Why menu files stay in different folds of VCD?

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Different VCD creators would put still menus to different directories. If you want a still image(menu.jpg, say) to be a menu in your VCD, you may create it with EZCD4 or VideoPack4:

1. With EZCD4: menu.jpg --> menu.mpg --> EZVCD4 --> XXXX.DAT in directory of MPEGAV of the VCD 2. With VideoPack4: menu.jpg --> VideoPack4 --> xxxx.DAT in directory of SEGMENT of the VCD

Can you pro's tell why? Can you have any approachs to put menu DAT files into the SEGMENT with EZCD4 or put them into MPEGAV with VideoPack4? Thanks.

-- RD (dingrose@hotmail.com), October 03, 2000

Answers

White Book VCD standards are specific about what MPEG files are allowable and in what directory they should be put on a VCD. Complete audio/video system streams complying with White Book specs (352x240/288, 1150kb/s video, 224kb/s 44/16/st/2-ch audio 29.97/25fps, etc.) are to be placed in the MPEGAV directory. Video only, audio only, or still MPEG clips (such as that would be needed for menus), or non-standard MPEG clips (as compared with above, within limits, for example those with audio that range from 0- 384kb/s, etc.) are to be placed in the SEGMENT directory by the VCD authoring application (not by you, really). All clips in the MPEGAV are named AVSEQxx.dat and all those in the SEGMENT directory are ITEMxxxx.dat. If you have a bitmap or JPG and you encode it to a White Book compliant-stream, that is NOT a still MPEG anymore and as such will be put in the MPEGAV directory. This will be like when you specify a still pic as a range of bitmaps to be encoded into MPEG in, say, Panasonic. There are NO stand-alone encoders I'm aware of that will take a bitmap/jpg and create a still MPEG file with it which will now necessarily belong to the SEGMENT directory of a VCD you will author. ALL current s/w encoders only want to create complete MPEG system streams that will all later end up in the MPEGAV directory. Still MPEG clip creation is mysteriously part and parcel of complete VCD authoring apps, such as VideoPack, WinOnCD, and the latest Nero, which will accept jpgs as they are and you will see these correctly as itemxxxx.dat later in the SEGMENT directory of your completed VCD. Heaven knows what Easy CD wants one to do when it asks for a still MPEG to be included in a menu-driven VCD layout, if that's the plan. You also have to know that Easy CD 4 has a nasty, unpredictable bug in which you know you created full audio/video White Book compliant streams but these later end up in the SEGMENT directory of your VCD, instead of in the MPEGAV, which your set-top player may or may not recognize.

-- Mehmet Tekdemir (turk690@yahoo.com), October 03, 2000.

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