maybe your dvd player can't play the cd-r disc reliably, if at all. Some dvd players are picky about the disc.

Some desktop DVD players will not play VCD's at all. I would say to take your burned disk and try it in various players before you give up. I have a Smasung that says it will play VCD's but I have yet to have any play - and that is just the way that model works. I felt the same way as you at first than I found a user group for that model and started finding out it all had to do with the type of blank media that was used. I finally gave up a far as VCD/SVCDs go with that model. I also have an APEX AD-1500 that is awesome. It plays pretty much everything.

I would say that if your burned VCD plays fine on your PC with either WinDVD or Power DVD than you have burned it fine. One word of caution - Nero 6 has issues. Lots of info out there you just need to look for it. If you have already gotten Nero 6 yo umight want to downgrade to nero 5.x.x as it seems to work better for video burning.

Be careful with Nero Express 6. I first tried render in Vegas to mpeg1 for VCDs and mpeg2 for SVCDs -- and Nero Express would insist on "transcoding" my files. I.e., I got an mpeg of an mpeg and the results were terrible.

I then rendered in Vegas to an *.avi and allowed Nero Express to do its thing, "transcoding-wise," and the results were excellent.

DGrob

Perhaps it is my player. I have a Toshiba. I don't have a DVD drive so this is the only way I have of testing to see if it works. It's a bummer because I can't rely on it for outside distribution. I am however using 'inexpenisve' media I get on sale at Best Buy and the likes.

Thinking about getting a DVD burner. Think I will have the same problem playing back on commerical players ??

>>>I don't have a DVD drive ...<<<

You do not need a DVD drive to play VCD's or SVCD's on a PC. Just put your burned VCD into your normal CD burner/player and see if it plays. if you have Windows XP you should be able to play them already. If you have an older OS you either need something like Power DVD or you need to tell your media player where to look fo rth efiles - I just made a post about this - http://mediasoftware.sonypictures.com/forums/ShowMessage.asp?MessageID=221691&Replies=4&Page=2

Actually, your problem might be with your CD Burner.

When I first started 2 years ago, I had problems burning VCD's. They would work in my daughter's DVD player but not in the 'Family' (other one)

I thought that since hers was a newer one , maybe that was the problem.

Fortunately, ?????? my other daughter broke the tray on my CD burner and I bought another one (PHILLIPS 40X) my old one was an 8X.

Made new VCD's and presto, they worked on both DVD players in our house!

ONE OTHER NOTE ! ! ! ! You might want to slow down your burning speed !
It does make a difference in compatablity with various players. I don't go past 8X on my new drive.

As far as buying a DVD Burner..... I bought the SONY 500 since it could do DVD+'s and DVD-'s. Had problems with the "+'s" working on the 'family DVD player, switched to "-'s" and both players played them!

Good Luck and I hope this helps.....

Pete

Also, I agree with DGrob's post about creating an AVI file and letting NERO do it's thing.

NERO allows a simple menu structure that actually works !

Side Note: When you decide to buy that DVD burner, you'll no-longer make VCD's, because the quality is so,oooooo much better with the DVD's. BUT the cost of learning how to make things work, is much cheaper starting out with VCD's, so get that to work first !

Just afew other notes -
Personally I would not let Nero do the encoding. Quality is poor. If you do a search for Nero on these boards you will find others who also see this. If you are using VV 4 why let nero do the encoding? Quality will be much much better. And bottom line is also this - you can burn a VCD direct from VV so you really don't need to leave VV for anything VCD wise. I mentioned Nero 6 and problems - one of them is the burning of VCD's. For me I can burn perfect VCD's from within VV 4 but if I try with Nero 6 they barely play. I did not have this issue with Nero 5.x.

There could be a problem with your burner that is why I suggested also testing on your PC because chances are if it works there is will work on a set top like the Apex. You should check out http://www.dvdrhelp.com/dvdplayers.php and look for your make and model of player and see if it works. THis is the place I looked 5 or so years ago when I was having problems with my Samsung

I also burn directly from Vegas. Look under the Tools menu. Works great. And I keep the burn speed to 4X, just to be sure.
Best/Tommy

As posted above...go to vcdhelp.com

Sometimes the media that you are burning to will not be compatible with the DVD player you are trying to play on. Example...I had to burn my VCD's to a CD-RW for it to play on my Sony DVD player...??

Do you have an option to print your stuff back to VHS?

Jon

I've made hundreds of VCDs for viewing in China.

I encode using TMPGEnc as mpeg1 for VCD, gives the best results with noisy video. Then I use Nero 5.x.x to author.

Genuine VCD players are a bit twitchy with CD-R so use the best media you can get (I.E. good reflectivity) and burn at low speed.

I've never had a problem playing VCDs in a ST DVD player. Where you can come unstuck is the VCD needs a set of files on it which are the code that is loaded into the player. Most players don't have the code for playing the stream in their firmware.

As others have said stay way from the Nero encoders. The only really bum bit of code I've paid money for is their mpeg-2 encoder.