Burning a VCD

fadeout wrote on 8/14/2007, 4:13 PM

For the present I am burning to VCDs. The procedure in Vegas is about as easy as it gets, but I am somewhat confused about file formats and such.

All of my VCDs will be played in Windows Media Player, and I would like them to open automatically upon the insertion of the CD into the drive. What do I have to do to make this happen? Do I simply burn the VCD as a Mpeg1 as per the burn dialog box, do I first use the RENDER AS command on the File menu to turn my .veg project into an .avi file, or is there some other step that I have missed?

Comments

farss wrote on 8/14/2007, 6:20 PM

VCDs should be authored, if authored properly they'll play in any DVD player both hardware and software. For authoring I used Nero to build the menus and TMPGEnc to do the encoding. Vegas's mpeg-1 left a LOT to be desired but that's OK as TMGEnc for mpeg-1 is free.

Bob.

fadeout wrote on 8/14/2007, 7:18 PM

Thanks Bob for taking the time.

I don't use menus, so I don't have to bother with Nero. And as for TMPGEnc, I went on their site, and the only reference I could find relating to Mpeg1 was that they were no longer supporting that format.

In any case, at this point in my life I'm trying to learn Vegas, and that being the case, I'm not necessarily trying to learn how to do things the best way, but rather the best way in Vegas.

fadeout

farss wrote on 8/14/2007, 7:38 PM

So....
Are you actually trying to make a VCD or just a disk with video on it that'll play when loaded into a PC?

A VCD is a defined format, the same as a DVD. If that's not what you really need then there's a number of options. WMV would perform better than mpeg-1 if you only need it to play in a PC.

But I see your main need is to get the thing to play automatically. I'm no expert in that area but there's some good info here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autorun

However depending on how the PC is configured there's no way to ensure that the OS will autoplay the disk.

bStro wrote on 8/14/2007, 8:56 PM

Tools -> Burn CD -> Video CD.

As for the disc playing automatically, that will depend on how the PC is configured. In a default configuration, I believe WMP would launch or Windows will ask you what you want to do with the disc.

EDIT:
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Sorry for the redundant advice. I had figured that you were already using Vegas' VideoCD option, but then for some reason became convinced that you were not. Now I realize you were. (Ugh. It's been a rough few weeks, let me tell ya.)

To answer your actual question, it probably doesn't matter whether you go straight to the VCD from the timeline or render out to an AVI (assuming it's DV AVI) first -- Vegas does essentially the same thing -- renders and encodes your video. The only difference is that if you might ever want an AVI for some reason, you may as well make one now.
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Rob

Laurence wrote on 8/14/2007, 9:15 PM

My experience is that PAL VCDs look pretty darned good whereas NTSC VCDs look pretty terrible.

fadeout wrote on 8/15/2007, 7:03 PM

Thanks all.

Bob says that wmv would perform better than mpeg-1, and I'm in no position to dispute that assertion. The problem is that Mpeg-1 is the only game in town when it comes to burning VCDs in Vegas.

Would I be better off bringing the file into a program like roxio, and burning it there?

As far as DVDs go, if for the time being I was just interested in burning a movie to one without menus and all the other bells and whistles, how hard is that to do in DVDA?