Can i play CD-ROM-MPEG on my pioneer DV-525 player? Is A CD-ROM-MPEG the same VCD? Whats is the pic like? Is it like a MPEG you find on the MPEG web site? The kind you have to let load & then it plays the video, Or like a dvd plays?

-- bill burnham (bill-norris@webtv.net), April 10, 2000

Answers

Bill,

No...I think not, but it would not harm your 525 to try it out and see. If you must do it, then do it on a CD-RW so that if you find out later that it would not play then you will not have a coaster on your hand....experiment is the tool for learning. It didn't work for me! VCD is a special formatted disc with defined directories and files structures, which contains MPEG-1 (preferably VCD compliant) clip(s). This is what required for your DV-525 or other VCD/DVD/CD players to process and play the mpeg1 clip(s) correctly. Think of it this way....Your DVD player is like an automated computer which needs pre-defined functions to play your mpeg clip(s); Sorta like auto run function on the software you buy on CD-ROM, which automatically run the installation when you put it in your CD-ROM drive. So if you put a plain old Mpeg clip on the CD-ROM, then your DVD player will be confused as what to do with it. Of course it will recognized it as a CD-R and will attempt to play it, but what? up to this time i'll never know :)(been there done that!) There are about four types of mpeg formats: Mpeg1 is the type used for VCD and Mpeg2 is used for DVD. Typically VCD mpeg1 quality ranges from very poor to VHS+. DVD mpeg2 is equivalent to laser disc quality. The one you download from the net may be in either mpeg1(VCD to who know what) or mpeg4 (asf). Quality on these mpeg clips can be from poor to good. I don't think you will download DVD quality mpeg2 clip since a 15 minutes worth of video can be about 700Mb+ (Using T1 or T2 lines can take hours! besides it will hang the other side line up for the same amount of time! not to mention the amount of space required to store it). Playing a VCD mpeg1 clip is like playing a VHS tape. Here are the standards for NTSC VCD mpeg1 file format: file format is mpeg1 audio/video stream, frame size is 352x240, frame rate per second is 29.97, video bitrate is 1,150,000 bits/s, GOP setting is 15,3(IBP compression), audio bitrate is 224,000 bits/s at 44,000Hz using 16bits stereo setting. Anything that deviate from this standards are not NTSC VCD mpeg1. PAL standards have two differences from the NTSC format: frame size is 352x288 and frame rate per second is 25.

A 74 minutes of VHS quality video can be stored on a single 650Mb CD-ROM using VCD standard.

-- (wingstarzz@hotmail.com), April 10, 2000.