Creating your first VCD Movie

Creating VCD movies is a lot of fun and an easy task. The best thing is that you don't need to spend a penny to create a VCD movie of your own.





Akmal Khan Sapay

.2003.07.19.

In my previous article I described briefly what a VCD is and what makes it different from a DVD. In this tutorial I will guide you through all the steps to making a VCD using some of the free tools, which are available for download on the net.

In the previous article I also discussed what encoders you could use to create a good VCD movie playable on your stand-alone DVD-player. That is why in this article I will assume that you have read the previous article and that you have everything needed in hand, e.g. TEMPGEnc and a movie clip. If not, I would recommend that you go through the previous article so that you have background knowledge of what you are creating.

Encoding To VCD format

After downloading TEMPEnc, install it and then open it by double clicking the TEMPEnc icon. You should see a window like the one below:



This is the start window of TEMPEnc. Make sure you choose the last option under "Stereo type" e.g. System (Video+Audio). This will encode both video and audio in the original source file to VCD format.

Now it is time to find the movie clip you want to convert to VCD format. Click the first "Browse" button in front of "Video source" and double click the movie clip after finding it. You don't need to do anything about the "Audio source "since the encoder will automatically convert the audio in the source file to VCD format. This is because you have chosen the option "System (video+audio)".

The last "Browse" button is used if you want to save the output file in some other place on your hard drive. TEMPEnc will save the output file in the same directory as the source file by default.

Now you have to tell the encoder that the file will be converted to VCD (mpeg-1) format. You do this by clicking "Load" at the right bottom of the window. You should now see a directory called "Template".

Open the directory by double clicking it and choose a format for your source file, in this case "VideoCD (NTSC).mcf" if you live in Japan or the USA. Otherwise choose "VidoeCD(PAL).mcf". NTSC is a video standard for Japan and the USA while PAL is used in rest of the world.