How to make a still picture VCD with VCDEasy

Baldrick · Administrator Joined: 09 Aug 2000 Location: Sweden

This guide will explain how to make a still picture VCD with VCDEasy. On a still picture VCD you can store several hundred pictures in DVD quality(704x480/576) and you can play the still picture VCD on all DVD Players that supports VCDs and CD-R or CD-RW. You can also store the images as original on the VCD.

Download and install VCDEasy.

Convert images to high resolution still mpegs
We start with converting the images to the correct format so it will look okey on your TV.

Launch VCDEasy.
Click on Tools in the left menu.
Click on MPEG Stills.
Configure the settings,
select VCD2.0
select NTSC if you live in US or Japan and select PAL if you live in the rest of the world
select High
Select output folder, where VCDEasy will convert all your images to still pictures.
Leave the rest default(you can try around with the settings if you like to)
Now add first one image to test how it look like in the Preview Window.
When you think it looks okey add all your still pictures, you simple open explorer and select all images by hold down shift and select and drag them on the image window at the top left and now will vcdeasy convert them all to mpg still pictures, it will take some time if you add many.

Author the VCD
Now lets author and burn the VCD

Click on (S)VCD in the left menu head back to the main VCD still picture creation.
Select VCD 2.0
Select Your CD-Writer and Burn
Select VolumeLabel
Select where to save the temporarily output
Add all the generated still pictures MPG by hit Add files and select all by hold down shift and select

Click on Options
Here do we change the default playtime for all images.

Set the default timeout for all images (you can still press next on your player if you wanna change images faster).

Click on Interactivity
Here can we change the order how the images should be play.

You could leave it as default now and it should play in order both if you press the next button on the remote or let it timeout. But if you wanna make it to play in a loop you can easily do that.
Select the last Play item
Change the timeout to the first play item
and also select the next to the first play item
You can play around with these settings if you like to and then try on cd-rw.

Optional step
If you also wanna store/backup your images as original you can easily store them on the VCD.

Select ISO-Files in the top menu.
Create a new folder calles images or similiar.
And add all your images to that folder, you can then later easily access them in your computer, just insert the vcd in your CD-ROM or DVD-ROM and browse to that folder.
Check the Appromixate size, if you burn on 74 min CD the max is about 740 MB and on 80 min 800 MB.

Last hit Go to start authoring and burning, burn preferably on a CD-RW so you can test.

Done.

bertmartin · Member Joined: 16 Mar 2001

Whatever program I use for displaying photos, I would like to have a program to intelligently resize the photos without distorting. I guess that would be 704x480. I usually crop my photos but it is difficult and time consuming to get the exact size for a VCD. Ideally the tool would automatically crop and resize with minimum input by me. Does such a program, tool, or method exist?

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JWW · Member Joined: 15 May 2002

You might want to check out Ulead DVD Picture Show. It will do the resizing for you.

mysterX · Member Joined: 17 Feb 2002

Help!
I can't view my "CD Writer" bar. It's not showing up for me and I can enbaled it.

mrbass · lurker Joined: 28 Jul 2001 Location: Las Vegas

I did this like a week ago or so. It would bomb at around 40 pictures. I tried around 90 at a time. Perhaps it was just the jpg itself which was hanging it in all fairness. Doesn't this create mpg stills? Are you sure these are the same as the .dat files as PictureShow. I can see possibly in 6 months to a year using VCDEasy if it improves some settings but for now I'll stick with my purchased $29 copy of PictureShow.

Baldrick · Administrator Joined: 09 Aug 2000 Location: Sweden

yep you could only add 40 at a time...not that good...Ulead PictureShow is still probably the easiest solution for still pictures.

Baldrick · Administrator Joined: 09 Aug 2000 Location: Sweden

The 40 limit will be fixed in next version of VCDEasy so you can add more images at a time. (you can get a vcdeasy beta that is fixed from www.vcdeasy.org )

delphi.stuff · Moderator Joined: 08 Jul 2001

The '40 stills' limitation has been fixed in VCDEasy 1.1b5 version available at www.vcdeasy.org.

