I have seen on older thread on this here, but no real answers.

I just got the Pioneer 525, and it plays back a CDR copy of a commercial porno VCD somone gave me (Christy in the Wild)

I'm not interested in VCD Pornos, but It's the only one I have for example. The Audio is there but low quality.

Anyway I was able to burn a Toast (version 3.5.5) VCD from Asarte Mpac files made with the default VCD settings, and default audio of 192 kbits, 44.1 khz. The files I mage into Mpeg1 came from DV with 48 khz audio, and iomega buz files (352x240 and 44.1 audio)

The VCD plays back fine on my Mac, with good audio. In My Pioneer 525 the picture playback is surprisingly good (though a tad darker than the orig files) but the audio is almost not there, either from the 48khz or 44.1 files)

I creeated a new Mpeg from 1 clip with different audio setting this time, 160kbits, mono sound, and 44.1

The sound is better but certainly not correct.

I am using Plain silver Compusa blanks. DOes anyone have any insight into this problem.

Off topic - Does Toast DVD really burn playable DVD's from a $700 burner?

-- Don Q (DonQ@unet.net), December 30, 1999

Answers

Sorry, this is not an answer but another person with the same problem. I too have a Pioneer 525, a Mac, Astarte M. Pack and Toast (Deluxe) 4.0. I wonder from reading around whether or not this is an issue with the Toast program or with the DVD player?

Anyone have a Pioneer 525 that will play original/burned VCD's with good audio? - this seems to be the big problem...

-- Jeff H (jhancock@hsc.utah.edu), January 31, 2000.

To use your setup, you need to start with a quicktime file. If you start with a MPEG file, the sound is not good.

-- Yos (Yos245@mail.com), March 08, 2000.

I have had good luck using Astarte M. Pact, Toast 3.5.7 and Editing Final Cut Pro. The key is that some Video CD, CD-R, CD-RW seem to troubles with playback. My discs play perfect in Philips brand DVD Players. (Even ones that don't say they support Video CD) The Pioneer DV-525 seems to be problematic with this set up. I did get good results out of a high end Sony DVD Player. Video looked the best on the Philips DVD players. Anxious to try out the Apex P

-- John Mortensen (mort@thinkatron.com), March 17, 2000.

You must use Toast 4.x.x together with Cleaner 5.0.5. It works perfectly for video and sound

-- mihail (mrp@wpo.mlsultan.ac.za), May 23, 2001.

Don't use Astarte Mpack, it screws up your mpeg1-file. It ain't compliant. Use Toast 5 or Cleaner 5 and burn it with Toast 5. That's the best way for creating VCD-mpeg's.

By the way, has anyone Philips VideoCD 2.0 toolkit for MAC ?

-- sander v/d knaap (vdknaap@wanadoo.nl), August 19, 2001.