Akmal Ali Khan Safi

Making Your First VCD With a little work and some freeware tools you could make a professional VCD of your own to watch on your TV.

• February 26, 2002 •

In my previous article published here at Infinisource.com on 28th Jan 2001, I described briefly what a VCD is and what makes it different from a DVD. In this tutorial I will guide you through all the steps to making a VCD using some of the free tools, which are available for download on the net.

In the previous article I also discussed what encoders you could use to create a good VCD movie playable on your stand-alone DVD-player. That is why in this article I will assume that you have read the previous article and that you have everything needed in hand, e.g. TEMPGEnc and a movie clip. If not, I would recommend that you go through the previous article so that you have background knowledge of what you are creating.

Encoding To VCD format

After downloading TEMPEnc, install it and then open it by double clicking the TEMPEnc icon. You should see a window like the one below:

This is the start window of TEMPEnc. Make sure you choose the last option under "Stereo type" e.g. System (Video+Audio). This will encode both video and audio in the original source file to VCD format.

Now it is time to find the movie clip you want to convert to VCD format. Click the first "Browse" button in front of "Video source" and double click the movie clip after finding it. You don't need to do anything about the "Audio source "since the encoder will automatically convert the audio in the source file to VCD format. This is because you have chosen the option "System (video+audio)".

The last "Browse" button is used if you want to save the output file in some other place on your hard drive. TEMPEnc will save the output file in the same directory as the source file by default.

Now you have to tell the encoder that the file will be converted to VCD (mpeg-1) format. You do this by clicking "Load" at the right bottom of the window. You should now see a directory called "Template". Open the directory by double clicking it and choose a format for your source file, in this case "VideoCD (NTSC).mcf" if you live in Japan or the USA. Otherwise choose "VidoeCD(PAL).mcf". NTSC is a video standard for Japan and the USA while PAL is used in rest of the world.

In order to change the settings for the output file you have to unlock it. You can do this by simply clicking "Load" again. Under the directory "Template" you can see a subdirectory called "Extra". Double click it and then double click "unlock". Now you can change the default settings. Click "Setting" on the start window and a window like the one below will appear:

Make sure you have the same settings under "Video" as the window above. You can have "Highest quality (very slow)" instead of what you see above but the encoding process will take too long making almost no change in the quality of the video.

Under "Advance" the settings must comply with the window below:

Leave the settings under GOP structure, System, Audio and Quantize matrix as default. These settings are mostly for making SVCDs and DVDs, so you don't have to worry about them.

Well, you are now done with the hardest part. All you have to do now is to click "Start" on the start window. You can see the movie in a small window as it is being converted.

Sit back and relax, as it will take some time before the conversion is done. Depending upon the size of the source file and the settings you have chosen, it will take different time for the conversion. In general, a 5 minute-long song with the setting "High quality (slow)" takes between 10 to 15 minutes.

After the conversion process is complete, close the encoder and go to the directory where you have saved the output file, in other words your first VCD movie. Double click it and your default player will play it for you. Don't be horrified if you find the video quality of a low standard since VCDs are not really for playing on a PC. The movie will have much better quality while playing back on a stand-alone DVD-player.

The next part is to burn the VCD movie on to a CD using one of many burning programs available on the net for free. I will go through this part in my next article and tell you how to burn a whole movie on ordinary CD-R disks with menus to choose from.

Till then, you can create VCD films from your small movie clips. The best thing to begin with is, of course, music videos, which don't take too long to convert to VCD format and are easy to experiment with. So stay tuned, I will be back with the last part of the "VCD Movies" series very soon!

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Akmal Ali Khan Safi
Music Editor
InfiniSource.com

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