Thanks to Baldrick, I have just been aware of this 'very long' problem. It comes from the XML display in color of the generated XML file. Simply UNCHECK "Display the XML documents with colors" BEFORE hitting GO ! It seems to be related the Borland RTF viewer. I will try to fix this. Result: 2 secondes before VCDxBuild... instead of a couple of hours!!! Only because of a display problem... Quite incredible...!

delphi.stuff, the VCDEasy author.

delphi.stuff · Moderator Joined: 08 Jul 2001

For mrbass and surely some other users... why not having sent to me an email about the 'bomb at around 40 pictures' ? I have been aware of this only a few days ago by one guy, and Baldrick today... And only Baldrick told me, today, about the 'very long delay' problem...
I can not test everything... (a good exemple is the consequence of having added a XML viewer with colors coupled with an authoring containg lots of MEPG files...!) but when someone reports to me a problem somewhere, I always take a look at it, and see if I can do something. (NB: But I won't rewrite or improve or update CDRDAO... more than 90% of the emails I receive...).
In case you posted it on the forum, I can say that I spend hours on email, so I hope you understand I can hardly take a look at the forums to know about problems.

trossin · Member Joined: 20 Nov 2001 Location: United States

kriss92 · Member Joined: 23 Aug 2001

no warez crap here please.

edited by baldrick

kitty · Was A Moderator Joined: 15 Jun 2001 Location: US

kriss: No warez / crackz to be posted on this site

trossin - great web site dude
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Panasonic DMR-ES45VS, keep those discs a burnin'

sparky12 · Member Joined: 27 Apr 2002

Is it possible to do this and have music play while the pictures are showing? (not a different song for each picture but one song for the whole disc)

Sparky

toni2 · Member Joined: 04 Jul 2002

Instruction were good, but when playing the VCD in the DVD player, how to see/navigate quickly for ex. the picture number 567?

Now I have to wait for ex 6 secs per picture or just press 567 x next button to see the wanted picture. How can I do this little easier? Are there some special options when creating a VCD with VCDEasy to solve this problem, any ideas?

vitualis · Moderator Joined: 01 Oct 2000 Location: Australia

BottledErotica · Member Joined: 10 Jul 2002

Ok I am VERY frustrated with this program right now.. I am having a problem with the JPG to MPEG conversion.

I am getting the same error over and over, it states..

'creation failed Illegal VCD still: Larger than maximum permitted by it's buffering parameters! Please increase the MPEG size (Quality)!'

Ok.. the guide is telling us to not mess with the default settings.. so what should I do exactly?? It's not letting me convert any pictures.
The MPEG quality notch is just about at the center.

Any ideas anyone?

delphi.stuff · Moderator Joined: 08 Jul 2001

Increase the quality in the page... it will give the MJPEG Tools more file space to encode the picture. In fact, I myself always put quality to max.

The "Leave the rest default(you can try around with the settings if you like to)" is not a very good advice...

delphi.stuff

arcorob · Member Joined: 28 Dec 2001 Location: New York

Hi, I have two problems with this, one MINOR , one major. The guide is great by the way.

When I create a VCD with this and try to PLAY on a PC (windows media or PowerDvd) its says it cannot , use VCD 2.0 or enable PBC ?? WHy ?
Thats the minor one.

Major one.
WHen I create the MPEG stills (first step) , I want to be able to drag them into ULEAD. Ulead says they are wrong format. If I run quickly through TMPG, the format is corrected and ULEAD accepts. Problem is , to do this for hundeds of pictures is cumbersome....SO

How can I get the FORMAT on VCDEASY to work in ULEAD or is there a faster way to setup a BATCH file in TMPG ???

Thanks !!!

vitualis · Moderator Joined: 01 Oct 2000 Location: Australia

Ulead probably just expects a bitmap or jpeg rather than a preformated still MPEG used for VCDs...

