ez creator 4 is telling me that I saved my mpeg 1's in the wrong format. I made them in studio MP 10 and as far as I know there are no options to change the format... how do I save thenm correctly or if not.. is there anything I can use to convert them?

-- Geoff Blackham (gblackham@freeserve.com), March 23, 2000

Answers

Easy CD Creator 4 has an option that allows you to create your VCD even if your mpeg files do not strictly meet White Book specifications. Why don't you proceed with VCD creation anyway and see if that VCD will be playable on a set-top, which, after all, is what matters here? For example this is the bug with the Panasonic encoder-Nero combination. White Book specs allow for different forms of the audio stream; there are four such, with differing characteristics but all usable under the White Book umbrella: mono, joint stereo, true stereo, and two-channel. The last two are same, bitrate-wise and all, with the difference just about the header identifying one as two-channel and the other as true stereo. This identification was meant to be such that corresponding players will give the correct options on playback; but with players nowadays able to give all the combinations of ch 1, ch2, L, and R galore (most so with karaoke players) this has little meaning. Panasonic apparently codes its files as two-channel; Nero expects true stereo, and thus says Panasonic-coded files are unacceptable, but allows you to proceed anyway if you so wish, with the results perfectly playable on, say, a Pioneer DV525. Panasonic duly says its files are not Nero- compatible; we wonder why then they do not make them so, are at least give an option to choose between two-channel and stereo. Your MP10 captures straight to MPEG-1; be sure the files created are VCD White Book compliant, ie, audio, video, and total bitrate; resolution, frame rate; audio characteristics, etc. You can find these figures in the help of VCD Creator in Easy CD. Do they match what that MP10 creates?? MPEG-1 is still a loose specification and one can vary many aspects of it prior to capture; I'm sure that MP10 will have a VCD template.

-- EMartinez (epmartinez@yahoo.com), March 25, 2000.