Thanks to all for the information posted, I've learned a lot from you.

...but after my first VCD was burned, when launched with ATI MMC 7.1 VCD player it says: "This application does not support playback of Video CD 2.0 discs". Got same message with MMC 6.3 player also.

Now comes the full story of my first VCD authoring experience: I recorded with my AIW Pro about 160 minutes, split in 4 clips to avoid commercials, using very close to VCD specs and ME 100. Then I used TMPGenc 12d to overnight reencode for VCD and to split one clip in two, to fill two 80 min discs. Nero 5.5 accepted my first three clips, 76.5 min, only have changed the Volume Label in properties, then burned the disc and got the error at playback. I made another disc, using the same clips, this time with WinOnCD 3.7, with same final result. With MediaPlayer 7 the .dat files play ok on both discs, but ATI can not open that files.

I have no standalone player to test them now and no plan to buy one soon. Where I did wrong? Also i have planned to upgrade my CPU to start with SVCD, but i'm asking now, will they play on ATI MMC or is a waste of time/money?

Also I want to ask if somebody succeded with installing latest DirectX 8 ATI drivers on Win98SE (tried 3 times with clean Win, then worked on Me) and installing DVD4.1 by giving the code of a 633 CD (worked with 6114 borowed from a friend)?

-- Calin (calinux@go.ro), April 30, 2001

Answers

If Windows MediaPlayer played them okay then there is little to worry about: you most likely created a legit VCD. But VCDs are meant to be played primarily on stand-alones. This is the most reliable yardstick with which to measure whether or not your created VCD is okay. For example, you may have to tweak your ATI All-in-blahblah to play VCDs properly, so initially, as you're experiencing now, it's hard to tell if your VCD was incorrectly authored or your ATI MMC has an attitude problem or both. Plopping your creation onto a VCD player known to read CD-Rs instantly resolves at least one question. Lastly, if you do not want to get a VCD player, I suggest not authoring VCDs; just store the MPEGs as they are *.mpg in a conventional ISO9660 CD-ROM format.

-- Mehmet Tekdemir (turk690@yahoo.com), April 30, 2001.

You "may" have nothing wrong (as per the previous poster) I know something about the ATI All in Wonder cards. The VCD player currently available does NOT work with VCD version 2 which is what you are making. Only VCD-1. I don't believe you can make VCD version 1 with what you've got. And I don't think you would want to.

By the way. I'm curious why you do a long (several hour) re-encode?

The latest ATIMMC does have a true VCD profile. If you use that the resulting file will be fully VCD compatible. You cannot change ANY of the user settings when using that profile. Any change will result in you losing the VCD compatibility. Mostly the thing you may "want" to change would be the ME setting, which with the ATI VCD profile is very conservative. You CAN make your own true VCD profile, with it's ME set at the highest your processor can take. The resultant VCD quality will be very dependant on your source. The better the source the better the MPEG. Of course it won't be AS good as the TMPGenc final output. But then it also will take you 0 (zero) time to encode.

I've found the VCDs done that way to be perfectly acceptable for playback with my stand alone DVD player. Before switching to SVCD, I had authored hundreds of VCDs with the ATI AIW (I'm using the older AIW 128 32mb which now has new drivers and MMC 7.1)

-- Rich (rich@pcphotovideo.com), April 30, 2001.

The VCD is ok, it works on MMC 6.3 VCD Player. Looking in the help of the two VCD Player releases, anyone can see (and must believe) that MMC.6 supports VCD 2.0 and MMC.7 only VCD 1.0 and Karaoke. It is strange they included a recording template for VCD in V.7 and screwed the player. This "enhancement" of MMC 7 goes in the same "no backward compatibility" as VCR 1-2 avi, but for this and the jerky avi / divx picture I think not only ATI is to be blamed, but some guys in Richmond too....

What do you think if in two-three years from now also the stand-alone device manufacturers will drop VCD or SVCD out of their products? Progress is life, but too many standards are changing for a life-time.

-- Calin (Calinux@go.ro), May 01, 2001.

I have burned VCD's and SVCD´s with Nero. Ati MMC don't read them but my standalone DVD player does. In order to make SVCD's I encode the videos as "custom" (MPEG2, 480X480, NTSC, etc.) and turn the files SVCD compliant using TMPGenc. Hi8 videos look great! The "Menu" feature of Nero 5.5 is nice.

-- A. Escobosa (escobosa@yahoo.com), May 06, 2001.

i have the same problem i phone to ati and they told me that MMC 7.5 is coming to solve this and other problem with directX8 and windowsME

-- jim (ribmag@internet.gr), May 09, 2001.

I had a similar experience.

Can someone tell me why in God's name would ATI creat a VCD that ATI itself cannot read, all this Incompetence for $300.00 (radeon)?

I emailed ATI to complain, and got no reply back.

-- paul obembe (paulbee@hotmail.com), May 25, 2001.

Use a different player. InterVideo WinDVD might work for you. I get the same message with ATI but WinDVD plays SVCDs for me as well as the MPEG2 files from the hard drive. I think it includes MPEG1.

-- Donald J. Couture (COUTURE@NDU.EDU), June 07, 2001.

ATI MMC 7.1 can't play commercial VCD's, I have to use the "File Player" application. ATI screwed up bigtime with MMC 7.1!!! What happened to the AVI editor? What happened to manual tuning the TV? Why is VCD not quite VCD? Why is the sound and video out of sync when de-muxed then muxed?

-- robertsradios (allradio@freenetname.co.uk), July 23, 2001.

As usual in this times, the hardware does'nt survive enough to see his software evolution. With MMC 7.1, ATI started a never ending improvement process. We liked better if ATI succedeed this process before to sell-us the videocards!! I think that is necessary to continue asking ATI customer support for better and newest solutions of (their) problems and incredible sw-bugs . (Sorry for my bad english... :-))

-- Piero Spinelli - Genova - Italy (tizpie@inwind.it), September 26, 2001.

I got the same problem: will not support VCD 2. I paly the file in "File Palyer" where I get video but no sound. These are commercial files that worked fine with my older ATI card/software combination. I also get no sound with WM6/7 on the same files which DID work before upgrade. I wil try another player for VCD but this is getign me mental. Any ideas would be appreciated...

-- Ivan Miletic (miletii@cis.mcmaster.ca), September 28, 2001.

Great, I'm not doing anything wrong making VCD's I have been pulling my hair out, thinking I'm making mistakes making my VCD's. Thanks to everyone who wrote in

-- Paul Harrison (ksakivi@sahara.com.sa), October 01, 2001.

Power DVD Software can playback SVCD pretty good. SVCD Playback is not possible, as of yet with ATI VCD or File player.

-- Thomas Duboise (sabu2421@aol.com), December 21, 2002.

I upgraded my AIW to AIW 7500 lately, installed MMC 7.5 VCD player plays only Karaoke VCD but not movies VCD. My previously MMC 7.1 shown a messages "...no support VCD2.0..." but the newer MMC shows no message and shows no visual either... Any suggestion is welcome.

-- Stanley S (ypseng@pc.jaring.my), February 09, 2003.

I have ATI All in Wonder 128 on Win 98 can record TV and Video in but on play back there is no sound. Have checked and re checked everthing but still no sound. While recording the clip, the sound is there. Please Can anyone Help. Leao. Padman

-- Leao Padman Dunedin NZ. (teddya@xtra.co.nz), March 14, 2004.