Can you play VCD with a MPEG-2 decoder card? I think those cards are primarily for playing DVDs but I am not sure if they can play VCDs as well.

-- Luan Au (luan.au@uk.fid-intl.com), October 07, 1998

Answers

I have sony 5x DVD drive, I couldn't run VCD. I have ATI xpert 98 video card. When I put VCD into dvd drive, I couldn't read any files in the disk why? Can anybody suggest me an answer!

-- ANAND (ANAND123@AOL.COM), October 12, 1998.

The answer is "probably" -- DVD drives are backward compatible with CD-ROMs, so they should be able to read VCDs, and MPEG-2 decoding chips should be able to handle MPEG-1. But it sounds like at least one person's tried it, and it didn't work. Anybody else?

I'm thinking of buying a DVD drive, so I may be able to try it out in the near future. If I do, I'll post another answer here.

(I'm not sure if DVD drives can typically read CD-R or not. I'd guess that they should be able to -- if not, you'd need to keep your CD-ROM drive around to read CD-Rs.)

-- Russil Wvong (rwvong@geocities.com), October 19, 1998.

I have a Creative Encore DXR2 DVD-ROM and MPEG2 decoder card, and I can run VCDs fine. In fact, my DVD is much better at reading bad CDs (written CDs, CDs from the front of magazines, etc.) than my ordinary 32x CD-ROM (Diamond Data)

-- Travis Beesley (icq12890384@yahoo.com), November 14, 1998.

My DVD-Rom drive is 2X toshiba and can read cd-r discs. I am going to get the BUZ capture card and capture video from my hi-8 camcorder then convert to MPEG-1 for VideoCD from my CD-R drive. I will find out if my DVD-Rom drive will read my homemade CD-R/videoCD sometime later this week. If you set your Mpeg-1 clips for 704 X 480, will the videoCD be twice as good quality? OR is 352 X 240 the only resolution VideoCD's can be as.

-- Todd Bunner (bunnerct@usfmail.sf.edu), November 22, 1998.

Well, I bought the Creative Labs PC-DVD Encore 2X kit (with Dxr2 Decoder) a couple days ago. It plays DVDs fine, but unfortunately it doesn't play my PAL-format VCDs properly: it cuts off the bottom of the image.

If anyone knows of a way around this problem, please let me know!

-- Russil Wvong (rwvong@geocities.com), December 08, 1998.

According to the white book specification, CDVs can only handle 3 formats : Film 352*240 29.976 Hz NTSC 352*240 29.97 Hz PAL 352*288 25 Hz

And I have a problem with that, Easy CD Creator Deluxe can't recognize others formats. Is it any way possible to convert other format to one of these ?

-- Sothavath AN (san@adobe.com), December 30, 1998.