[sailor41]

I want to make VCD's for consumer DVD players.

After following the path thru Imovie, encoding(toasts mpeg1), and burning at various settings and many coasters later, I write to Roxio:
Toast 5 Tests revealed:
dead discs in cube(dvd player will not recognize)
only sony cdrw will produce anything (on our toshiba dvd player) and it is full of video and audio artifacts.

Question- Will toast-5 produce a working(vhs quality minimum) vcd using the equipment mentioned? if not what is needed?

Have you tested media?, can you tell me what brand and model to use?

also your registration site will only produce an error message at submit.


Since Roxio is hard to get a response (gave up after 40min on long distance hold) any one here made a good vcd using similar equipment?

--
Cube 500/256/40
QT Pro
OS (9.1)
iMovie 2.0.1
Sony CDR-CDRW CRX 160E

[michelin]

I have created several VCds already using Toast 5 and in my research of compability with DVD players I reccomend you to use CDRWs instead of CDRs.
Im using a G4 400 PCI with a Que Firewire 8/4/32.

Quality is almost VHS, if you have lots of fast movements on the video you will notice some pixelation otherwise is perfect.

My only complaint is the time that it takes to encode the video 1 hour of video=6 hours plus encoding

[sailor41]

Michelin,

Do you burn the CDRW at the max rate-4, or other speed?
What cdrw media brand works?

In the encoding, do you remember the resolution? (exp. 352X240 NTSC)

Thx

[Kosmo]

I use Imation CDRW's to make VCD's..CDR just does not work. Also, VCD's hardly ever play on my Macs..They do play good on several DVD players here at home. Sony, RCA and JVC.

I use the Export/Toast VCD in iMovie. On my Dual 450 it doesn't take very long to export, considering what it used to take a couple years ago.

I notice when I make a VCD of a TV show (I do Soprano's every week) the Credits on the screen are always pixelated and fast movement also creates a pixelated scene. I'm not impressed with Toast's VCD plugin.

if you choose advanced export for Toast you'll notice the quality is set to Medium and you can't slide it to maximum quality. I am disappointed that Roxio won't let you adjust this. A 52 minute episode of the Soprano's exports to about 440MB. If I could adjust the quality higher I wouldn't mind it going up to 700MB because I could still fit in on an Imation CDRW.

With my choice of media I can't burn it faster than 4x on my Firewire Sony Spressa. Perhaps there are faster CDRW media but I'm sure it's more than $1.00 a disc which is what I pay at Best Buy.

If anyone knows how to get a higher quality out of Toast I'd love to know about it.

------------------

[GreenMnM]

I've made several VCDs that look as good on my TV from my DVD player as the original VHS tape.

I also used the iMovie export (six hours for a one hour video on my 450MHz G4 Cube with 576MB RAM). My setup also includes: iMovie 2.0.3, Sony Digital Media Converter, QPS Que Fire! 8x4x32x FireWire CDRW drive, Memorex CDR disks -sorry no specs, it's just an unmarked spindle- and my Pioneer DV-333 DVD player that I chose after visiting the VCD Helper Web page. They have a really nice, searchable database of features of DVD players, you look for one by manufacturer, if they play VCD, CDR (even what color, if it depends), CDRW, MP3, DVDR and there are customer comments too.
http://www.vcdhelper.com/dvdplayers.php

Good luck.

Oh, and by the way, what exactly do you mean by "dead discs in cube(dvd player will not recognize)" ??? You do know, of course, that the Apple DVD Player software will not actually play a VCD, right? You will need a 3rd party VCD player software (you can find the most popular by visiting versiontracker.com). Quicktime Player will allow your to play SOME VCDs, but you may need a 3rd party CD/DVD Driver extension in order to access the files with QuickTime, I use Intech's CD/DVD Speed Tools to play VCDs on my iBook.

Let us know what you find out!

-Doug

P.S. Greetings from Seattle, my mom is visiting from Minnesota right now and she's up in Anacortes visting my aunt! :-)

[This message has been edited by GreenMnM (edited 04-16-2001).]

I have had excellent results with Toast 5's VCD feature. The CD-Rs I use are a little weird--they're generic (100-disc spindle from PC Club in Irvine, CA for about $20), but they play in just about anything. I've been burning my VCDs at a full 12X using a QPS firewire burner and all has been well.

I have a Toshiba SD-1200 DVD player, and although the owner's manual specifically states that it will -not- read CD-R discs, it plays my VCDs just fine without any problems whatsover.

For me, this is great because I can burn my edited DV movies to disc and watch them on the home theater in passable quality. It's a decent solution until the SuperDrive comes down in price.

-Michael

[GORDYmac]

You guys don't notice JPEG artifacts in high motion scenes on your Toast VCDs? I burned a VCD from a DV stream (for maximum quality) and it looked very poor. It looked okay on the Mac, but awful on the TV. Decreasing the sharpness on the TV helped a lot, but still it wasn't as good as I wanted.

I'd like to know how you guys prepared your files before putting them in Toast. Were they QuickTime movies, MPEGs, etc?

