I am new to VCD and movie formats, and have gotten myself confused trying to do a few simple things (I have read many posts on this board too).

My ultimate goal is to create a VCD of about 74 minutes of footage of home movies which I am compiling in Premiere (scanned in at 608x456). I understand the basic idea is to transfer it to VCD compatible MPEG1 format and then use a VCD software product along with a CDR or CDRW drive to press the CD (neither of which I have right now).

What I'm trying to do as a first step is create a MPEG1 file with VCD specs and see what it looks like before I continue any further. I've heard results can be good when done in a studio, but home-spun stuff can look funny, so I figured I'd test for myself. I am having problems, however. Do I need to resize my video in Premiere from 608x482 into a VCD compatible size first? Also, I tried using the BBMPEG program, but it gives me errors (maybe due to the different size), and I can't find an easy way to make sure it gives VCD "white book" format. I keep thinking there has to be an easier way. I would very much like to not pay any money just to test if this works, that is why I used the free BBMPEG, but it doesn't work for me.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

-- Matt Lewis (matty_lewis@yahoo.com), June 12, 2000

Answers

Matt some of your problems could be a result of the queer size, in NTSC you should really be using 640 x 480 as the final size on the timeline.

Be careful with bbMPEG, the latest version of it will not convert a still direct from the timeline, it only does so where there is a transition.

http://aussie01.freeservers.com

"doing it" gives some guidance on making stills work on a VCD. scanning is also discussed.

-- Ross McL (rmclennan@esc.net.au), June 13, 2000.