First of all, I am a raw beginner, so my question might seem foolish, but... I've got several VCD movies, and I'd like to record them onto a DVD-R (think it could hold, easily, up to four VCDs), with a start menu, that allows me to select anyone of them at will. Does anybody knows how to do this. Thanks
You cant put VCD to DVD without re-encoding. that means that the VCD will be changed to mpeg2 using TMPGEnc and then converted to VOB format for DVD using TMPGEnc DVD Author. It will depend on the lenght of the movie, but generally, only one or so will fit.
Thanks, Oriphus, for your answer. I don't know whether this could be useful for anybody, but I succeed in making my DVD. This is what I did: First of all I encoded, four movies (namely, Shrek, Toy Story, Toy Story II and Monsters INC.) as VCD (audio in 48000Hz format). Any of them weights about 850 Megs. so I reckon I can fit them all into a blank DVD-r (4.7 Gigs.) My second setp was to install "TMPGEnc DVD Author" and feed the four VCD movies into that program. Tell it to create 20 chapters for each movie and, later on, using the menu build facility, made a very simple menu, that allows me to select any movie. And that's all folks. Now I've got those four movies fitted into a DVD, that plays perfectly in my standalone player. Surely many of you, that know about this ripping, encoding, authoring, business, will see a lot of flaws in my doing, but for the beginners, like me, it worked. I hope it helps someone.
What you basically have done is to rips the DVDs and changed the encoding to low (but standard) DVD resolution (Pal 352x288) and then burned the films to a DVDr. Actuality it has nothing to do with VCD except that VCD has the same resolution. VCD (standard) - Mpeg 1 - 352x288 (ntsc 352x240) - Constant bitrate at 1150 - 44000 Hz - Mp2 (only one soundtrack) - No subtitles - VCD menu (The reason why VCD is low quality is the low bitrate (reason for blockiness), not the resolution (sharpness). That’s why we have xVCD and SVCD.) DVD (low and medium resolution) - Mpeg 2 - 352x288 (ntsc 352x240) or 352x576 (ntsc 352x480) - Variable bitrate up to 9000 - 48000 Hz - Mp2 or AC3 (5.1) or DTS or PCM - Up to 8 soundtracks - 32 subtitles languages - DVD menu The only difference between your original DVDs and your DVDr with 4 movies on it, is that you have reduced the video resolution from 720x576 (ntsc 720x480) so the movies takes up less space. But it is still a DVD.
If you have Roxio6 in the DVD builder program, you can add VCD, avi, divx ete. Place in a menu and its done. THats my lazy one click solution. But what gort9K did is very impressive.
Actually, The DVD standard will accept VCD MPEG1 files without a problem, meaning that (as gort9k learned) there is no need to re-encode the files inas MPEG2 format. Rather, you simple have to author your vcd compliant MPEG1 files into a DVD title-set (like you would with MPEG2 files) and away you go.
Etniez, well sort of you don't have to rip it. In Roxio6 you add video files and it does all the work. So it will be encoded to the required format by Roxio6, but it does take some time. Do go from Divx to a finished burned DVD for me takes 2hrs with Roxio6. Thats One hour for it to encode the File and one hour to burn with my 1x burner. So faster burns would take less time. But esentially if you like doing other things, you can add the files in the first window, say what type of cool background you want for the menu and then set it to go with a single click of the mouse. Then little over 2hrs later you have a DVD that you can watch in a stand alone DVD player.