[GreenMnM]

Originally posted by GORDYmac:
You guys don't notice JPEG artifacts in high motion scenes on your Toast VCDs? I burned a VCD from a DV stream (for maximum quality) and it looked very poor. It looked okay on the Mac, but awful on the TV. Decreasing the sharpness on the TV helped a lot, but still it wasn't as good as I wanted.

Have you ever watched a store-bought commercial VCD? They simply are not very high quality. There are always artifacts in high-motion scenes. You just can't squeeze high-quality motion images into a 650MB CD. It's not just an iMovie/Toast 5 issue.

-Doug

[Todd Madson]

One thing to consider too: not all DVD Video players can/will play CD-R/CD-RW media. A recent issue of Stereo Review's Sound and Vision has a list of available DVD players and what they will and won't play. Caveat emptor! I learned the hard way that while my Onkyo DVD-S535 does a great job at playing commercial DVDs and Video CD's, it will not play CD-R/CD-RW media or MP3s. My G4's DVD drive does of course.

You'd best experiment with different types of discs. I've noticed that my Toshiba DVD player plays certain CD-Rs (although it's specifically listed as being unable to do so), and my old Sony won't play some CD-RWs (even though it's supposed to play everything). I've heard of people having success with getting Panasonic DVD-players (all are supposedly unable to play CD-Rs/CD-RWs) to play gold-colored discs.

Of course, your mileage may vary. =)
-Michael

[sailor41]

Thank you for all your help.
Been out of town and to a big city (Victoria BC) and dicovered the test VCD's I burned worked on a New Toshiba, a 1200 I think. But.... the quality is less than VHS. Pixelation, sound drops and artifacts.
Sounds like too much compression. Might be best for now to duplicate for distribution on VHS. At least till MPEG4.

Thanks again for all the help and no, I did not know I needed a VCD player to play VCD's in the Cube. Off to version tracker......Later-B

[Mighty Hetfield]

DVD players tend to prefer CD-RW because of the reflectivity. On the other hand, Kodak and Mitsui have the most compatible CD-Rs, so I'd give it a try.
About Toast, I'm sad to hear the comments myself because I invested money on equipment to produce my VCDs hoping they'd be a good way to store video. I haven't tried yet but the overall comments aren't very nice.

[GreenMnM]

Originally posted by Mighty Hetfield:
About Toast, I'm sad to hear the comments myself because I invested money on equipment to produce my VCDs hoping they'd be a good way to store video. I haven't tried yet but the overall comments aren't very nice.

Well, you get what you pay for... If you want commercial quality compression and support, then you'll need to invest $600-$2000 on commercial quality software for VCD authoring. This Toast codec is the first for writing VCDs with software that costs less than $500. You can buy Media Cleaner or Final Cut Pro for writing your MPEG files, buy you'll still need to spend $500 for VCD authoring software (at least for a Mac, maybe there are cheaper Windows options). Not to mention some commercial quality video hardware.


Like I said before, the VCDs I have created with Toast look as good on my DVD player as the original VHS tape in my VCR. I will admit, though, most of the ones I have created are from regular, home quality VHS tapes from TV shows recorded off my $200 VCR, so the original quality is probably not all that high. Once again, I do have to ask if you've ever watched a commercially bought VCD movie? They simply are not very high quality. You can't expect to see the same quality people have come to expect from DVDs. With the correct hardware and correct software you can make VHS-quality VCDs that are 60 minutes in length, but you WILL have to spend more than the $89 for Toast 5.

Terapin has a stand-alone VCD writer (sort of like a VCR, but it records VCDs) so you can bypass your computer all together: http://www.goterapin.com
Query Software has a VCD authoring solution for Macintosh (hmmm, under construction right now...) http://www.netviewdisc.com/

Pick up a copy of Digital Video Magazine ( http://www.dv.com/ ) or Computer Videomaker Magazine ( http://www.videomaker.com/ ) they are both at least Macintosh "friendly" and have reviews on Apple hard ware and software to find some more information!

-Doug

[This message has been edited by GreenMnM (edited 05-05-2001).]

I am seriously considering using Toast 5 to make VCD's. I like the idea of one disc that can play in a PC, Mac, and many DVD players. Right now I only have CD with AVI's that play on a PC or Mac, but not a DVD player.

I have tried a commercial VCD, and found that I could open the MPEG file in Quicktime on a Mac, or Windows Media Player on a wintel...but I had to find the MPEG in the correct folder, and then tell the player to open it (could not just double-click).

My question is: does Toast to anything special to make the VCD easy to play in a computer (autorun?). Or do you have to tell all your users to locate a certain file in a certain folder, and open it with their player?

One more question: They say that Toast is fully carbonized...but there are missing API's for accessing hardware. But can you PREPARE the VCD in OSX (encode the MPEG), and then boot into 9 to burn?

I am seriously considering using Toast 5 to make VCD's. I like the idea of one disc that can play in a PC, Mac, and many DVD players. Right now I only have CD with AVI's that play on a PC or Mac, but not a DVD player.

I have tried a commercial VCD, and found that I could open the MPEG file in Quicktime on a Mac, or Windows Media Player on a wintel...but I had to find the MPEG in the correct folder, and then tell the player to open it (could not just double-click).

