I'm very new to this and have only burned a couple of VCD's so far and
I'm having some "issues" with my DVD player (Toshiba SD3950) and
menuing.

Here's what happened.

I used Nero 6.0 to convert an .avi to VCD format and burned it. I
added one "menu" but basically it was just a title screen. I put it
in the DVD player and the menu screen came up. Hitting the "Skip"
button, the "play" button, and the "Enter" button, all had no results.
(Actually it gave me the little "no" sign that means that feature is
not supported). Pressing the fast forward button worked and I watched
the movie successfully.

Later on, I went to watch the exact same disk again but when I put it
in, nothing happened ... the player said loading but the screen was
black. Any button I pressed on the remote resulted in the little "no"
icon. So I fooled around with the settings and went and set PBC to
off. This allowed the movie to play, but did not show the menu at
all. That's good enough, but I'd like to be able to use menus.

Another disk that I created with NeroVision Express 1.? had a more
sophisticated menu structure and multiple tracks and titles. When I
set PBC back on I still get just a blank screen and the disk won't
play. Turning off PBC results in the disk playing sequentially.
However, hitting the "Skip" button skipped to the beginning of the
next Title as opposed to the beginning of the next chapter as I
expected ... is that how it's supposed to work or am I simply
misunderstanding?

So ... two issues:
1)can't get menus to work at all
2)skip button skips all chapters within a title

Irene wrote:

From what I hear, Nero's MPEG encoder isn't that great. You'll have
better luck encoding your video with TMPGEnc.

Very few programs create a good VCD. The only one I've found to create
acceptable discs is VCDEasy. Pinnacle Studio has serious flaws with
the compatibility of the produced disc, and it makes flawed assumptions
about the navigation of the disc. I wasn't impressed at all with
Nero's abilities. (way too basic)

With VCDEasy, *you* specify what you want each button to do. (Next,
Previous, Return, Default, Numeric Keypad)

So for example, you can have a menu come up automatically. Number keys
can go to the appropriate chapters. You can specify a timeout, after
which a particular chapter will begin playing automatically. You can
set the "Next" button to start playing the video if you like. etc....



-WD

"Irene" <ireneshaw@earthlink.net> wrote in message
news:474b0611.0401080947.6cb185a6@posting.google.c om...
My DVD player sometimes has problems with VCDs that previously played ok.
I find that turning PBC off then on fixes it.
Maybe the PBC info gets corrupted and turning it off then on clears it??

Martin.

PS Definately give VCDEasy a try.

Ok, I'll try VCDEasy and let you all know what happens then. Thanks for advice!