New and XVCD question.

[Amethysque]

Hi, I've used this site as a reference but now realize I need some help, so this is my first post. (Not much Mac stuff out there in terms of burning discs)

Basically, is Toast 5 capable of burning non-standard vcd's? I noticed that many times it tries to convert mpegs that it considers non-standard. I was originally going to try SVCDs (looked difficult, and none of the programs seemed to work) and then rechecked my player and saw that it could play XVCDs. I have Cleaner 5 and was wondering, after encoding the mpeg-1, what do I do? Thanks.

[AntnyMD]

If you have a nonstandard MPEG file that Toast would like to re-encode, just use MissingMPEGTools to create an XML file, then CDRDAO CD-ROM XA files that you can burn in Toast to end up with an X(S)VCD.

[major]

BTW if you use ffmpegX to encode XVCDs it can output a .BIN which you can directly drop on Toast (VCD window) and it will accept it and burn it.

[Amethysque]

Thanks

[Tolly]

ok, im not too familiar with xvcd, what are the advantages of it and how is it better than regular vcd? and so u can just simply encode with ffmpegx to a toast ready file, no need for making xml any other steps? and one last question, what formats are supported for converting to xvcd? if someone could fill me in thatd be great, im just trying to learn! thanks alot.

[major]

ok, im not too familiar with xvcd, what are the advantages of it and how is it better than regular vcd?

Basically, xvcd means you use a larger image size and greater bitrate than vcd, so as it will look better. However not all DVD player support XVCD, or they support them just in some specific sizes and bitrates. To learn more about XVCDs click on the relevant "What is" chapter on the main navigation of this site.

and so u can just simply encode with ffmpegx to a toast ready file, no need for making xml any other steps?

yes

and one last question, what formats are supported for converting to xvcd?

if you talk about ffmpegX, the input file will be usually a DVD VOB file, or a DivX AVI file. However it can also take as input any of these: mpeg mpegts pgm pgmyuv ppm .Y.U.V pgmpipe pgmyuvpipe ppmpipe mp3 ac3 mpegvideo mjpeg s16le s16be u16le u16be s8 u8 mulaw alaw rawvideo rm asf avi wav swf au mov jpeg ffm (codecs: rawvideo h263 mpeg4 msmpeg4v1 msmpeg4v2 msmpeg4 wmv1 wmv2 mpegvideo h263i rv10 mjpeg mp2 mp3 ac3 pcm_s16le pcm_s16be pcm_u16le pcm_u16be pcm_s8 pcm_u8 pcm_alaw pcm_mulaw).

[Tolly]

okay thanks alot!

[Amethysque]

One more question, I made a .bin and dropped it into the toast vcd window, but it said that the bit rate wasn't a multiple of 2352 (?) or some other number like that. I have a Panasonic RA60, and the dvd compatibility list said that an XVCD of 2520 kbits/sec would work. What is the correct way to use ffmepeg and make this bit rate? The actual material is only like ten minutes in all, and I wanted to make it the best quality I could, but my player doesn't support SVCD or XSVCD.

[major]

2352 is not the bitrate but the packet size. bitrate can be set to anything your DVD player is able to support, like 2000 or less, or more. Are you using ffmpegX 0.0.2? it should create mpgs with the correct packet size for Toast (this was not the case in v0.0.1).