someone told me that i could burn VCD's to regular CD and use this in my DVD player (a commercial DVD player, not on a computer) and watch them. Is this actually possible?

If so, could comeone give me "idiot-proof" instructions for doing this. I would love to be able to do this.

i have a G4, plent of RAM, a LaCie 12x firewire drive. I have some VCD's of wedding videos, family stuff, etc. that would be great to put on DVD

[mitchell_pgh]

This is one (down and dirty) way of doing it to work properly...

1) Copy the movie from the DVD player to a Digital 8 Video Recorder

2) Dump that into iMovie

3) Save that iMovie as a QT movie

4) Break up that QT movie into two parts using Quicktime Pro [$30]

5) Using Toast 5 [you find it...], burn those QT movies to VCD and bingo...

I haven't tried this method, but it should work (in theory)

Notes:
- The quality is going to degrade (you don't get AC3, Dolby, etc)
- You also must have a DVD player that plays VCD's on CD-R media (some don't)

[mitchell_pgh]

Oh yah, if you use all Sony products for the above mentioned method. I'm assuming that everything is on the Up and Up! Sony and a few others are nice enough to have some copyright protection so you can't copy DVD's directly to Digital 8.

The copyright protection is within the video stream so you would have to go to Circuit City (or wherever) and buy a Video Filter [$40] and then you can make backups of your DVD's >-P

ok, i dont really need to get stuff OFF of DVD, i need to get movies (from my GL1, or whatever) to a CD and play it on my DVD player. but i will try this tonite to see if it works!

[mitchell_pgh]

Please tell me if it works for you... Do you have Toast 5? and Quicktime Pro?

I have QT pro and i'm using Toast 4.1 deluxe.

with VCD's do they have to be 320x240? my DV captures are (of course) 720x480. Do i compress the files (in QT pro) to 320x240, frame rate of 29.97 and all that good stuff? would MCP do a better job?

and if i have a VCD file already, can i just drag that into toast and rip away? i read somewhere that you have to extract the audio and video seperately. is that right?

[mitchell_pgh]

No... You need to download Toast 5 (but guess what, it's not out yet... a little bird told me it is available via hotline) AKA, you must obtain it illegally, and I don't have a copy <sorry>

Where do you live in DC?

hotline?? whats that?? (wink, wink) I have seen the Toast 5 betas but toast 4.1 has a VideoCD part in it.. that wont work?

i actually live out towards Rockville, but i work in DC

[mitchell_pgh]

Toast 5.0 solves that issue. It should work like a gem.

You wouldn’t be interested in writing a few articles for a little Mac DC newsletter I want to start would you? Perhaps we could make it somewhat alternative?

I have a quick question. Can you play a VCD on a 6400 with the Apple Video Player

well, i tried the toast 5 beta last nite and i saw no way of doing a VCD. I think it was 5b1. Guess i'll have to wait til it's released.

go ahead and e-mail me about the article writting
thedarkhalf@mac.com

i'd like some more info about it

[mitchell_pgh]

Hmmm,
That should have worked... A quick question, did you look around iMovie for an export feature. When you install Toast 5, it "should" add a export as VCD (but get ready to tie up your machine for about ten hours...) I have heard reports that on a mid level machine, it can take up to an hour and a half for five minutes of footage!

I'm still looking around for Toast 5 (it looks as though you have an older beta version)

[osiris]

If you're just copying the VCDs, use Toast to make a VCD copy and burn to a CDRW (a rewritable CD) The disk should work in a stand alone DVD player.

Burning a VCD for DVD player playback is tricky - I use Toast ( I use an old 3.x version) and astarte mpeg mpack to make the mpeg files.

If you do a DV capture (iMovie seems very proprietary and the DV compression is poorer than Adobe Premiere - use the highest quality setting. This capture should be 720x480 NTSC.

The mpeg1 file needed for a VCD needs to be 352 x 240 NTSC, In Astarte Mpack, select 'Toast Ready" and fire away.
This takes time, a 7 min piece takes about 2 hours to compress to mpeg1. Once you do that, drop the vcd file into Toast and burn to a CDRW! This should take about 5- 10 minutes to burn, but get this - use a CDRW! CDR media is unreadable by most consumer DVD players. Using a CDRW somehow makes it better and it works,

good luck - I've spent the last couple of years trying to find the best way (with limited resources)

[This message has been edited by osiris (edited 02-07-2001).]