Is it OK to use mono in stead of stereo on a VCD?

[bobotns]

Hi!

I want to make some VCDs with only one channel (96 kbps mono sound + 1278 kbps video). The VCDs work fine on the PC.

Will those VCDs work fine on DVD standalone players? has anyone had problems with such VCDs?

[vitualis]

This is definitely off-spec but if you have a DVD player, there's a good chance it will play. Why don't you give it a go?

Regards.

[lafamar]

For VCD compliant/white book basically these are the templates: Video-CD NTSC (MPEG-1 352x240 29.97fps CBR 1150kbps,Layer-2 44100Hz 224kbps) OR Video-CD PAL (MPEG-1 352x288 25fps CBR 1150kbps, Layer-2 44100Hz 224kbps.
I believe that all out of this is XVCD.
Changing sound and video bitrate settings I'm no sure you can play it in your DVD Player Unit. You must test it or verify compatibility list(go to "OTHER" on this page =>left side-red column and double click "DVD Players".
Good luck!

[bobotns]

I don't have a standalone player, I just plan to buy one, and I don't want to make VCDs that will not work!

The bitrate is no problem, since the total is 1374 kbps! (1214+160stereo and 1246+128j-stereo were accepted from Nero and they worked fine on the dvd player of a friend)

My question is: is it ok that the sound is mono? nero says that it is not vcd-complient, since he detected only one channel.

PowerDVD detected the burned CD as a VCD and played it fine.

I want to know if a vcd with only one sound channel will work without problems on a dvd standalone player.

[AntnyMD]

I've created VBR XVCDs with a video bitrate CQ 50, min 0, max 1150 with 96kbps mono audio and burned with Nero. I got the full film of Charlies Angels on one CD-R (80min) with a couple megabytes to spare. The 96kbps mono audio really kicks out the bass on my system. I play it back through the Dolby Surround filter, so all the dialog and music comes out the center channel, but the subwoofer makes up the otherwise limited mono signal. I've watched that movie a handful of times since burning the disc ... its currently my favorite xVCD actually.

It plays on my Apex 500 (no W, B, A etc), and my JVC 523GD.

[kinneera]

I thought the vcd 2.0 spec added support for mono...? Of course, you can always just encode it to standard at 224 stereo and it won't cause any problem. You can't hurt yourself by encoding more than you need.

[bobotns]

Please just answer my question:
Have anyone encounter problems by playing VCD with mono sound (only one channel! no dual channel and no double mono sound!) on DVD stand alone players?
thanks!

[kinneera]

I've captured mono VHS tapes and burned them to VCD, and they play fine. The audio track on the VCD is encoded as 224Kbps stereo, however, which is standard. The simple way of thinking about this is that it plays the mono through two channels, which doesn't really affect anything. The VideoCD 2.0 standard is supposed to support actual mono encoding up to 192Kbps, but you'll just have to test it on _your_ DVD player to be sure whether it works.

[bobotns]

I said I havn't a dvd player yet!
Can anyone test it for me (on a CD-RW for example) with those bitrates:
Audio: MP2 96 kbps Mono (single channel!)
Video: MPEG1 CBR 1278 kbps (352x288/25fps for PAL or 352x240/29,97fps for NTSC)
You may multiplex Audio and Video as Video-CD (non-standard) in TMPG under MPEG Tools.
Perhaps you kinneera?!
thanks!

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: bobotns on 2001-08-24 16:02:26 ]</font>

[kinneera]

Sure, it wouldn't be difficult to test it for you, but that will only establish that my DVD player accepts it, and odds are my DVD player isn't even on the market anymore (it's about 2 years old now). If you haven't even bought a DVD player yet, then you probably don't need to worry this much about it. Just make sure it says it can play VCDs, and that it supports CD-R/RWs, and it will probably be perfectly happy with those settings. Most players are very flexible with nonstandard VCDs these days, as indicated by users on this site anyway.