Ram & Reason: Video CD Maker:
The Cheap, Easy, and Competent Video Editing Suite, Part 2
by Rob Rice June 2004
In the first part of this article we discussed how to make a video CD that will play on a home DVD player so that you can watch your home movies on the television. Video CDs (VCDs) are the key. We discussed how Video CD Maker by Topics Entertainment, ($20 at CompUSA) does a good job of producing and burning videos to a common blank CD. Taking my Sony camcorder, I used a *FireWire cable (a.k.a., IEEE 1394, Sony i.LINK) and transferred my video recording to a computer and then burned the video on to a blank CD. Video CD Maker handled everything from transferring the video to burning the CD. No other software was used, only Video CD Maker and a common CD burner. But, if we want a video disk with a picture quality that is as close as possible to DVD quality then our best option is not a VCD, but a Super Video CD (SVCD).
A collaborative effort by the Chinese, the Chinese government and the VCD consortium (Sony, Philips, Matsushita and JVC), the SVCD is not only high quality video on regular CD media, but it can be played in most DVD players so you can enjoy watching your home movies on television. The SVCD also allows for the adding of a menu and hyperlinks such as you see in commercial DVDs.
However, as you may recall from part one that Video CD Maker had problems creating an SVCD. While it could successfully burn to a disk the sample SVCD that comes with the program, it could not create one from my home movies without a fatal error. Yet it could also burn to a disk an SVCD made with another program. Unfortunately this problem with Video CD Maker’s recorder has, as of this writing, not been fixed nor have I found a workaround outside of getting another program to create an SVCD. But making an SVCD can be a problem all on its own.
One cannot simply burn an MPEG file onto a CD and expect to have an SVCD. Special encoding is required which means special software and this special software must encode the video stream from your camera correctly. Unfortunately, Video CD Maker failed in every attempt.
So, is Video CD Maker a waste of money? No, I don’t think that it is. Everything else on the product with the exception of SVCD encoding worked well, including the making of a plain old video CD. But other features may make it worth your while, such as the video conversion, video viewing, video editing and video surveillance, which can respond to motion detectors or use a timer. The video surveillance alone is worth the $19.99 that I paid for the product. Heck, it even will do photos. It will do almost everything one can think of except properly encode an SVCD.
So how did I finally create an SVCD? I broke down and purchased Nero 6 Ultra Edition by Ahead Software. With the included Nero Video Express I managed to download and burn an SVCD, complete with a snazzy menu and titles on my first attempt; the price was about $80 at Circuit City ($99 at Best Buy) and the quality was very good.
SVCD is an excellent format for converting your digital video camera tapes to CD. The quality is very good and a typical blank CD can hold almost an hour of video. If you want to learn more about SVCD, DVD and VCD, then have a look at some of the links below. If you are interested in burning an SVCD then you might want to download the Nero demo. The Nero 6 Ultra Edition demo is a fully functional trial version that lets you keep what you burn, at least up until the trial period ends. After the trial period ends, you must purchase or remove the program.
As for Video CD Maker, for $20 it’s worth a look.
Video CD Maker,
Nero 6 Ultra Edition,
What is an SVCD?
http://www.uwasa.fi/~f76998/video/svcd/overview/
Video Help,
DVD players that will play SVCD disks,
Your DVD player will not play an SVCD? You might be able to trick it into playing your disk,
http://www.vcdeasy.org/modules.php?name=_Guides&id=VcdTrick
Products that contain IEEE 1394 technology, http://www.1394ta.org/About/products/consumer_products.html
IEEE 1394 Trade Association,
Robert Rice is a member of the Oklahoma City PC User’s Group and computer specialist working in Anchorage, Alaska. You can contact Robert at robt@isp.com.