VCDs and Toast

[Ian Sidle]

> Anyone had luck on making VCDs with Toast that work on the iBook (or 
> any other Mac)?
> I made a VCD last night, worked great in my Apex DVD player. I used 
> MacVCD X to try
> to play the VCD, but got endless grinding and gave up.
>
> Video support is spotty on Macs (see Macintouch), however I thought if 
> you created a
> VCD on a Mac, that MacVCD would more than likely play it.

I've used it before quite a few times. Although not recently. It seems 
quicktime 6 (for mac os x) dose not include the mpeg-1 codec (for 
whatever reason) which is used in vcd's. Now, if you make a SVCD (can't 
be done with toast ::shrug::) then you could in stheory play it after 
buying the mpeg-2 viewing codec from apple ($20). Although I find it 
rather silly they are doing this at all. mpeg-1 has a much more open 
licence (and hence more things use it) then mpeg-2.

I guess to help "convince" people to use mpeg4. Which is good but not 
perfect (still need lots of cpu to play, that everyone doesn't have and 
not in dvd player yet,etc).True, there is one that will play divx but 
thats quasi-mpeg4... its inside avi files for crying out loud...

Now you could use video lan client (vlc) to play those vcd's. Also 
supposedly you can use mplayer also, but I haven't tried it yet. Both 
are open source programs (ah isn't *nix great?). I have played a vcd or 
two with success using vlc.

Although personally, I would rather watch it all on my tv anyway (a lot 
more comfortable then my computer).

thanks,
Ian