S-VCD Refresher course needed

[Charles Martin]

> From: David Thrasher <idave at earthlink.net>
>
> During earlier posts about making Super VCDs, I was a little too 
> tangled up with other pieces of my project to absorb everything that 
> was said about how to go about making S-VCDs.
>
> First of all, does anyone know of any OS 9 solutions?
>
Yes and no. There are no cheap/easy ways to make SVCDs in OS 9, but 
there is a method that involves Quicktime Pro, Toast and BitVice MPEG-2 
encoder. For the money and time you'd spend setting that up, it's not 
really worth it IMHO.

Here's what *I* do in Mac OS X to make SVCDs. I make SVCD compilations 
of music videos all the time. The following works for me and plays on 
MOST (but not all, particuarly not Sony) DVD players. YMMV.

1. Most of the material I obtain is already in SVCD-ready MPEG-2 
format, but for those pieces that aren't I use ffmpeg to convert them. 
One of the "presents" in ffmpeg is "SVCD NTSC" so I just use that with 
only minor tweaking of the settings to cut down on extraneous file 
creation. This takes quite a while to convert.

2. Once the material is ready, I have several MPEG-2 files I've 
collected in a folder. At this point, I GNU vcdtools X *or* 
MissingMpegTools to create an XML "menu" of the files. This takes only 
a few seconds.

3. Each of those two programs can then turn around and read the 
just-created XML file to "point" it to the MPEG-2 files, whereupon it 
creates .IMG or .BIN (your preference, I seem to have better luck with 
.IMG for SVCD projects) of each of the MPEG-2 files.

4. Open toast, set for "multimedia XA CD-ROM," drag all the main .IMG 
files (ignore the "pregap" IMG files, the .TOC file and the .XML file) 
into the window, arrange in the order you want them (if they are 
numbered sequentially this will not be an issue), and burn on GOOD 
media.

Every program I've mentioned above except Toast is available from 
macupdate.com or versiontracker.com.

> When I am able to afford to buy a DVD Burner (it will have to be 
> external since I have a G3 iMac)

To the best of my knowledge, a G3 iMac *cannot* make Video DVDs, though 
perhaps with something like ffmpeg and Toast it could be possible. Be 
forewarned that creating such a thing will take HOURS AND HOURS AND 
HOURS of rendering time.

A friend of mine has a Superdrive attached to his G3 iMac, but he only 
uses it for data DVDs. Works great for that.

> I've noticed that the LaCie comes with authoring software. Are there 
> other brands that do too?

Again, to the best of my knowledge, all commercial DVD authoring 
software (except Toast?) requires a G4. I'd be happy to be corrected on 
this if I'm mistaken.

_Chas_
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