Need help...best way to go?

Okay, I must admit... I've become addicted to VCD... at least the concept anyway, as I have still yet to figure out the best way to go about doing this whole VCD creation thing.

Here's my dilemma.

I have a Pentium III 600 mhz Dell with a dial-up 56K modem (yeah, yeah, I know... I'm cheap).

I have a 16x 40x 10x cd-rw burner as well.

My main mission is to just create "backup" ;^) VCDs to add to my DVD home library, but am having trouble figuring out the best way to go for this.

I figure I have one of two options.

1) Buy a DVD-R drive so that I can rip my own DVDs to .avi and then burn those to VCD (I've got Nero).

2) Download already ripped .avi files and then just burn those to VCD. No more money involved from my end. I just have to live with the 40+ hour download times.

Option 1:
The problem with option 1 is that I do not have any additional IDE slots available, at least from what I can tell inside my PC, for the additional DVD-R drive. The existing slot that I have is taken up by the CD-RW burner. Since I don't plan on burning all the time, I guess it's conceivable that I could buy a cheap DVD drive, keep that installed most all the time, and then just temporarily swap it out with the burner when needed...sort of a hassle. I'm also cheap, so I'd rather not spend the additional cash on the drive, unless I can leave it in at all times.

Option 2:
I'm currently using Morpheus, and to be honest have not been all that impressed... at least with their video selection (I am impressed with their .mp3 selection). As for video, I have wasted my time downloading 4 separate .avi files so far... 2 of them have been CAM files (shame on the distributors), one of them has had sound with no picture (tried fixing it but couldn't... suspect problem with original file), and I could not get the 4th file to work at all. The only luck I have had so far is to download a file from http://www.divx.com and work with that. I noticed a post somewhere on this site that mentioned look for files distributed by a certain very reputable group (TNC? TMC? Can't remember what the letters were right now.) Anyway, I did a search on that group's name in Morpheus and didn't find anything.

Question I guess is... I'd really prefer to use option 2, since aside from the download times, it seems to make life much easier as far as burning goes, since some of the work is already done for me. It's just a matter of running the downloaded file through TPMG and then burning it with my Nero software. However, I am getting frustrated with my lack of success finding decent files.

Maybe it's my luck with Morpheus? Anyone have any recommendations on the best source of video downloads and the best way to find a reputable source (that TMC group???)? I also have IMesh on my pc at home, but have yet to give that a shot.

Any help would be MUCH appreciated!!!

p.s.
The only other problem that I'm having is getting a VCD to work on my Sony DVD player, but I'll knock that one out. I'm off to Office Max today to get some of the CD-RW disks that were recommended in the DVD forums. Hoping that will do the trick.

Need help...best way to go?

Thread Tools

Search Thread