Please help before I slash my wrists!!

[Wally_D_Warlock]

I will try to give you as much info as I can: I have wasted a lot of CD's trying to burn a VCD. I have used Premiere 6, Pinnacle Studio 6, and a few others to edit and Nero 5.5.9.0 to burn. I have followed all advice on this site and read countless books. I NEVER get any error messages when burning. I am using a HP 4x burner and trying to play it on a JVC DVDPlayer that tells me it can play VCD's. The player cannot read the disc. and sometimes it says there is No Disc.
I have 2 questions: 1. Do you have to have a menu in order to read the disc? 2. What is the dir supposed to look like? I imagined a single file but I have 5 subdirs:- CDI, EXT, MPEGAV, SEGMENT, VCD. Is this normal?
If you cant help can you point me to somewhere that gives detailed help.

BTW I bought Nero and I have never seen a manual as bad as the one packaged!!!!!

[mats.hogberg]

I keep banging this drum, over and over: Don't use Nero to author your VCD's! VCDEasy gives U a much higher degree of control, and has so far never failed in creating a VCD that my stand alone DVD player accepts.

/Mats

[danib666]

you say your player supports VCD but does it support cdr/cdrw's?
check here http://www.vcdhelp.com/dvdplayers.php

[theDruid]

Wally_D_Warlock,

I think danib666 might have just beat me to it - but have you tried more than one type of CD-R?

Do your VCD's play on your PC (as VCD's - not by selecting the files on the disc) Can you try them out on a friend's standalone?

Some CD-R's (especially cheap ones) are terrible for VCD's, although they may be fine for music/data etc..

cheers,

mcdruid

[Wally_D_Warlock]

My DVD plays CDR and CDRW without any problem. I have tried a few different brands of CDR, at the moment II am using TDK Gold but I have tried Sony and a few others. I downloaded VCDEasy and tried it. I got an error in the simulation saying to change the setting in the Force Driver to generic-mmc. Does this mean my HP CD-Writer+8000 can't burn VCD's? I tried changing the setting but got the same error message.

[Poplar]

I happen to have the same HP 4X burner as you do, which is kind of obsolete. This is what I found out:

1. Nero is fine. Be sure you have the right setting.

2. The maximum file size this burner can handle for one CD is 775 MB. Files over this size will not be burned correctly or failed completely.

3. VCDEasy is the King of S/VCD authoring/burning. To have it work properly, get ForceASPI from doom.org and install it. You may have to install it manually since BAT file comes with it doesn't work right. Once ASPI layers are installed, VCDEasy works flawlessly.

[drewson99]

your dir sounds proper, yes those sub-folders are supposed to be there, yes, all the ones you mentioned. I would try to use VCDEasy and get a newer cd burner. (sorry about that last bit of advice)

[xed]

In order:
[1] First, you want to make sure that the problem is not simply your DVD player. A few DVD players won't play back CD-R VCDs, and the compatibility list on www.vcdhelp.com is good but not infallible.
So the acid test would be to pop the VCD into your computer's CD-ROM drive and use Windows Media Player to play it. If the VCD plays, then the problem is your DVD player. If Windows Media Player _won't_ play your VCD, then the problem is your encoding procedure.

[2] "Do you have to have a menu in order to read the disc?"

No. VCDs without menus play just fine. The VCD 2.0 standard allows, but doesn't require, menus.

[3] "What is the dir supposed to look like? I imagined a single file but I have 5 subdirs:- CDI, EXT, MPEGAV, SEGMENT, VCD. Is this normal?"

That is completely normal. It's exactly what your DIR structure for a typical VCD should look like. Check inside MPEGAV. You should find a set of files with names like AVSEQ01.DAT, AVSEQ02.DAT...etc. If you double click on these files, they should play on your Windows Media Player (assuming you have the proper file associations set up on your computer. If not, when the comptuer asks you "WHAT PROGRAM SHOULD RUN THIS FILE?" choose The Windows Media Player icon and double click it and WMP should pop up and play your MPEG-1 file.)

I must demur with those who claim Nero is not adequate for burning
VCDs. Nero does a splendid job of burning both VCDs and SVCDs for me, though admittedly VCDeasy does indeed offer considerably more control over the VCD creation process. But I cannot believe that the problem is the fact that you are using Nero, since many folks (including myself) have successfully used Nero to burn VCDs that work just fine.