VCD work flow

[jAY-R]

I've been authoring dvds for awhile but am a vcd newbie. Whats the best workflow with FCPro 3, Cleaner, Toast etc to play with?

I 'm woking with PAL footage and I've burnt a vcd from FCPro timeline which now has black bars down the side since being exported. Can I avoid this? Is it better to use cleaner to make .mov's or .mpg's and then use Toast? If yes what should I convert my 720 x 576 movies too?

How do I make tracks so I can skip on the VCD? I've look at the help articles but I cant see how to add markers on a mac. Will I need to make each section a separate .mov and then bring it into toast to make markers?

Can MacVCD X help with any of this other than playback?

Thanks for any info it will help me alot,

Cheers,

-jAY-R

[Ender11]

Hi. I hope I got it right you are talking about VCD, not SVCD. I have just managed to get a good result (and I have tried MANY ways in the last few weeks using also many hints and tips I got here) by doing the following: don't read on if you not have access to a PC

1- FCP divide your film in separate tracks i.e. how you want them on your VCD
2- export them (in batch) to .avi files (scary but hang on.. I told you this was the only way I managed to get a good result) (DVPAL, colour, highest quality, 25 fps, no audio compressor, 44.1 khz, 16 bits, stereo)
3- use TMPGEnc on your PC to translate it to MPEG1 for PAL (use the wizzard and all the settings are correct)
4- transfer the MPEG1 files back to the Mac
5- use VCD builder to build a menu (at 4 you could opt for slapping the MPEG1 files in TOAST using the VCD option but this didn't give me a stable image result on my dvd player) and use the burn option, which invokes Toast in the multitrack XA mode.

This way you have a nice VCD with a nice menu and it runs very well.

Still a bit of a downer: in between tracks you have a little hiccup: a frozen frame for a second or so. You could mask this by creating individual tracks in FCP that begin and end in black (and no sound) so you don't notice this.
I have put a message out here (before I read this one) to ask if anyone has a solution to that.