VCD Menu with audio in VideoCD 2.0 Toolkit ???!!!

[flipper]

Sorry to bather everyone if this has already been discussed in another forum.

I 've been trying to add audio to my VCD menu that I'm creating with Philips VideoCD 2.0 Toolkit v1.0:

I downloaded an episode of Dark Angel from the net and turned it into a cool interactive VCD, with a main menu and a chapter menu. I think I figured just about everything out, but I can't get the audio option with my menu to work. I've tried about 15 (!) different mpeg1 layer2 audio encoders (including TMPG, bbMPEG, Adobe Premiere and I even tried Cdex, as suggested in several posts), but none of them produce an mp2 (mpeg1 layer2) file that is accepted by VCD2.0TK as a valid audio mpeg file (most of them do, however, create acceptable files for the VCDMUX program) !! Adding audio as a .wav file or .aif file doesn't work either, because they are inserted as a CD-DA file (red book) and cause an error when building the image.

Then I came across an article on the http://www.icdia.org page that stated:

"Elementary streams may be imported into the Mac VCD 2.0 Toolkit only. The PC VCD 2.0 Toolkit requires audio-only/video-only streams and MPEG stills to be
multiplexed prior to being imported." (MULTIPLEXED WITH WHAT ??????, USING WHAT PROGRAM ???????)
(check out http://www.icdia.org/cdprosupport/vcd/vcd2x/vcd_audio.htm !!!)

(maybe the elementary audio-only feature was supposed to be included in version 2.0 of the PC version of the program ??)

Well, anyway……I then tried to mux a .m1v file (created of a .bmp file, 704x480, converted to an mpeg1 file by tmpgenc) with an .mp2 file, but of course this wasn't accepted by the VCDMUX program included with the VCD2.0TK (..DUH !), because the .m1v isn't compliant with the VCD 2.0 specifications. I lowered the resolution to 352x240 and the muxed result was actually accepted ! (in my case the VCDMUX program accepted just about every video/audio combination, as long as the audio file is LONGER than the video file, and both comply to the VCD specifications!!!).
It even created a working VCD !!

So now I've got my menu with background audio working, but not at maximum resolution !!!

I can now produce VCD's with audio featured menus at a resolution of 352x240/288, or a menu with 704x480/576 resolution WITHOUT audio !!

I haven't figured out a solution to this problem (maybe there isn't one ?), so if there is anyone that did, please let me know.

Thankx,
Flipper.

[zed]

Hi,

I would be really interested in seeing your project file (just the layout - no assets)for this as I am trying to do somthing similar any chance of emailing me a copy and maybe between us we can resolve the other issue?

snake@hell.epinet.co.uk

I would appreciate it

Regards

Zed

[patrickm]

you just multiplex it by itself. use the VCDMUX that comes with Toolkit. it adds the correct headers to the audio-only stream. it doesn't need video with it. i've been trying this for a while and it seems to work on software but not on my pioneer dvd player. the audio is choppy, but i don't know why. it may be below the player's min bitrate, but then again when i drag the audio-only .mmd stream into winamp it's choppy too.

[RFontenot]

Flipper,

If you are using CDex, you need to use the internal MP2 encoder. The encoder settings should be:

MPEG-1
224 Kbps
On the fly encoding
Stereo
VBR=none
Everthing else unchecked
Press F9 to extract the selected CD track to a MPEG file.

Run the resulting MPEG audio file through VCDMUX to add the the correct headers, and viola!, you'll have an .mmd MPEG audio file that Toolkit will accept.

RF

[RFontenot]

patrickm,

I have the same problem with MPEG audio in menus sounding choppy with my DV-C503 Pioneer player too. If I play the .dat file VCD2TK created directly from the VCD on my computer, it sounds fine. On my Pioneer, though, it sounds awful.

I guess it must be a problem with Pioneer players.

RF

[justice]

well i'd like to know where you got videoCD toolkit. you download it someplace? or have a manufactuer link? sounds like a nice editing program...

-nick.

[zed]

Here is the link to the download page

http://www.icdia.org/sw_pc/vcdtools.html

Zed