Both can and cannot burn VCD's - weird!

[exile183]

I'm having a strange problem and maybe somebody here can shed some light on it (I've looked all over, including all over this site, for help and can't seem to find it).

I've got a few MPEG files here that are VCD compliant that I wish to burn to CD-RW (or CD-R) discs. I both *CAN* and *CANNOT* do this.

I have two setups here. The first machine is running Windows NT 4 with Easy CD Creator version 4, and an older Ricoh 6/4/24 burner. The second machine is running Windows 98 SE with Easy CD Creator version 5, and a fairly new Plextor PlexWriter 24/10/40A, which is one hell of a nice little unit (for the most part).

Here's my problem: VCD discs (regardless of media type) that I burn with the old Ricoh/EZCD4 combination play just fine on my Panasonic DVD-CV51 player. But if I then try to make a VCD using the very same source files, on my other machine (Plextor/EZCD5), the Panasonic won't play it. It goes through the "logging in the disc" procedure, and then just stops - displaying the playing time of the disc on the display but refusing to actually play it.

I can't figure out if the problem is with the Plextor burner or the Easy CD Creator 5 software. The thing is, from everything I've seen here, nobody else is having a problem with either this hardware or this software.

So I'm stumped.

Anyone got any bright ideas?

Before anyone suggests just giving up and using only the Ricoh, the problem there is that it has a relatively high coaster rate - if it detects any problem at all with the write, it just stops. The Plextor does a much better job and has never yet coastered a disc on me (and I've burned well over a thousand discs with it).

Any assistance would be greatly appreciated.

Joey in Calgary[/list]

[vitualis]

Have you tried anything else (e.g., using Nero or VCD Easy)?

If you have a DVD player that can only marginally read a CD-R disc, sometimes, subtle factors like burn speed and the burner model can have an effect on the readability of the disc.

Regards.