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Initially, VCDwizard was written as (another) GUI for VCDimager, but allows one to author (Super-)VideoCD's with almost all possibilities allowed. Later, I (the author) needed support for longer filenames in the first track of a S/VCD (the ISO-track). It seemed this wasn't possible in the original VCDimager by HvR, so I wend reprogramming VCDimager into lkVCDimager, which does the same like the original VCDimager but instead of the very restricted ISO9660-level#1, it uses the ISO9660-level#2 restrictions for the ISO-track (longer filenames). These days I've added nearly all frontends to lkVCDimager, which were originally available in VCDimager, making VCDwizard almost a complete package.
I also needed the possibility to create STILL's very easely and simple. Till a year ago, I always used a complex routine in which I used TMGenc in order to create a STILL. Later on, it seemed those kind of STILL's weren't that much compliant at all, which made me to fork the 'linux mjpg-tools' as well. This resulted into the mjpgTools, which I also included into VCDwizard. Any STILL created by the routines of VCDwizard are compliant for sure. The STILL-Creator of the mjpgTools allows you to add an image of type JPeG, GIF, BMP, TGA or PPM (best results are retrieved from PPM though).
Till begin this year (2003), I always used cdrDAO to burn all cd-images, created by VCDwizard, onto a CD-Rom. But I thought it would be simplier (and easier) if I would have a burning method inside VCDwizard (to make it more complete), so I wend forking cdrDAO as well, resulting into lkCDRtools.
So by now, VCDwizard has been evolved into a complete package, which lets you create your STILL's, author these STILL's and your pre-encoded MPeG's (movies) into advanced PBC-structures, adding one or more custom files/directories to it, and as soon you're finished and (lk)VCDxBuild has done its job, you can start burning the image onto a CDR immediately.
This type is experimental and was formerly used by 'Karaoke' CD's. Better use VCD1.1 instead.
This is the most basic Video CD specification dating back to 1993 (actually this was based on the Karaoke-CD, which was the first MPeG based cd-rom format), which has the following characteristics:
The Video CD specification requires the multiplexed mpeg-1 stream to have a CBR of less than 174300 bytes (1394400 bits) per second (2324 bytes of payload per sector * 75 sectors per second = 174300 bytes per second) in order to accommodate single speed cd-rom drives.
The specification allows for the following 3 resolutions :
The CBR mpeg-1, layer II audio stream is fixed at 224 kbps with 1 stereo or 2 mono channels.
It is recommended to keep the video bit-rate under 1151929.1 bps (It should be noted, that in addition to the audio stream and the video stream, there are also bits consumed by the program stream encapsulation which have to be taken into account for bit-rate calculations).
About two years after the VideoCD 1.1 specification came out, an improved VideoCD 2.0 standard was published in 1995. This one added the following items to the features already available in the Video CD 1.1 specification:
The specification allows for the following 3 resolutions :
For segment play items the following audio encodings became available:
Also the possibility to have audio only streams and still pictures (in addition to the resolutions already defined for motion video, also high resolutions are available for still pictures, which are 704 x 480 (NTSC Full d-2) and 704 x 576 (pal Full d-2)) was provided. The bit-rate of multiplexed streams should be kept under (Alas it seems, that for strict VideoCD 2.0 compliance, it's required to pad the stream exactly to 1x muxrate. The Super Video CD format does not have this flaw) 174300 bytes/sec (except for single still picture items) in order to accommodate single speed drives.
With the upcoming of the DVD-V media, a new VCD standard had to be published in order to be able to keep up with technology, so the SuperVideoCD specification was called into life in 1999. In the midst of 2000 a full subset of this SVCD specification was published as IEC-62107.
As the most notable change over VideoCD 2.0 is a switch from mpeg-1 CBR to mpeg-2 VBR encoding for the video stream was performed. The following new features - building upon the Video CD 2.0 specification - are:
For the SuperVideoCD, only the following two resolutions are supported for motion video and (low resolution) still pictures (the same high resolutions as defined for VCD2.0 apply for SVCD's) :
About STILL's.
The Pages, start here.
Ask them via the Forum of VCDwizard at labDV.
VCD autorun