VCD Authoring...

[Homeiss]

What are some good programs for making som good VCD menus?

[Truman]

Quite a lot: VCDImager (my favorite), Videopack 4, I-Author, VCD 2.0 toolkit (philips).

[vitualis]

GNU VCDImager!

This is the only one still in development with features being constantly added. It is also open source!

It is also the only one that is free and does both VCDs and SVCDs.

The only thing that is missing is a nice gui, but a few beta GUI frontends have popped up for VCDImager.

The other proggies are good too, but have their limitations.

Regards.

[RFontenot]

Philips Video CD 2.0 Toolkit!

This is a commercial quality VCD authoring program. It has all the features needed by multimedia professionals to create commercial VCDs. It's a Win16 application, which means it runs on every Windows OS from the original Win3.x to the current Windows XP.

It is also free, but only does VCD.

It has an advanced GUI which makes development of complex VCDs as simple as dragging and dropping assets into objects.

This one tool will let you create VCDs which incorporate MPEG-1 videos, MPEG audio, CD-audio, still pictures, multi-level menus, and PowerPoint presentations. Still images are automatically converted into MPEG stills with the correct aspect ratios.

It's limitations are: your imagination, only does VCD, uses DOS 8.3 filenames, and demands absolute compliance with the White Book specificiations for VCD assets.

There used to be limitations with what burner programs you could use, but problem has been addressed with a new utility that let's you use almost any currently popular burner program for burning your creation to a CD-R(W).

The Toolkit is a powerful program and while it can be used to create simple VCDs, it's probably better to use other programs for that purpose, such as Nero.

RF

[VideoBoy]

Can VCD Toolkit 2.0 do XVCDs ? I mean MPEGs with video rate of 1450KBPS and Audio of 224KBPS ?

[AntnyMD]

I'd love to see CDDA support applied to VCDImager. With that, I'd give up my current worship of VideoPack 4. I can live without MPEG Audio underneath my still images (although thats how I create menus in VP4). I still cant figure out menuing in VCDImager. When I drop in an MPEG still, the only thing that shows up on my television is a black screen (from which I can press "1" on my remote to start the movie).

[k5oz]

Try TSCV, this guy is really developing a nice GUI for VCDimager. It does menus/chapters, however, it is still in development, but almost there.

http://www.ttool.de/indexe.htm

k5oz, Dave