I need help: i made vcd's with video pack 4: i put on the cd beautiful menu end one or more mpeg files that are the result of multiple files joined together with a program like vcdcutter or similar. The final result is good on a dvd player, where i can see the menus and the video has no problem, but if i play the cd on a philips cdi player, i can't see the menus and the movie freeze after some minutes of playing. Anyone can help ? Thanks in advance, Luigi

-- Luigi De Angelis (dean@mclink.it), September 09, 1999

Answers

The Philips CD-I format is a little different from Video CD format; the former is Green Book, the latter White Book. Commercially available VCDs include a directory in their file system with items in it to be recognized by a CD-I player; if this is not present, then that VCD will not be recognized by the CD-I player. So, when creating VCDs, you should check the box in the VCD mastering software (Easy CD Creator, for example) that asks whether or not you will intend to play the disc later on CD-I, as well as VCD players. But there is another problem here for you (actually a limitation): what I've said only applies to ver 1.1 VCDs (straight play through, no menus). If you create ver 2.0 VCDs (such as the type produced by Videopack), as a rule, CD-I players can't see (and therefore can't play) items in the segment directory of VCDs, where the menu items are. It may attempt to do so, but just stops. If you have any version of Easy CD Creator Deluxe you can search in the help files and find a statement that says "items in the segment directory cannot be read by CD-I players". :-))

-- EMartinez (epmartinez@hotmail.com), September 11, 1999.