I am running a Sony TRV30 DV into PC through Pinnacle Studio Capture card. Once captured I have the option of making an AVI or MPEG movie. I want to be able to save these files onto CDR and want to know whether I can then play them in a Domestic DVD Player. If I burn the MPEG file as a data file can I do this, or do I have to convert it from MPEG to Video CD format? A lot of the DVD Players I look at refer to MPEG but I'm not sure if this refers to something different from what I want to achieve.

Thnks

-- John Lengthorn (john@elveys,freeserve.co.uk), September 07, 2001

Answers

VCD uses MPEG-1 video, but it is specially formatted for VCD. Some capture cards can capture in VCD compliant format - others can't. If yours can't, the normal procedure is to demux the video into separate audio and video files and remux them back together using a VCD template in something like TMPGenc (www.tmpgenc.com). I would not use the term "convert" to refer to the muxing process as the video is still MPEG-1. Will a standalone DVD player play these VCDs? It depends on whether or not your player supports CD-R or CD-RW media. Many players do not support burnable media. Please go to www.vcdhelp.com and look at the DVD Player Compatibility List to see if your player accepts burnable media. I strongly suggest you go to the following sites and read all you can about making VCDs before you get started or you will have nothing but trouble. www.vcdhelp.com www.digital-digest.com www.doom9.net www.labdv.com members.home.net/richa (mostly info on ATI cards, but he has some info on making video streams VCD compliant which might help you)

-- Jason (Jason.Shumate@equant.com), September 10, 2001.