Making VCD

[M3G4]

Hey guys!

I'm making a leaving-video for school because I'm in the last year of high school so I'm making a kinda yearbook/leaving video. Thing is, it needs to be Interactive (scene selection menus for the main feature video, and a little photo album) and distrubutable on a normal CD-ROM.

It needs to be compatible with Macs, PC's and DVD Players..

So, where would I start and how?

Would VCD/SVCD be a good place to start? Bear in mind that I live in the UK.. if that makes any difference...

The master CD needs to be done by the first week of April... please help

Thanks for your help

[dcsos]

Create your video stream in MPEG-1 from, I assume, your DV AVI capture file from your camcorder in one of the following programs:
Ulead Media Studio 5 or 6
Premiere 6.5
Vegas Video 3.0

I reccomend these programs as opposed to the freeware solution because they offer frexibility of editing the footage on a timeline

You need to know the VCD specs and output your work on the timeline into a compliant stream.
PAL is different from NTSC in frame size and rate.
You'll find those specs elwhere on this site, but these programs are reccomened especiallly because they provide a template or output pre-set for the correct settings.

Then, using
NERO, or EASY CD CREATOR
an entire productions that interleave menus with the mpeg-1 clips you prepare in the other programs can be generated
and Burned to CD ROM

VCD is playable on MAC if you stick to the specs.
DON'T OVER BURN, or VARY the BIT RATE and you'll be ok...

Good Luck

[vitualis]

Premiere is recommended for NLE video editing.

However, for the authoring of the VCD (i.e., menus, scene selects, etc.) I strongly recommend that you use a VCDImager based authoring system.

That is, either use VCDEasy or author the XML yourself.

If you want an idea on what can be achieved on a VCD in terms of interactivity, have a look at the Official VCDHelp.com PAL/NTSC Demo Video-CD. There older version (v0.3) is still available for download for free: http://www.vcdhelp.com/vcd

Regards.