I would like to make a screen saver .scr for pc with flash interface for navigation on a mini cd, with autorun this part is ok. What I would like to add to this on the same disk is a 5-10 min video mpg1 to run on DVD to TV for people without computers. 1. Is it possible to do this on the same mini disk and have the pc or DVD/TV autorun? 2. Can I adapt the Flash interface to provide a menu structure in the movie to jump to scenes? 3. Is it possible to get the movie to do loop?

-- John Maher (jmvr@austarnet.com.au), January 12, 2005

Answers

This is really an excellent set of questions. 1) Yes, it is possible to set up the VCD part to autorun, but only on PCs. Standalone DVD players will ignore the autorun file. You should realize that some standalone DVD players, mostly older ones, may not like burnable media. Some may not play VCD at all. Newer players should play it, but there are no guarantees that someone might not own an old player or a really cheap one that just won't play the disc no matter what. You can put VCD content on your disc, you just can't make a standalone player autorun it. Autorun on standalone players depends on the firmware. Some players, like Apex models, won't autorun any VCDs. If the firmware is setup to autorun VCDs, then it will do it without any special files on the disc, but if the firmware doesn't do this, there's nothing you can do to make it do it. 2) I know nothing about programming Flash, so I can't answer this, but I am very skeptical that this can be done. VCD menus are very simplistic and I doubt that you are going to be able to integrate Flash successfully into them. Standalone DVD players aren't going to understand Flash at all. 3) Yes, this is possible. VCDEasy (http://www.vcdeasy.org) is a VCD/SVCD creating software program that I highly recommend. It is possible in VCDEasy to set a movie to loop forever. It's not possible to do this in Nero, which a lot of people use to make VCDs. You can use VCDEasy to create a BIN/CUE image that Nero can burn, but if someone uses Nero to actually create the VCD, there is no option in Nero for making something loop.

-- Root (root@yahoo.moc), January 13, 2005.