My question is: does Toast to anything special to make the VCD easy to play in a computer (autorun?). Or do you have to tell all your users to locate a certain file in a certain folder, and open it with their player?

One more question: They say that Toast is fully carbonized...but there are missing API's for accessing hardware. But can you PREPARE the VCD in OSX (encode the MPEG), and then boot into 9 to burn?

[GreenMnM]

No one said Toast is fully carbonized. In fact, it is not. Currently Roxio is shipping 5.0.1 and has promised a fully carbonized version as soon as Apple finishes writing the part of OS X that Roxio needs to actually implement CD burning. We'll see, since Apple just made iTunes 1.1.1 in OS X able to burn CDs, maybe Roxio will come out soon with the rumored Toast "5.1" update.

Right now if you launch Toast 5 the Classic environment starts up. Now that I have iMovie for OS X I would love to see if the carbonized Toast 5 would encode the MPEG files for VCDs any faster. Six hours for a one-hour VCD is really getting annoying. But, at least it can be done!

It would be nice if Toast gave you some options for saving the MPEG file. The VCDs I have made have an extra ".mov" file on the disk that is not normally a part of a VCD and this file can be played with the QuickTime Player without selecting or importing the ".dat" file. I'm not sure, but I would guess that by placing that file on the disk Roxio is making the MPEG ".dat" files smaller (lower quality) to that there is room for the ".mov" file.

-Doug

I thought I read somewhere on Roxio's that Toast is "fully carbonized" but of course I can't find it now...

Anyway, about the .MOV file on your VCD - does it play automatically when you put the CD in the computer? If not, is it at least in the root directory so it's easy to find? Does a window pop up when you put the CD in? And what happens when you put it in a Windows machine? I know I'm getting all persnickity, but I am almost completely convinced that VCD's would be a good way to distribute my video. My only concern is that playing the VCD on the computer might be a little too complicated for a novice user. From my previous experience making CD-ROM's, I've found that there are some people who will put in the CD, and when nothing starts automatically, they have no idea what to do.

But if the CD is as easy to play in a computer as I hope it is, then I will be purchasing Toast quite soon.

[GreenMnM]

When I was at Macworld in January the guys at the Roxio booth who were showing me the VCD stuff said that Toast 5 would be carbonized. Apparently they were jumping the gun just a bit. But it is supposed to be in a free update sometime soon!

There are two ways to play a VCD in a Mac. First is to use a piece of 3rd party VCD player software. I've never used one, but there are several around, some are shareware and some are freeware. Unfortunately, the way Toast 5 makes the VCDs there's no way to customize it in order to, for example, add one of these utilities to your CD so you wouldn't have to download anything. Second, is to use QuickTime (and the QuickTime Player). Unfortunately, Apple's CD-ROM driver extension does not always allow direct access to files on VCDs (don't ask me why). So, sometimes you can open the file with QuickTIme, sometimes you get an error message. The solution is to use something like Intech's CD/DVD SpeedTools for your driver. Then you always have access to the files on the VCDs. I've been using SpeedTools on my DVDless Tangerine iBook for a while so I can watch movies. Once you're past the driver issue watching movies is no big deal. http://www.intechusa.com/

Now, as I look at my newly created homemade Toast 5 VCDs, there is an extra file that appears to be a QuickTime movie file. I can double click it and the QuickTime Player software starts up. There is no way to make it automatically startup. But, I have been able to play all of my new VCDs without using my SpeedTools CD-ROM driver. The VCD mounts on your Desktop like any other disk, and .mov file is in the first directory.

It's really even more confusing for Windows. I have yet to get a VCD player software to run on one of my PCs at work. I just keep getting message after message about missing files. Shouldn't you just download something, install it and have it work? I hate Windows. :-(

My recommendation would be for you to just save big QuickTime movies, and don't bother with Toast's VCDs yet. Just put the one .mov file on your CD, if you want (I don't know what Apple will say about this) you could even put the QuickTime installer on the CD with your file. QuickTime Pro and iMovie all have settings for exporting or saving your movie to a CD-ROM compatible size and settings. That way you have total control over your movie settings and the layout of your CD. Maybe in a future update for Toast we will have more options for quality or customizing your VCD export.

Of courese, Toast is really the way to go for laying out your CD projects and burning so you might want to go ahead and get Toast 5 (it's only $90!) and then you could experiment on your own.

-Doug

[This message has been edited by GreenMnM (edited 05-08-2001).]

[This message has been edited by GreenMnM (edited 05-08-2001).]

Thanks for the help...I think I will wait on making VCD's...

I have found that by exporting AVI's from QT Pro at 320x240, Cinepak compression at the highest quality, I can make a CD that plays in a PC and a Mac. In a mac, it shows up as a Quicktime file, on a PC as a Windows Media Player file. Double clicking works on both platforms.

At my compression settings, a 3.5 minute video took about 120 MB. If your video is longer, you might need to drop the quality.

Also, I could have exported at a higher resolution, but many computers will choke on 640x480. 320x240 looks OK, even blown up to full-screen (similar to VCD).