Hello, I'm totally new to all this. I've just had a new computer built and paid a lot of extra money to have the new ati all in wonder agp 32meg video card installed with it. I did hope to convert some of my old vhs tapes to video cd. I found Rich's web site and printed out the instructions and followed them step by step. Still no luck. I downloaded ifilm edit, still nothing. I either get the not compatible message from east cd creator 4 or the system clock reference error 1050 or 1051. I've tried changing the motion estimator to 3 like the previous post suggested. Still no good. I've tried to e-mail ati and got an automated response that said they are 5 days behind on replies. I'm thinking of trying to run the mpeg 1 through Unlead video studio to see if that will work. Right now I'm really, really sorry I bought this card. I wish that I had gone with one of the pinnacle cards. By the way my system is p3-550 with 128meg ram and a 7200 spin hard drive so I don't think that is the problem

Rob Bellenie Canada

-- Rob (robbell@ionline.net), March 22, 2000

Answers

Rob, I don't have any experiance with the ATI card, but then again, I don't understand your question.

What format do you capture to? If not directly to MPEG-1, what encoder are you using to encode from X to mpeg1? (Use the Panasonic encoder ;)

I think you can ignore the timining error, and EZ CD will still burn the VCD fine.

Could you restate your question(s) with question marks(?) at the end so I know what your asking.

This is a great message board. Hang in there. I'm sure you'll get your problem fixed in no time at all.

-- Michael S. Gilmore (mgilmore@san.rr.com), March 22, 2000.

Use NERO software, it records almost anything to CD. I have used it to record MPEG2 video to VCD. I have captured MPEG2 through my All-In -wonder 128 without any problems. The VCDs are pretty good created this way.

-- julio (jcanaca644@aol.com), March 22, 2000.

Hi, Running it through IfilmEdit should have worked. Did you remember to set the Ifilm file properties to VCD? I (and many others) are using the ATI AIW 128 cards for some time now and they do work. As the other poster mentioned, Nero will also work. Nero has a wider tolerance of out of spec mpeg than EZCD. You may get a yellow " ! " in EZCD but go ahead an burn it anyway. That shouldn't stop the burn process.

Lastly, I would suggest you download one of my short several second samples and try to burn one of those. If "that" doesn't work, then there's something else wrong.

Which MMC version do you have? If you have 6.2 then you SHOULD be able to burn the "default" Mpeg-1 video directly using EZCD Video creator. But you MUST use the ATI default setting (which I'm sorry to say produces less than great VCD bit rate video) But it should work and at least create a valid VCD. Select the Mpeg parameters in the ATI TV player configuration (little box with the check in it in the player control panel) Then follow this:

Select "Custom" Select "Set" Set Format to Mpeg-1 Set Dimension to NTSC (352x240) Click on the "Mpeg Settings" box At the bottom right of next screen you'll see a "default" box. Click on that. Hit "next" four times (Do NOT change ANY settings or even put the curser in any optional fields) Now hit "OK" twice.

You are back to the player screen. Do your record. Take that resultant Mpeg-1 file and load it into EZCD directly. It WILL be VCD correct and will burn okay. If not, you have some other problem and it's not the ATI.

MMC 6.2 fixed that "default" button so it DOES make valid VCD files. BUT as I said, the problem is that the internal parameters ATI chose (esp. the motion estimation setting of only 3) are very conservative. My computer system is capable of using an ME setting of 18 or 19. Generally speaking the higher you can run the ME the better the video. How high you can set it is dependant on your CPU power. You can produce VERY nice Mpeg-1 (as seen from my samples on my web page)when you can get up into the ME = 15 or more. But I cannot change the "default" settings at all without making the file non-vcd compliant again. Ergo, to get the best video, I "change" the settings to my own, and then parse the mpeg video through IfilmEdit which "re-muxes" and fixes the system mux rate back to where EZCD will accept it.

Try the "default" settings as I outlined regardless of the quality just to see if you "can" at least burn a VCD.

