where can i buy videopack 4? cequdrat told me that they dont offer it anymore because ver.5 is coming out this summer i am told that it only comes with european versions of winoncd

thanks for any help

-- madunga (madunga@mailcity.com), February 16, 2000

Answers

Got told the same from Cequadrat and I have seen nothing yet.

I say go with Adaptec Easy CD Creator which everyone seems to get practically for free with all CD-R burners these days.

It's pretty easy to drive and once you sort out the little perks it's quite reliable to use.

-- Frank T (ft_aust@hotmail.com), February 20, 2000.

Hi

Forget Video Pack 4.0. Get Win On CD 3.7 Power Edition. It has features of Video Pack inside and it's from the same software company. I am surprise they didn't recommend this to you.

You can create VCDs with this software in two flavours. With or without menus.

Menus can be created from stills(with or without audio) or from mpeg files if you prefer that.

I have used WOCD ever since I can remember when Easy CD Creator went shitty a few upgrades back. Never looked back since.

Cheers NT

-- NT (i1x@nightmail.com), February 21, 2000.

Unfortunately, WinOnCD's authoring features leave out a BUNCH of VCD features -- most importantly, "return" location. Also, it treats every node like a menu node -- which is not what you need. For multi- level menus, you need a menu to select and play a video, then bring up another menu.

VideoPack 4.0 dies completely (as far as I can tell) when the menu structure gets too complex -- it just flat out stops writing the project file at the 64K limit. It *looks* like it's working, but when you save it, it just leaves out a ton of info. Has anybody seen this before? Does anybody know something else that might do the job for me?

-- chip (chipr@concentric.net), February 22, 2000.

WOCD may have forgotten to put a feature to use your remote control's return button but there are ways to workaround this, use the 'previous' or 'next' in the node to get back to the main or sub-menu.

If your intention is to have multi-level menus, what's the problem having sub-menus after the main menu. It gives the viewer more choices isn't it?

Most of the time I use a single-level menu with 4 to 5 selection items without any sub-menus. That is, button 1 link to video 1, etc. I guess that would be the case for most users too.

NT

-- NT (i1x@nightmail.com), February 22, 2000.

No disagreement, NT -- none at all. But think of this situation -- previous/next when you're on a series of menu objects moves between the various bitmaps. The return key is absolutely necessary at that point to "back up" a level.

I've got a customer with an extremely complex, multi-level interactive, and having the return is a MUST. With the bugs in VideoPack, i don't know what to do.

-- chip (chipr@concentric.net), February 22, 2000.

thanks for the info, i got VP4 and it crashes my machine if there is any other burning software installed where can i get WinOnCD 3.7? the place i was going to buy it from says that they will not get it for another month, and do you know if it will get along with other burning software?

-- madunga (madunga@mailcity.com), February 22, 2000.

Chip

some interesting comments there. How many layers are you talking of in this complex structure that VP4 will not handle?

-- Ross McL (rmclennan@esc.net.au), February 22, 2000.

Why not have a 'Return to previous menu Button' on the menu itself.

Example: Main menu > Sub menu 1 In Sub menu 1, you have two videos, so you put 3 buttons instead of 2. The third button brings you back to the main menu.

Just a thought.

NT

-- NT (i1x@nightmail.com), February 23, 2000.

Well, let's see. With VP4, if the project file gets larger than 64K, VP4 just stops writing it out. Try it -- make a series of menus with multiple selections, and watch how fast the menu structure fills up -- and when the project file gets over 64K, open it in a text editor and see what it looks like.

As for NT's comment about using a separate return button, that would be nice, but in this case, it just won't work because of the requirements of the customer .... owell ...

-- chip (chipr@concentric.net), February 23, 2000.

When the customer asks for something that cannot be achieved its a bit of a problem.

NT yes thats what I do in all sub menus every thing returns to the active menu and a exit option gets out usually back the the main menu.

All this begs the question what do the commercial people author in? VideoPack should still be in beta in my view, but its sold as "professional", hell it probably works OK on a Macintosh!!!!!!!!!! Never thought of that before!

The 64K failure point is one to watch out for. Thanks for the information.

-- Ross McL (rmclennan@esc.net.au), February 23, 2000.