Best VCD Burner Software??

[xnofriendsx]

Hi.
Here is my situation.
Im looking for opinions on what the best VCD burner software for PC.
I work on Macs mostly, and Toast Titanium is really good for burning VCD's, but i cant get any software for the PC that matches Toast for Mac.
I have 48, 1.5 minute clips that are in MPEG format that have been created with a variety of programs (tmpgenc, toast, cleaner, procoder, etc) and when i drag them into Toast for Mac, they all will load and burn successfully.
but..
when i use programs like Nero and Easy CD Creator for PC, there is always and issue or its way more difficult to make the vcd compared to Toast on the Mac.
With Nero, unless all the mpegs are encoded just right, it will give an error and it wants Nero to encode them, and Neros encoder sucks.
With Easy CD Creator, it takes like 5 times as long as Toast to create a simple 48 track VCD.

Another thing..
When i use Toast, it displays the correct Track #.
#1-48
With Nero it says #2-49 and it throws things off. I need it to be exact.
Plus with Nero and Easy CD Creator, when i burn the disc, when i view it on a VCD player, it doesnt show the tracks. With Toast, when i click the next track, the Track # will show in the corner.

Sorry this is such a long post.
Hopefully someone out there can help me out.
Maybe just give some opinions on the best burning software for VCD's

thanks.

brian

[Cornucopia]

Let's break this down:

1st-Some background info on Toast. It creates only v1.1 of the VCD spec. It (if using v5+platinum) internally encodes from a valid QT movie (it makes its own decision about what is valid), or accepts Toast-ready/Whitebook spec MPEGs (ver5P also accepts just Whitebook spec). Since TMPGEnc, Toast itself, Cleaner, and Procoder all have Whitebook/VCD compatible templates, it is not surprising that these files are accepted.

Now-There is Whitebook compatible and then there's WHITEBOOK COMPATIBLE.
Most whitebook compatible templates have no trouble with the general Video + Audio specs:
*352x240/288 (HxV rez-NTSC/PAL) @ 29.97/23.976/25 FPS(NTSC/NTSCFilm/PAL)
*16bit @ 44100Hz - Mono/Stereo/Joint/DualCh
The problem is that some are more or less careful about bitrate-whether Video or Audio or the Combined Muxed rate. Also more difficult to determine settings: VBV, GOP composition, Packet & Pack sizes, UserData, etc. Often these are hard-coded with the template and not adjustable at all.

Believe it or not Toast is probably NOT as picky as VCDEasy, Nero, or EZCD about acceptable compatibility. Therefore I could see scenarios where Toast would accept a file and not Nero. Of course, if you do have the file EXACTLY to Whitebook spec, it should be acceptable to all programs.

Now, while Toast is v1.1 compatible (and so is EZCD for that matter), VCDEasy/VCDImager, Nero, VCD2Tk, WinOnCD, and most others are v2.0 compatible and are therefore more complex. This can be a good thing-more power and features, or bad-more setting to have to deal with.
You can set VCDEasy/VCDImager to act as v1.1 compatible and it will just have less settings/features.

Tracks-This is just Toast hiding some of the truth from you. ALL valid VCD's have their 1st track as a CDROM-XA ISO9660 Data track (so that you can see the mpeg *.DAT files using a regular filesystem), and subsequent tracks--2 thru 99 as MPEG sequence tracks. We won't even go into CDDA tracks.
What you are probably seeing is the track numbering change because of the v2.0 inclusion of the PBC (Playback Control). Check out Vitualis' VCDImager info website for examples of how to avoid this and when this is needed and when it's not. Needless to say, if you have 6 separate movies included on the disc, there is IN TRUTH 7 tracks with the MPEG tracks being 2-7. On ALL VCD's.

Encoding:
Sounds like you have a number of encoders to choose from. My recommendation: DON'T use Toast's or Nero's or EZCD's or any encoder that is included as part of the CD burner app. The only one acceptable on the mac that I have found is Heuris encoder-which is $$$$. Since you have used PC encoders I would recommend that you continue using (in this order) TMPGEnc, CCE, or Procoder. Quality is much better than the rest and speed doesn't suck either. If you find you would like to use Nero as your authoring/burning app, you can always choose "Turn Off compliancy" and burn anyway. It usually doesn't make too much difference to your DVD player.

To sum:
I like Toast alot as a general purpose Mac burner app, but it's too simplistic for VCD authoring. Too bad "VCDMaker" isn't really available anymore. It was very good at authoring v2.0 discs on the Mac. Try and read up on VCDEasy/VCDImager some more, and this site too. You'll be glad you did.

Scott