Video CD Playback for CD-i 220. Can't make it work. Please help.

[ReddMcKnight]

Okay...I got it working in the past, but I've since forgotten how. So far, here's what I have tried:

-Converting Video Files to MPEG-I, then using VCDWizard, tried to make a 2.0 VCD using the proper CD-i Application Files.
-Using VCDGear to create bin/cue images, then used VCDWizard again, same settings, still didn't work.
-Tried using the Video CD Toolkit by Philips. Didn't work, as my system is 64-Bit.
-Tried using VCDEasy. Would not start, claiming Windows Media Player was not installed, even though it is.

If anyone has a way of making this work, please give me the steps I need to take to make it work. Thank you.

[Cornucopia]

Use vcdeasy in compatibility mode (xp or even 2k). IOW, emulation, or even vm. Can do similar thing for vcdtoolkit.
Remember these are 2k-era apps (or even pre-2k in the case of vcdtoolkit) and they need to "see" that era environment.

Have you ever successfully used these apps? Why vcd now?

I was a big proponent of (and quite expert with) vcd back in its day, but the time where it was useful and even relevant has long past.

Scott

[Ai Haibara]

As far as I'm aware, nobody's been able to get VCDEasy to work in anything better than XP, compatibility modes, tweaks, or not. You'll probably need to be running XP or lower (in a VM, or actual XP) to get it to work, with no exceptions.

[ReddMcKnight]

Use vcdeasy in compatibility mode (xp or even 2k). IOW, emulation, or even vm. Can do similar thing for vcdtoolkit.
Remember these are 2k-era apps (or even pre-2k in the case of vcdtoolkit) and they need to "see" that era environment.

Have you ever successfully used these apps? Why vcd now?

I was a big proponent of (and quite expert with) vcd back in its day, but the time where it was useful and even relevant has long past.

Scott

I've always had an interest in Retro Formats, so to say, but I can't recall if I ever used those apps, but I do know I got VCDs working at one point in the past. I'll see what I can do as far as getting them working and get back to you.

[ReddMcKnight]

I got Philips Toolkit working using a Virtual Machine, and after much trouble, I learned how to "mux" files so I could get them into the Toolkit, and the Toolkit DID accept the file, but now I can't get it to build. It keeps saying something about not accepting a .msc file as input.

[Marsia Mariner]

The few VCDs that I created several years ago, were authored with vitualis's Visual Basic GUI for VCDimager.

Supposing both the CLI-application and its GUI were 'properly-coded', they should work without problems under the post-XP versions of Windows.

Or at least I hope so.

EDIT:

oooops, you wrote:

CD-i 220

Looks like I wrote another useless post. Apologies.

[ReddMcKnight]

The few VCDs that I created several years ago, were authored with vitualis's Visual Basic GUI for VCDimager.

Supposing both the CLI-application and its GUI were 'properly-coded', they should work without problems under the post-XP versions of Windows.

Or at least I hope so.

EDIT:

oooops, you wrote:

CD-i 220

Looks like I wrote another useless post. Apologies.

It's okay. I appreciate ANY help. You never know what you may learn.
I think I'm getting somewhere now that I have VCDEasy working, as when I burned the CD, a VCD Startup Screen came up on my CD-i, but the Video itself didn't play, which leads me to believe I converted the file wrong. Is there a good free program for converting the file properly to a proper VCD Format?

[Cornucopia]

For encoding for vcd, I recommend an old version of TMPGEnc (e.g. v2.54). It can be used FREE for mpeg1 encoding (which is what vcd uses), and has fairly compliant vcd templates (though I've always tweaked them).

Vcdimager was great, and vitualis was a great contributor to this forum. If you dont care about manually creating the navigation xml, it's fine. When I was doing lots of vcd production & distribution and was creating fairly complex menu structures, I needed to graduate to a complete graphical authoring environment, and the best choices then were vcdtoolkit, vcdeasy, and cequadrat's (later adaptec) product (which I can no longer remember the name of).

Scott

[ReddMcKnight]

After much digging, I found a tutorial on this very site (it took forever to find) that taught me how to use TMPGEnc to encode a proper VCD MPEG1 File. Once I followed it, I finally ended up with a working CD Image and thus, a working CD. It's a bit of work to make this whole thing work, but was it worth it? You bet! I love when things work! Cornucopia/Scott, it was your first tip of using a VM to make this whole process work that got all this off the ground. You have my thanks.

For those who are curious, here's the aforementioned Guide:
https://www.videohelp.com/oldguides/tmpgenc

EDIT: I am DEFINITELY recommending this Forum to anyone who asks me for help in the future! I have a few friends who enjoy Laserdiscs and the like as much as I do.