe because theres nothing branching off from it. I'm not sure. Just thought it might help. Thanks again.

[LucasBuck]

Also, the VCD works fine with WinDVD. I'm thinking it must be something with the player itself, since I've tried with tsvc and VCDEasy and gotten the same results. But it must be something to do with any menu that has something branching off from it, since that second one always seems to work. If anyone can confirm that this sounds like a player problem, I'll try going to get another one and test it. Thanks again.

[Riccardom]

I have the same problem with my Pioneer DV-444 and the menu generated with VCDEasy or TSCV.
The screen remains black or contains the last frame of movie where I pressed Return.
Menus generated with Nero or Ulead MovieFactory work well.
For custom menu to be used with VCDImager I found that TMPGEnc works but:
- version 2.0 can create an MPEG from Jpg, Bmp in VCD or SVCD format (the default templates) and it works well;
- version 2.54: I had to create a template with the right screen size and a CBR compression with 12000 as bitrate, otherwise the file would come out too small, with a very poor quality.

Hope this helps.
Riccardo