VCDs with movies, stills and background music?

[gadgethead]

I am trying to make a VCD with...

1. Digital Stills
2. Short movies (avi's) (from my Canon V3/S230)
3. Background music

Nero lets me make a VCD or SVCD with digital stills and short movies, but NO background music.

Ulead DVD pictureshow lets me make a VCD with digital stills and background music, but NO short movies.

Is there an alternate application that allows all 3 that you may recommend?

I hear VCDEasy may be worth a try. Anyone with experience with VCDEasy?

[vitualis]

I see you actually did repost it...

The previous post is here: http://www.vcdhelp.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=125513

Regards.

[gadgethead]

VCDEasy (v1.1.1) doesnt allow for background music.

I conclude that NERO is much easier, but still doesnt meet my requirements of:

1. Movies
2. Stills
3. BACKGROUND MUSIC

[hp_lovecraft]

I've been using Microsoft Movie Maker Beta (free) to mix stills, movies, music, effects, etc.

In fact, I'm making one right now as a christmas present, and it looks pretty damn good. Its a mix of a few hundred stills, and about 60 or so video clips, with transitions, etc.

The quality is great, and it renders at lossless 720x480, which is better then any other video-mixing program I've used. However, the stills are stored as MPEG-video, so you'll have to make an x(s)VCD to keep them at that resolution.

Another problem- Its a beta and a 'little' buggy. (little by microsoft standards!).

nick

[vitualis]

Background music is impossible which is why VCDEasy doesn't do it.

Any program that actually claims to do high res stills with background audio actually muxes the mpeg is a non-standard / non-compliant way. As such, the discs don't work on many players. If you intend for your disc to be universally compatible, it is not recommended.

If background music is important, then you will have to encode your stills and music as a video clip. For standard VCD, it will look poor due to the low resolution.

It looks better on SVCD.

You could go the XVCD path but again, it is non-compliant.

I highly don't recommend you use Nero for menus / stills as it's authoring is buggy and doesn't work on some players.

Regards.

[Cornucopia]

What Vitualis said about VCD stills with audio being impossible is true in the strict sense. However, there is a way (not supported by all players) that gives the effect of VCD stills with audio (or background music if you want to call it that). This thread has been played before. Do a search here, or refer to http://www.geocities.com/mikk999/StillsWithAudio.htm.

This type of trick could concievably be done by other VCD authoring apps, but as far as I know, it isn't really-most are too template-based. That leaves VCD2TK, VideoPack4, and VCDImager (and friends) the only ones that utilize the full spec of VCD where you could do this trick. And obviously the VCDImager path is the cheapest and, now, most documented.

BTW, other threads have been asking alot lately about VCD stills w/ transitions (low-rez video really) vs. true Hi-rez stills (no transitions except cut). Here is the compromise trick:

Take your pix and load them into Premiere (or similar).
Drop them one after the other onto the timeline.
Drop your fav Transition FX onto each edit point.
Select just the duration of each transition, each in turn, and export just that clip-NOT the whole timeline.
Encode each clip, along with silence or your fav SFX wav (same length of course), into MPEG1/VCD muxed video.
Author your project so it looks kinda like this order--
T1:S1:T12:S2:T23:S3:T34:S4
...where T is the transitional video and S is the still-possibly infinite length!? You won't notice so much the lack of resolution during the video transitions, because they go by so quickly and you are paying more attention to the effect. I've also got another card up my sleeve I'll write about later that includes a background music component along with infinite wait Hi-Rez still. Hint: Multi-default. Try that, NERO/Ulead/EZCD/etc.!

Scott

[vitualis]

What Vitualis said about VCD stills with audio being impossible is true in the strict sense. However, there is a way (not supported by all players) that gives the effect of VCD stills with audio (or background music if you want to call it that). This thread has been played before. Do a search here, or refer to http://www.geocities.com/mikk999/StillsWithAudio.htm.

Yes, you can do it this way... I think it is even compliant (though poorly supported). However, you can't have multiple stills go by with the same audio.

BTW, other threads have been asking alot lately about VCD stills w/ transitions (low-rez video really) vs. true Hi-rez stills (no transitions except cut). Here is the compromise trick...

Good idea. I've done this a few times for "bridging animations" between menus on VCDs. There are a few disadvantages though... If you have a player with a slow drive mechanism (thankfully, not most DVD players), it can take a (irritatingly) long time (1-2 seconds) between transitions (e.g., my stand-alone VCD player).

Another disadvantage is that on some players, it won't "seamlessly" display the high res still --> anim --> next still. Rather, it's more like: high res still --> blank/black screen --> anim --> blank/black screen --> high res still.

Not a big issue for a few menus on a VCD but it can become irritating on a photo sequence...

I'm mildly intrigued by how you intend to use multi-default menus with a photo sequence... Low res video sequence of photos + multi-default to go to high res still??

Regards.

[Cornucopia]

That's the gist of it. Kinda like a multi-angle DVD in a way. Wasn't going to divulge until I had burned a good sample first, though.

I hear what you're saying about player smoothness & glitches/delays with transitions. There's still way too much variabilty in hardware capabilty.

Question: If this were SVCD, how might selectable subs enter into a photo/menu slideshow? Sorry, I just like pushing the envelope here. 8)

Scott

[gadgethead]

Hmmm,

It all sounds complicated.

All I needed was something like Ulead DVD Picture Show with the option of dropping in a directory of MPGs in a separate folder. We can call this "slideshow #2", where "slideshow #1" was the jpgs with the background audio. So, when you click 2 on the DVD remote, it will cycle through the moveis you have there and when you press 1, it will cycle through the jpgs with the background audio.

I dont understand why the software doesnt allow this.

I will try "Microsoft Movie Maker" as it sounds easier.

[gadgethead]

Microsoft Movie Maker Beta 2 does not show the jpgs in high res. Is there a way we can force it to? Otherwise, its a promising package.

What about Nero Vision?

[vitualis]

Question: If this were SVCD, how might selectable subs enter into a photo/menu slideshow? Sorry, I just like pushing the envelope here. 8)

Scott

You could use it as a form of written commentary I suppose. For example, the date, time, location, etc., but not have it physically on the picture to ruin the image...

How to do this is a little bit beyond my knowledge but I presume that one of the subtitling tools would be able to do it.

Regards.

[gadget]

I use vegas video to do all these home made movies or jpegs with background music, effects, you name it on one video file and then I use Ulead Dvd Movie factory to burn my vcds/svcds/dvds with menu. Go to sonicfoundry.com to find out more. They also have a forum and people there are very helpful.

[gadgethead]

anyone?