I've been reading how to burn .mpeg's, but I have no luck with Nero. Whenever I select the vcd button and choose a .mpeg, it says unexpected file format...If anyone could tell me how to burn vcd's with Nero I'd appreciated it a lot!

-- (inf3ct3d@psyon.org), June 24, 2000

Answers

Im using Neros and it works fine. U must make sure that the bitrate is not to hight and that you have the video set to 352 X 240 and the VRB set to 150 useing panasonic mpg encoder.

-- todd (tewanko1@midsouth.rr.com), June 25, 2000.

I've been playing around with authoring a few video CD's and i think your problem might be not to difficult to solve (i'm having worse right now). Video CD's have a strict video and audio format that must be obeyed in Nero. basically you have three choices of resolution/framerate. and thats it. Anything else and Nero will fart about the format being unsupported. You have to change your video capture settings when making the MPEG1 (not MPEG2) file.

1. 352x240 (NTSC) at 29.97 fps,

2. 352x240 (FILM) at 23.976 fps,

3. 352x288 (PAL) at 25 fps

Also, I think your video bit rate should be 1,150,000 bits/s and the audio stream should be 224 kbit. I hope that helps. Your video capture software should let you change these things. If your MPEG is already done, but not at the right settings... well you're outta luck. Gotta recapture it.

good luck

Jason

-- Jason (adankj@ucs.orst.edu), June 25, 2000.

Nero will allow you to burn a non compliant file and you should always be be prepared to reset Nero to "compliant" after doing so or you may find your getting non compliant files that you know nothing about. Most players will play a non compliant file. If Nero chucks up, as you put it, then you need to read the fine print and see what it thinks is wrong. 2 channel sound, wrong data rate, MPEG2 instead of MPEG1 etc etc. I use VideoPack 4 and on some of my early stuff and with stuff from TPMGEnc it comes up with "illegal Packet" but it too allows the burn to continue and who cares so long as the file plays in the DVD player. The quality is not effected by the burner.

As far as the squares are concerned you really need to be sure your doing everything you possible can to reduce the effect. It seems these squares are an involved part of NTSC encoding and lots of people on this site use high levels of video or noise filtering, at the expense of image quality. Soft images are preferable to square blocks. I think a lot depends on your capture system, the encoder and the source material and above all you need to try alternatives using the same source material because no one can really give accurate advice for every situation. One solution to this has come from people like "Doug" who takes the trouble to capture at high data rates and re-encode, its all hard to achieve simply and at a price, no one remembers the time taken but the quality, yes!

I use a slow old 233mmx computer and a DV base but it takes me almost 40 times the length of the video to get a quality product that stands up against SVCD, yes 40 times, and yes I can do it in 13 times but its crap by comparison.

http://aussie01.freeservers.com

-- Ross McL (rmclennan@esc.net.au), June 25, 2000.

Ross

Your postings are always worth a read and your web site is great. Did you mention before whether you have made a SVCD with Nero?

Thanks, Al

-- Al Meikle (jumbotech@netscape.net), June 26, 2000.

Thanks

SVCD - yes but.... the story is on the site under "other VCD's" XVCD in my experience is far far better but I do not have a Pioneer 525 YET. You will note I have updated the site with some basic encoder settings and confirm that VBR must not be used for SVCD. Not even the 525 plays that smoothly, auto CBR was great in a 525 or on my philips 725 for that matter, but way below the XVCD in quality that I regretably cannot use YET.

-- Ross McL (rmclennan@esc.net.au), June 26, 2000.