combo w/Extended CD and mini-DVD

[trbarry]

Apologies if this is answered somewhere here or in the guides. I couldn't find anything.

My daughter is a musician and I'm trying to figure out how to make an extended CD (boombox compat) of music with a mini DVD of music video on the end of it. So far I've had only limited success.

I can burn a 2 session CD with the waves on the front and a VIDEO_TS folder with a short MPEG-2 music video in the second session. This looks like a regular CD to Musicmatch or my car player but will play the video fine in at least some software DVD players.

But I've had no luck playing the second session video in any hardware DVD player. Anyone know if this is even possible? Or do the hardware players not really follow the directory structure or something?

- Tom

[FreQi]

I thought most set-top dvd players were also cd players by nature. In which case, wouldn't a hardware player recognize the disc as an audio cd and just run with that? Pretty much ignoring the data part...

[trbarry]

I own 2 set top DVD players, though one is sort of broken (freezes when hot).

But one of them recognizes the disc as an audio CD and the other can't load it at all. Maybe this is the best I can hope for but I was just trying for ideas, or a second opinion. I'd prefer to coax video out of the DVD players if possible somehow.

- Tom

[maa]

You need a program that can burn an "open session" Red Book audio CD.
Then you can burn a second session to it in mode 1.
This is quite a typicaly used method because normal CD players always read the first session and computers always the second.
A CD player stops at the end of the first session and doesn't cause any nasty hiss like some twisted norms do.
Having said that I don't know which session a DVD player reads first - I assume the second at least it would appear so with the open DVD format used by Sonic Solutions.

[mpucoder]

There is no real guidline here for the makers of DVD players. On one hand to play an audio CD the player should look at the first session only, and expect PCM audio, not a file system, as do normal audio CD players. On the other hand, to play a VCD the player needs to look for a file system. A PC will look at the last (not second, there can be many sessions) for a file system.
Now enters DVD video, it resides in a file system (micro UDF), but DVD-video is not multi-session (note: I did not say that DVDs are not multi-session, only DVD-Video). So what should a DVD player do? If the player's firmware was originally written for DVD video, and then enhanced for VCD, it probably will not look beyond the first session for micro UDF.

In short, I don't know if any DVD player can play this. I doubt any firmware writer thought about multi-session audio/VCD. In fact, this would be the only time sessions would come into play, so I highly doubt there is any logic for sessions in any DVD player (just like audio CD players, it's not that they play the first session, they are completely unaware of sessions).

[maa]

Hmmm - quite interesting - I'll have to test this with my players.

Is there a "Norm" player ? I mean something that adheres strictly to the norm, or are the borders melting away with all these cheap All in Wonders ?

[mpucoder]

Not sure what you mean by "norm", even old audio cd players built prior to red book will play just the audio. They have no multi-session ability (having been made before the extension was invented). Before sessions digital data was stored in an audio track, which would cause a horrible noise. I'm not sure what book that was (lost trrack of all the CD stuff, it's been replaced with DVD stuff), but sessions was the answer to that problem. And a clver one at that - a CD player starts at the begining, looks for the TOC, and plays it. A computer looking for a file system scans through the session links to find the last session.

As I said, there is no reason for a DVD player to be session-aware, not for DVD-Video, CD audio, or VCD.

[trbarry]

As I said, there is no reason for a DVD player to be session-aware, not for DVD-Video, CD audio, or VCD.

I can't find anything to contradict this so I'll pessimistically assume it's true. Grrrrr!

But my reason for using mini-DVD for the video in the second session was mostly to take advantage of the possibility of playing that video in hardware DVD players. If I can't do that anyway then maybe I better rethink this. Though I still like the DVD menus & stuff.

Time for more research. I guess I should play a few more extended CD's and see if there's anything I like there.

But thank's for everybody's input here.

- Tom

[maa]

Is there a "Norm" player ? Uh - that should habe been "Norm" DVD player - but anyway its all clear now including my other mistake of saying computers play the second session - I was thinking more on the lines of "not the first" . They do indeed look for the last session.