Creating and writing Video CDs?

Video CDs? (VCD) are bastardised ISO9660 file systems containing some meta-data and an MPEG file. Easy pizz-ezzy!

There are three steps (four if you count finding the MPEG):

• Make sure the MPEG is VCD format
• Create a .bin and matching .toc or .cue
• Write using cdrdao

Let us take this one step at a time:

Make sure the MPEG is VCD format

VCD format requires video to be "just so". I usually play the MPEG through [mplayer]? first and check for output that looks like the following:

       VIDEO:  MPEG1  352x240  (aspect 12)  29.97 fps  1150.0 kbps (143.8 kbyte/s)

       Opening audio decoder: [[mp3lib] MPEG layer-2, layer-3
       MP3lib: init layer2&3 finished, tables done
       AUDIO: 44100 Hz, 2 ch, 16 bit (0x10), ratio: 28000->176400 (224.0 kbit)

There are additional formats such as SVCD for higher quality.

Should you need to convert your video from XviD? then feel free to use avidemux. Have a look at the tools on Christian Marillat's Debian Packages website .

Create a .bin and matching .toc or .cue

For this we need mkvcdfs from the vcd-tools (vcdtools on Debian) package.

Easy enough:

      mkvcdfs paint_drying.mpeg

After some time mkvcdfs will complete (without errors) and you will have vcd.toc and vcd_image.bin

Write using cdrdao

This gets easier as it goes on:

      cdrdao write vcd.toc

And you are done! Huzzah!

Play it on your VCD/DVD player, or use mplayer -vcd 1 on your computer.

It helps to configure the driver and maximum speed options in /etc/cdrdao.conf .

The file contans name value pairs separated by colon. Strings must be enclosed by ", but number should not be enclosed.

This is what I have in mine:

    write_device:"0,0,0"
    write_driver:"generic-mmc"
    write_speed:24
    write_buffers:64
    read_device:"0,0,0"
    read_driver:"generic-mmc"