Regards.
_________________
Michael Tam
vitualis' Medical Rant :: stay updated, read the rant
The Medicine Box
GNU VCDImager Authoring Guide Series

arcorob · Member Joined: 28 Dec 2001 Location: New York

I WOULD agree if it wasnt for the fact that two seconds through TMPG and it does accept it. In other words what VCD easy is creating is not 100 percent compliant in some way ? Just a guess, but ULEAD does take the MPEG after conversion.

I would be happy if I could feed the jpegs directly to ULEAD however, there again is an issue. If it is not a full screen horizontal picture (say I have a vertiical of the STatue of Liberty) , ULEAD stretches it out so she looks like the FAT LADY....Thats why I was using VCDEASY first...

I think its a case of you can't get ther from here...Not without ALOT of work.

vitualis · Moderator Joined: 01 Oct 2000 Location: Australia

Read what I wrote again.

The structure of a MPEG still for VCD involves multiplexing a high resolution still with a low resolution one. There are also the issues of headers.

This is how a "preformatted" MPEG still is structured.

TMPGEnc doesn't have a clue about MPEG stills and just demultiplexed one of the images and turns it into a one frame MPEG (i.e., quite similar to a JPEG).

The image parser in Ulead can probably handle a simple one frame MPEG without problems but probably dies when it is confronted with a "real" MPEG still for a VCD.

Perhaps you could mail delphi tools to see if he could release an extension of the "VCD Still" tool in VCDEasy so that it can batch convert the source images to bitmaps (WITHOUT converting them into MPEG stills per se).

Regards.
_________________
Michael Tam
vitualis' Medical Rant :: stay updated, read the rant
The Medicine Box
GNU VCDImager Authoring Guide Series

mahongzhou · Member Joined: 27 Aug 2002

When I try to use Nero 5548 to burn the generated cue, it always complains "not enough space on media". seems Nero thinks the size indicated by the cue file is always 2x500=1GB. If I open the BIN directly, with mode2, it seems to burn fine.

this works fine with about 600 pictures.

then I created a cue/bin with 1500 pictures with highest quality (200KB each). the resulting bin is about 500MB. even the BIN get burned fine with Nero, and I can see the folder structure (with the segments) of the resulting VCD on my computer, it does not play on my VCD.

anybody knows what went wrong?

vitualis · Moderator Joined: 01 Oct 2000 Location: Australia

What went wrong is that you used an old version of Nero to burn a CUE/BIN image.

The older versions of Nero do not burn CUE/BIN images properly and if you "burn the BIN", it will screw up the sector addresses (--> non-functioning PBC on a VCD).

I strongly suggest you use CDRDAO (GUI with VCDEasy), CDRWin or upgrade to the latest versions of Nero.

Regards.
_________________
Michael Tam
vitualis' Medical Rant :: stay updated, read the rant
The Medicine Box
GNU VCDImager Authoring Guide Series

PhaRxmerD.O.n · Member Joined: 04 Sep 2002

Ok, I have tried with two versions of VCDEasy now and can't get it to work. After loading my images and having vcdeasy convert them then analyze the mpegs, I get warnings that the track lengths are shorter than 4 seconds. So I force the execution and after I have burned the file, my dvd player won't play it. Ulead vcds work fine, but I wanted the option of forwarding on my own that ulead doesn't seem to have. Any suggestions?
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Don

PhaRxmerD.O.n · Member Joined: 04 Sep 2002

Nevermind - figured it out

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Don

delphi.stuff · Moderator Joined: 08 Jul 2001

VCDEasy give you the "track lengths are shorter than 4 seconds" warning only for MPEG video files, not MPEG stills... and video files should be more than 4s long...

Btw, I have just published a guide on "How to make a still pictures VideoCD" on the VCDEasy web site.
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delphi.stuff, VCDEasy author
http://www.vcdeasy.org