HTH .. Rich http://www.members.home.net/richa/

-- Rich (richa@home.com), March 22, 2000.

Question: I also have an ATI card and can capture in MPEG1 & MPEG2 but the thing is, at a decent setting it can capture about 30 minutes of video for 640M of space used. Isn't this the limit of the average CDR disc? If so, does that mean we can only burn 30 mins of video per CD???

I read someone but have not tried that to create a good VCD, we need to do the following: 1. capture in the higher resolution (752x480 or something close to this) in NTSC 2. use something like Adobe Premiere 4.2 to 'de-interlace' the video. 3. then use Xing to encode to MPEG1 (i guess if it was originally in AVI format or some other format) 4. then we can achieve 74 min of video on 1 640M CDR disc

IS THIS INFORMATION CORRECT? I'VE BEEN LOOKING INTO THIS ON AND OFF BUT HAVEN'T HAD ENOUGH TIME TO FULLY EXPLORE IT ALL. JUST DOWNLOADED A TRIAL VERSION OF ADOBE PREMIERE 5.0 LAST NIGHT FOR FREE DEMO (RETAILS OVER $500!!!) AND HAVEN'T GONE FURTHER THAN THIS. PLEASE LET ME KNOW IF ANYONE ELSE HAVE HAD SUCCESS IN BURNING A FULL 74 MIN CDR USING THE ATI ALL-IN-WONDER CARD AND WHAT THEY NEEDED TO DO TO ACHEIVE THIS.

THANKS ALL! TONY 3/27/2000 :P

-- Tony Lau (tonylau@yahoo.com), March 27, 2000.

I also have an ATI All-in-wonder 128 card, but on a 400MHz Pentium with 160MB of RAM, and have trouble making video CD's. The card will capture the video and save it to an MPEG-1 file; however, I can't save it to a video-CD because the CD software complains that it is not a compatable format. It plays fine on Windows Media player at home, but it does not play at all on the Windows Media player at work even though both Windows Media players are at the latest release!!! I've called ATI about this problem, and they said that I have to get some software that converts MPEG-1 files to the "white book" standard. So I tried iFilmEdit, but that won't recognize the MPEG-1 file any more than my video-CD burner or the Windows Media player at work. I'm sure I have all the MPEG settings correct, and I feel the problem is some sort of incompatibility with some other software on my system.

-- Bob Conover (bconover@gi.com), March 27, 2000.

Hi,

I myself is very new in this VCD making. But if I may recomend you, maybe you can try ULead Video Studio ver 4.0. I use this software, maybe it's not the best program / solution, but I think it's quite good for the beginner like me as ULead can save MPEG-1 Whitebook complaint for VCD format, which my WinOn CD ver 3.7 recognize the .mpg without any trouble then I burn it to CDR at 8x and the result....sorry to be said.... choppy and blocky......:) But for me at least it worked OK.

Sunar

Hi Tony,

For the beginner like me, I just know from the internet that you don't have to worry about your .mpg file size, as long as it not more than 70 min play, it will fit and be burnt fine to your CD-R. But the internet say that keep in mind, to spare 5 - 10 minutes which will be used for other VCD information, So don't make your .mpg file exactly 74 minutes. I hope my information is true.

Sunar.

-- Sunar (rekotomo@denpasar.wasantara.net.id), March 28, 2000.

I have been using VCDEasy's latest version and have also been getting the system clock reference eror, i am curently encoding something to burn anywho so i can test the post of the system closk not really matering with easy cd creator. I will let everyone know, as i have got a brand new panasonic dvd/vcr that is dvd-r compliant. I hope it work, as that is the only thing that has been hindering me from frome creating a kick ass library, and also i am experimenting with fitting movies on one cd with VCDEasy as per a guite i have also, so if it works i will post exactly what i did, i have a p3 550 with 320 megs ram and a shit 8 meg video card, and only a 4x burner

-- Justin (jweidmarkc339@rogers.com), January 26, 2003.