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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":http://marillat.free.fr/ .

  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"