[kiddydoc]

I have been trying to make a VCD out of some old videos using iMovie 2.0.1 and Toast 5.0 Titanium. My problem is that I can't seem to tell how big the encoded file is going to be before committing iMovie to converting the DV stream into VCD format. The first time I tried it (on roughly 90 minutes of video) I was left with a nearly 1 GB file that Toast, of course, couldn't burn onto a standard 700MB CD-R. And that was after my machine took nearly a whole day to encode the file!

I want to make the individual videos as long as possible to minimize the number of CD's I need to burn to get all my videos into VCD format. Is there any way to tell in advance (before committing to long encoding times) how long each video can be in order to fit on a standard VCD (without making them so small as to waste space nor making them so big as to not fit at all)?

Any advice would be appreciated.

[Stud Beefpile]

A VCD (650MB disk) can hold similar to an audio CD about 74 mins of movie. The bitrate is fix for a VCD mpeg stream. The block size of a VCD is bigger, sothat you can get about 800MB of mpeg movie on a 700 MB (80min) disk.

Cheers
beefpile

[dtriska]

Someone check this, but if I remember correctly the VCD spec calls for a data rate of 170 kilobytes per second. On a 700 MB CD, that should translate into just over 70 minutes. Keep your videos between 60 and 70 minutes, and you shouldn't have a problem.

[GORDYmac]

Ditto the previous remark. VCD is designed to put one hour of video on a CD. So keep your video to an hour and you'll be fine.

I believe the latest version of Toast also allows higher quality MPEG encoding. These are's compliant VCD's, and they will use less than one hour of footage since the rate is higher than the standard VCD rate of 170/second.

HTH

[v8q]

You may try using the "missing mpeg tools" suite. (OS X only)
Start looking here:
http://www.biermann.org/philipp
http://osx.hyperjeff.net/Apps

This is all freeware - and you get what you pay for, but all in all these are very impressive and usefull tools.

I have yet to get things all sorted out myself but there are tools to cut/splice large mpeg files and create multiple CD movies.
I am using my Tivo as the encoder and making SVCDs with these tools. I am having fairly good success. The biggest problems are that the tivo records sound at 32Khz and the VCD/SVCD standards are 44.1Khz. My players do not complain about this but many do, and my CDs are non-standard so they will not play in all players.
The other problem is the tivo video encoder puts a green bar on the left side of the picture. It would be nice to crop that out but I have not found the tool to do it yet.
With this setup, I can dump about 45 minutes from my DV video camera into the tivo, suck it out over ethernet, and burn it to SVCD all in about 90 minutes.
My computer is far too slow (ppc8500 with 400Mhz G4) to even think about software encoding so this is the best solution for me.

[jtc]

Stud Beefpile is correct. VCDs have the same bitrate as audio CDs, so you can fit 74 minutes (usually a little more) on a 74 minute CD, and 80 minutes of movie on an 80 minute CD. If you are using higher or lower bitrates, or variable bit rates, try vcdhelp.com's bitrate calculator:
http://www.vcdhelp.com/calc.htm