I'm sure someone out there has the answer to this. I have several still jpg's that I'm trying to import and encode into MPG to create a video cd. The problem I'm having is everytime I try to do this with Xing Encoder it tells me that the picture is in use or was created with a hardware codec that is no longer on this machine. This is becoming pretty frustrating as Xing with there no phone support is useless..I have tried serveral different resoulution and im age sizes still the same error.. I did get it to work once trying to batch 25 stills into a file, when it played back only the first frame played..after that SAY'S IT COULD NOT LOAD THE JPG

-- r nadeau (spiderwb@mediaone.net), February 16, 2000

Answers

You may want to convert your pictures to another format (Like Bitmap) or you may need to reconvert to JPG.

(Other Note: If you have Windows 98, Paintbrush can handle JPG & BMP. You can also probably find some freeware app to convert it. try www.softseek.com for a conveter app)

Good Luck

-- Jay (jlinkhome@yahoo.com), February 16, 2000.

well I tried re-scanning my slides in the Ls-2000 nikon scanner to 342x240..that seemed to work better.at least some of the file are now working. still having problems though...I have 8 test scans that I'm using..three will encode with no problem..the rest all I get is a green screen even though there all scanned the same size and resoulution..when I try to do a batch scan..and play it back.the first two or three show fine, but the fourth stays on for 8 frames then does not do the rest odf the images..I really believing that I wasted $250.00 buying this Xing crap.

-- rnadeau (spiderwb@mediaone.net), February 16, 2000.

What are you guys importing still images into?

You need a program even like uleads cheap video studio in which you can load up stills on a timeline and add music and/or transitions and render direct to a mpeg vcd stream for burning. You can add titles, sub titles and turn out a far better more professional production than anything done with burner programs and the like AND at a reasonable price.

That process works and you have total control over what your doing. It is crap that stills done in an mpeg stream are not as good as those down with burning software as "high definition" stills. Hells bells one of you is talkin Nikon!

The ulead video studio 3 has a good encoder for stills, it does not make the grade with video but for stills its a good way to go, VS4 uses LSX encoding. All you need is to use big enough stills on the timeline to give quality at output, you will not get it from 352 x 240 as the original size. For stills only on the timeline you can use a size of 640 x 480 for the originals and encode them to VCD 352 x 240 NTSC direct from the timeline whilst you have a big jug of coffee and then you let the DVD player do the rest.

Its quite amazing how often you read on this site that people are trying to do something that is way beyond what they have available in software. Yet for VCD's you do not actually need all the bells and whistles of professional software, it often makes it easier, but in fact you just need to choose wisely AND accept any resulting limitations.

-- Ross McL (rmclennan@esc.net.au), February 16, 2000.

Ross McL is correct about Ulead VideoStudio 4; something cheap that can do something wonderful gets all the thumbs-up from me. However, I personally find that Panasonic still encodes slightly better, and so for video clips I first encode all my takes into VCD-compliant MPEG with Panasonic before taking them to VS4, but for the stills I use 640x480 BMPs or JPGs straightaways and include them in the timeline. During rendering the parts of the timeline that are already MPEG it doesn't much further re-render, touching only the stills, all judging by the time it takes for it to produce the final MPEG.

-- EMartinez (epmartinez@yahoo.com), February 20, 2000.

Well I tried the Video unlead studio 4.0 trial and it works perfectly took several stills ( demo only allows 15 sec mpeg clips) and created a mpeg file, transfered that over to adaptec video cd creator and created a single menu video cd..played perfectly on my panasonic dvd player even a higher resoulution that xing enoder will do. Xing's response to my problem was that I must have a bug and since there no further devlopment on that product I was out of luck.

great company to sell a worthles piece of sh*t. than tell me I'm on my own.. I in the process of getting a refund of the $249.00 dollars that cost me.. unlead studio on cost $99.00.. too bad according to my distributor as of friday there were 20,000 copies on backorder hopefully it will be released sooner than it's feb 28 date. Thanks for everybodies help on this problem

-- rnadeau (spiderwb@mediaone.net), February 20, 2000.

EMartinez hi,

Your the first person to mention on this site the correct size for timeline based stills in NTSC as 640 x 480 (4:3) and it seems that you may mix them with video. The 640 is compressed to 352 and expanded back to 640 by the NTSC DVD player.

In PAL it pays to make the stills the same size as the video frame (Dig 625 = 720 x 576), the base size in PAL is 768 and doing part of the compression to 720 external to the timeline certainly decreases the time taken since 720 to 352 is quicker than 768 to 352. You still need a very large cup of coffee though.

In NTSC it will not decrease the time taken by following the same procedure because 640 to 352 is going to take less time than a pre expanded 640 to 720 to 352. All interesting stuff.

-- Ross McL (rmclennan@esc.net.au), February 21, 2000.