RIGHT I'VE DOWNLOADED A VIDEO FILE OFF IMESH ITS A MPEG VIDEO FILE. I HAVE USED NERO 5.5 TO WRITE IT TO CD AS A VCD (AND I CHANGED THE FORMAT TO PAL AS I,M FROM ENGLAND) IT PLAYS ON MY COMPUTER AND EVEN PLAYS ON MY DVD PLAYER(SONY DVP-NS700V) BUT IT PLAYS IN BLACK AN WHITE (AS IF I HAD WROTE IT IN NTSC FORMAT) I CANT UNDERSTAND THIS AS SOME FILES SEEM TO WRITE OK WHERE AS OTHERS DO THIS. PLEASE SOMEONE HELP ME
CHEERS CHRIS...
........BEFORE DVD PLAYER FOLLOWED BY TV GOES THROUGH THE WINDOW

Is the file originally NTSC? If it is then you may have to re-encode it. I don't think Nero likes it when you just burn it as a different format.

not sure how do you tell and how do you change it if it is?? thanks for the quick response by the way

Does the original file (before you burnt to a VCD) play on your computer in colour???

If both your TV and DVD are NTSC compatible then you might as well burn the disc in NTSC format. If, however, they are not, then you will have to convert it through TMPGEnc, or something like that. Just load the MPG into TMPGEnc and load the PAL format for VCD. Rip it and it should convert.
Try this site and it should help you convert it.

http://forum.vcdhelp.com/userguides/78178.php

thanks mate. oh is there any way to find out if file was orignally wrote in pal or ntsc before using nero to write it??