[MacDV] Re: Video CD

[Gregg Gorrie]

on 3/8/04 1:24 PM, 18151 - Gary D. Long at txglong at sc2000.net wrote:

> The word I couldn't think of in my previous post was ASTARTE. Making a video
> CD in this version of Toast (3.52 I think) Toast tells you to use ASTARTE.
> Does anyone know what ASTARTE is
> 
> Gary Long

Astarte M.Pack was (is) a program that allowed you to convert video files to
MPEG-1 which is the standard format for VCD. I did a couple of VCDs using
Astarte and Toast and was quite happy with the results (at least compared to
other solutions at the time). I >believe< Apple bought them out (at least
their DVD authoring software) and based the first versions of DVD Studio Pro
on that (someone please correct me if I'm wrong here).

I guess you have a couple options here: hunt down a version of Astarte
M.Pack or update to Toast v5.x or later, which has the ability to do the
conversion to MPEG-1 internally.

I don't know if there is much point in making VCDs these days. For the same
price (or less) of updating to the above software, you could pick up the
iLife package and use iDVD to make DVDs, which will contain more video in a
much higher video quality than VCDs. The cost or DVD-R media has fallen
below the $1 USD/per DVD floor, so that is no longer an issue. I guess the
key is whether or not you have a DVD-R burner.
-- 
Gregg