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For all you who wish to get really serious about VCD creation, there is some good news.

The Phillips Video CD 2.0 toolkit is now availbale free through this link at VCD help: http://www.vcdhelp.com/VCD2TK_Index.htm

A package that used to cost about $2000 US just hit rock bottom and let me tell you, it work like a dream. Forget f*****g around with Videopack which is an unstable piece of junk.

This is the package most professional VCD used to be created with before the great god DVD arrived. This software supports pretty much every feature known to the VCD standard.

Another good thing is that you can record the CD images this program generates through NERO (latest version reccomended) (after using TOC splitter) which is capable of recording to 99 minute CDs.

Anyway, all the above stuff is explained in the documentation (except for the 99 minute stuff) at the link above but just remember to use NERO to burn as the VCD gear recording instructions are a little too long winded and don't allow 99 minute recording. The instructions will say that NERO cannot be used but I have done it.

Have fun.

PS: Beware, the program does not use a fancy GUI and is quite complex but once you get the hang of it, no problem. Rewritable CDs would be a good idea to experiment on. I created about 12 coasters before I got it right.

-- Andrew Sedlak (bosss7@telstra.com), November 25, 2001

Answers

Thanks for this informative post, Andrew. I just wanted to add a few tips on using Nero to burn 99 (or 90) minute CD-Rs. To do so, you have to go to the Advanced tab and set maximum length to overburn to 99 minutes or 99 minutes 30 seconds. Whatever. Just get it so that Nero will do 99 minutes at least. Interested parties might want to check out www.cdrfaq.com. There are some links on using 90 and 99 minute CD-Rs. Some burners will not go much beyond 90 minutes though. My TDK will not, but it does burn the 90 minute CD-Rs with no problem. It has also been my experience that Nero identifies the longer CD-Rs as being 80 minutes in length, so you have to tell it to overburn anyway and make sure that you set the length to overburn high enough as I discussed above. Finally, I don't recommend trying to exceed the length of the longer discs. For example, I was easily able to burn 81 minutes of CD audio onto an 80 minute CD-R using Nero. I thought that I could probably use Nero to burn a little over 90 minutes onto a 90 minute CD-R. The last track failed, but the CD is playable up to the last track. If you have a 90 or 99 minute CD-R, that's all you get. 90 minutes means 90 minutes EXACTLY, not 90 minutes and 10 seconds.

-- Jason (Jason.Shumate@equant.com), November 26, 2001.

Here's the speil on 99 minute CDs using NERO from personal experience (and about 20 coasters later).

Firstly make sure you're using the LATEST version as I used to use an older version which did support overburning but it did not produce workable discs. Kinda. I was able to play them on my hardware VCD player (Panasonic VLP-45) but I could not get them top play on a computer at all which also meant I could not copy them if they went wrong.

The newest version takes care of that.

Now Jason mentioned that you can overburn 80 minute CDs to 81 minutes which is true, since I've done it myself and it worked great. They say you can go as high as 82 minutes but that's pushing it.

Now we come to 99 minute CDs. When they say 99 minutes, they kinda mean it this time. I was able to record a video stream 99 minutes and 1 second in length onto the disc but I got a recording error when it got the lead-out bit of the process. Another coaster I though.

NOT SO!

It turned out that even though it did not finish recording the lead-out properly, I could still play the disc in the hardware player from start to finish without ma single hiccup, on the computer and I could copy the .dat file to the harddrive and re-import it back into NERO for further duplication.

This means you could probably push the envelope as high as 99 minutes and 20 seconds but I have yet to try that. Just remeber, as long as the video track was written correctly, don't worry about the lead-out failing as nothing seemes to care either way.

Other things:

1-Set the overburn recording length in NERO to 99 minutes 59 seconds maximum. That way you can experiment.

2-I was not aware of 90 minute media. I though they only made 21, 63(obeselete), 74, 80 and 99 minute. But hey, the more the merrier.

3-IMPORTANT: The NERO site has a list of all players that support the Overburning feature so check this out before you start destorying CDs. Interestingly enough, just because a burner is newer doesn't mean it will overburn. My TEAC CD-R55S supports it (got it in 1998) but my Dad's Iomega Zip-CD (bought 5 months ago) doesn't.

Have fun.

-- AS (bosss7@telstra.com), November 26, 2001.


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