Hi, VCDs and SVCDs have very strict limitations on the resolution and bitrate of the video and audio streams they can hold. If your MPEGs are too high a bitrate you might have problems playing them on a DVD player after you put them onto a VCD/SVCD. Your computer should have no problem though. VCDs can only contain MPEG1 streams, SVCDs contain MPEG2 streams. Most DVD players can play VCDs but only some can play SVCDs. It seems like the cheapest DVD players can handle just about every format under the sun but the more expensive ones are more limited. *shrug*
For compatiability you should it's probably best to convert your MPEG2 files into VCD compatable MPEG1 files. Transcode should be able to do this but you said it was creating huge files. Are you sure you were converting to MPEG1? It almost sounds like transcode was trying to create a 4.7GB DVD image before you killed it. If you can't get transcode to work you might want to try mjpegtools [1]. Thier howto [2] contains information about encoding to various formats. Pay particular attention to section 9, "Transcoding of existing MPEG2". The script mpegtranscode included with mjpegtools seems do what you are looking for. I've used mjpegtools to create mpeg stills for VCD menus before but have never tried this script so I don't know if it works. Once you have a VCD compliant MPEG, use vcdimager to create the image and vcddebug to check the result before you burn it. If your VCD only contains a video stream (no interactive menus etc.) you can use mplayer to play the raw .bin file. Otherwise, if you can, use a CDRW to test your image on so you don't waste a pile of CDRs. Hope some of this was useful... ~Scott [1] http://mjpeg.sourceforge.net/ [2] http://sourceforge.net/docman/display_doc.php?docid=3456&group_id=5776 On December 8, 2002 04:27 pm, Jesse Kline wrote: > Hi, > > On Friday I was given some MPEGs that were taken with a DV camera of my > parents trip to South America a couple years ago. The guy had edited > them and saved them as MPEG2 files. I loaded them on my computer and > they play fine in Xine, however they will not play in Windows Media > Player or Quicktime player (I'm not sure what codec he used). I tried > opening them in RealPlayer and it said it was downloading a new codec > but it just sat there and didn't seem to do anything. My main goal is to > get these files onto a VCD so we can watch them on a DVD player. I used > VCDImager and cdrdao to burn them as a VCD however VCDImager complained > that MPEG2 files should not be used for a VCD 2.0. My DVD would > recognize the CD as a VCD but would not play it. The same thing happened > on my parents DVD. So I tried burning it as an SVCD which would play on > my DVD but was very choppy. I then tried it on my parents DVD and their > top of the line player will not play SVCDs (go figure). The VCD will > play fine under Xine but I could not get either to work on my brothers > Mac. I have been wasting CDs here trying to get it to work, but I > cannot. I used Kmencoder to convert the files to DIVX and they work > under Xine, but I have not tried to play them on Windows or MacOS. Last > night I tried converting the MPEG2 files to MPEG1 with transcode. I used > the example on their web site that is supposed to convert VOB files to > VCD compliant MPEGs, but this morning I found that it was still going, > and the file it was making was 4.5GB as apposed to the original which is > under 200MB. Can someone please tell me how to convert these to MPEG1 > files, or how to get this working? > > Thank you, > > Jesse
