VCD menu disappears suddenly

[asura]

I'm having problems with the vcd's I am making. I'm using Nero Ultra 6 burning software. I put in 3 short films on 1 vcd, and make a picture menu with title a picture selected from the mpeg. After I burn it and put it in my DVD player, the menu will flash on the screen for less than a second, see a rainbow bar at the top of the screen and then turns plack. PCB is already automatically initiated. The VCD works, but I just cant see the menu.

Due to sizing of the avi, when I convert the file, it stretches and fills the screen, and I lose subtitles. When I burned it with nero at the standard conversion size, the menus worked fine. Now when I convert with TMPEG and tell it to center on the screen at 336x192, the menu flickers on the screen and disappears. I've tried making menus with just a title too, and has the same problem. For some reason it works fine on my DVD-ROM but when I place it in my DVD player, I get the problem and if it worked before, I must be a file problem?

Anyone know what the problem is and how I fix it? I could always skip making a menu, but I like to give my projects a little more professional look when I watch them.

[mambojambo]

hi, I recently tried to make a still menu. (the last time I did a VCD menu was using video mpeg files). I adapted the methods from the VCDEasy web site on making photo cds to create my still menus. The only problem I experienced was that the menus I made will just flash for a split second on my DVD player before disappearing into a blank screen.

I spent a few hours figuring out the problem. It turned out that the problem was in the rsolution of the picture encoder. By default it was set to high in VCD Easy. After encoding into low (352x288 instead of 704x576), the menu worked perfectly fine.

My question is,
Why don't the menus work when encoded into high resolution? I read everywhere in this forum and also on the Internet that VCD2.0 supports high res stills. My DVD player supports VCD2.0. I tried on other DVD players (new ones) and they behave the same. Hope that some of you gurus out there can suggest to me how to fix this. Perhaps I missed out something which wasn't mentioned in any of the guides on VCDEasy to enable high res photo CDs.

Thanks in advance!

[jman98]

I am guessing here, but I think the problem is that you are assuming that valid resolution for stills is also the same for menus and I don't think it is. I think menus are required to have standard VCD resolutions. Stills are a separate class into themselves and the rules for them don't apply to menus.

[Cornucopia]

Where did you get that one?

I've been doing VCD's w/ PBC for quite some time, and I've never heard that.

Menus are a "state", not an asset. Menus can be comprised of Stills or Video (you have to use video for the "auto default" capability).

Also, the HiRez stills that are made via VCDEasy's MJPEG tool should in actuality be dual-rez (both HiRez and LoRez muxed together).

Note: VCDEasy and MJPEG tools understand that there are some players that can't play these stills correctly. They have an "alternate encoder". Maybe that's what you need to use...

Scott

[mambojambo]

Thanks for the replies guys!

Cornucopia,
If the HiRes stills made in VCDEasy comprises of two streams, then its definetely player compatibility I suppose. What a waste. Btw, where can I get this alternate encoder?

[Cornucopia]

Comes with VCDEasy. You choose which one to use when you run the installer. Which version of VCDEasy are you using? Maybe it's been added only on recent Commercial version...


Scott

[mambojambo]

I think i get what you're talking about. Its the alternative encoder for Pioneer players only. I'll give it a shot soon.

[Cornucopia]

Yeah, that one. Although, it's actually for "Pioneer, and other non-compliant" players. Or, then again, maybe it's because they're RIGIDLY compliant. Hard to say on that, as the tools are all reverse-engineered. Anybody want to try the Philips VCDToolkit and see how the various players read those stills? You gotta know those should be compliant (as they wrote the spec).

HTH,

Scott

[mambojambo]

Ok, I used Philips VCD kit and I think I've managed to create a VCD that shows up a high res menu on my DVD player. Okay, now I have another problem. My menus won't show up in Roxio vcd_play.exe which I included on my VCD as autorun. After my intro clip, it goes into my menu. But it shows only a blank black page. My video clips will start playing once I press Next on Roxio. I'm not sure where I went wrong coz I did create before a still menu using VCDEasy before this and it showed up on Roxio, just that there wasn't interactivity only. Well, at least it showed up!

Btw, does Roxio vcd_play.exe support hotspots?

Thanks cornucopia for answering my previous questions.

[mambojambo]

Okay, i figured out the problem again.

Apparently the version of VCD_Play.exe i downloaded off one of the threads here is an older version. I managed to get a slightly newer version which shows the menus and hotspots correctly.

Btw, where can I get the latest vcd_play version? Where's the official page? Roxio web site doesn't seem to have any reference to it. Is it no longer in production? If so what's the latest version known and available?

[Cornucopia]

Last one I know of is v1.2.1.33. Roxio never had it available seperately as a download or anything like that. Now that Sonic owns them, they'll probably be even more difficult to get info on.

I've tried a number of versions, so I can give you a little info on how compliant it is with the spec--although I haven't tested that latest version. PM me if you need more info. What version are you using right now?

Scott