I would like to know whether including the Autorun feature (enabling files in the root directory) on a VCD would affect it's "white book" compliancy, and in particular, would it still play on DVDs, VCDs, CDi's, and Sony Playstations in addition to computer CD drives without any problem? I heard that stand-alone playback devices simply ignore any extraneous files in the root directory but I would like to varify this.

Those of you who buy commercial VCDs and play them on computers: Do they autoplay or do you have to go fishing for the movie in the Mpegav folder?

-- Frank Marshall (new_wave@one.net.au), June 07, 2000

Answers

Adding an extra file to a VCD wouldn't affect it's ability to play on a DVD, PSX, CDi, etc. Just make sure you add it to the VCD layout with software that will let you modify the layout (ie, Nero v4+), because if you use Adaptec Easy CD to burn the VCD and don't close the disc, but add another file after the burn, you will get errors when playing on some CD-ROM drives (though the ones that I did only gave errors on a few PCs, but not on my PSX). That is due to the disc being multisession. Also, some VCDs come with a built-in autorunning VCD player that start the movie when you put in the disc, you do not have to look for the AVSEQxx.DAT file in the MPEGAV directory. I believe the player I've seen in those VCDs is called the Sony VideoPress Player.

-- Mr.Ian Roswell (cyberlien51@juno.com), June 08, 2000.

Thanks Ian,

Good to know the extra files won't interfere with VCD compliancy. I didn't really want to put a VCD player on the CD though. I was hoping to get the .inf file to just open Media Player on the host machine and load the .dat file off the CD. I'm doing some research on the web to try and find out how to do this but I'm not a code cutter and so far it's a bit confusing!

Thanks again.

-- Frank Marshall (new_wave@one.net.au), June 13, 2000.