I am thinking about getting Pinnacle Express to author and burn VCD.If you have used it before, please share your experience.

-- Ray Poon (rpoon2@aol.com), April 03, 2002

Answers

yes & it works very well- the drawbacks are it requires dv type avi files for input & the scene to scene transitions are not precise but rather intended for a natural break between clips or scenes- since i do mostly clips it is no problem for me - also i use a great workaround- ( http://www.sparkysworld.co.uk/ ) that enables me to use mpg1(vcd ready files)instead of the avi files which permits nearly 1 hour on my 6 gig hard drive.

-- joe ricci (joe1492r@aol.com), April 07, 2002.

Joe: Thanks for you answer. Can you clarify this part of your answer "i use a great workaround- ( http://www.sparkysworld.co.uk/ ) that enables me to use mpg1(vcd ready files)instead of the avi files which permits nearly 1 hour on my 6 gig hard drive."

Thanks a lot

Ray

-- Ray Poon (rpoon2@aol.com), April 07, 2002.

Ray- here is what i actually do based on the workaround from sparky- 1 Capture AVI's with pinnacle studio dv or se for analog- 2 Grab Titles Screens Or Make A Title Screen for each chapter 3 Edit AVI's & Render 4 Convert Large Render AVI's VCD format with TMPGEN wizard 5 Make Small( about 5 secs long)"Dummy" Rendered AVI'sfor pinnacle express to create the menu chapters 6 Enter Titles, a sound file & Dummy Rendered AVI's to Pexp 9 save project using X , then save again using F to XPLUS folder 10 Make Movie (VCD) with no disk 11 Press Stop when finished 12 Can exit Pexp at this time to finish later 13 Copy mpg1 from TMPGEN to PExp

-- joe ricci (joe1492r@aol.com), April 08, 2002.

DISREGARD the previous post - i accidentally hit send - here is the corrected posting- Ray- here is what i actually do based on the workaround from sparky- 1 Capture AVI's with pinnacle studio dv or av for analog- 2 Grab Titles Screens Or Make A Title Screen for each chapter from the AVI's & save in jpeg format 3 Edit AVI's & Render 4 Convert Large Rendered AVI's VCD format with TMPGEN wizard- i make one at a time due to hard drive size- most clips are 2 - 7 minutes - i can then join them in TEMPGEN if needed when they are in mpg1 (VCD ) format- 5 Make Small( about 5 secs long)"Dummy" Rendered AVI'sfor pinnacle express to create the menu chapters 6 Enter Titles, a sound file & combine grabbed titles 9i use jpeg format smae size as avi frame)with Dummy Rendered AVI's to Pinnacle express 7 Make Movie (VCD) with no disk in pinnacle express 8 Press Stop when finished 9 copy your TMPGEN rendered files over the pinnacle express created files(scn_001 etc,) from step #7 10 Insert a cd-r or rw and then finish in pinnacle express unless you read sparky's page carefully and have the pinnacle express, this may still sound confusing - i am going to try svcd next -

-- joe ricci (joe1492r@aol.com), April 08, 2002.