VCD menus

[insurrection]

Hi.

Well i have a question about VCD menus...
I have been trying to author a VCD with a menu using Nero 6. nothing fancy; just a still image with a text tracklist (its a live concert)and no thumbnails.
When i put the VCD into the player, it starts playing and it shows the menu for like half a second and then it disappears and i just get a blank screen. I can only play the VCD mpegs that i have burned, not the menu :(
What can i do to fix this? Does it have anything to do with PBC or something??
Thanks very much.

[killingspree]

hi and welcome to the forum,
perhaps this helps a bit:
http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=71066&highlight=vcd+menu+not+looping

also here you got some nice links by manono to vcd menu guides
http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=78174&highlight=vcd+menu+not+looping

cheers
steVe
PS: searching the forum helps ;)

[insurrection]

yea i tried searching first and i didnt seem to get very much... i dunno maybe i just wasnt looking at the right threads.

[insurrection]

" Nero's VCD template usually default the amount of time between track to "infinite". The default time of "playing the menu" is also "infinite". You can always change these values by selecting the clip or menu and change the properties like 60 sec. for the menu, and whatever for the clips (i.e. 0 sec is no waiting)"
i think this might be the problem. i will try it and see. thanks :)

[insurrection]

hmm wait i didnt read carefully enough and i didnt realize that they were talking about pause time not how long the track is. anyway i think that the problem is that the menu track is only one frame and therefore is only going to play for that amount of time, i.e. 1 frame and then on to the next one which is not the menu...
is there any way to make the menu longer?

[killingspree]

if this one frame would be displayed just for the usual amount of time it would be 1/25 of a sec, so you wouldn't even truly see it!

anyway, i'd just search for a loop time setting in nero... i've only done a vcd menu with nero once, and this was quite some time ago, used some early 5.5 version of nero then, so i don't fully remember!

perhaps you'll want to look for alternative mathods of menu creation... there seem to be quite a few ways!

cheers
steVe

[insurrection]

Originally posted by killingspree
if this one frame would be displayed just for the usual amount of time it would be 1/25 of a sec, so you wouldn't even truly see it!

anyway, i'd just search for a loop time setting in nero... i've only done a vcd menu with nero once, and this was quite some time ago, used some early 5.5 version of nero then, so i don't fully remember!

perhaps you'll want to look for alternative mathods of menu creation... there seem to be quite a few ways!

cheers
steVe
yea i am looking into those alternative methods. nero is soo much easier except for the only 1 frame problem. i wonder what the point of even including that "feature" is if it doesnt really work properly...
there must be some way to fix it within in nero...

[insurrection]

k well here's what i found in a google search (i already searched google but didnt use the same search terms)

"This is easy. I did it once in Easy CD Creator.
Its easy because VCD's don't actually have clickable menus. You select a keypad number to play the videos. Anyway here is what I did.

I wanted a backgroiund image that should all the selectable clips. With each of those clips animating a short loop. So instead of having a still graphic as the background image, I instead had an mpeg video as the background.

I imported a still image into my fav video editor(Adobe Premiere) I then imported copies of my mpegs that were actually AVI's(Premiere hates mpegs) BAsically I placed the still image on the time line for a length of 1 minute. I then added video tracks. 1 for each mpeg I wanted displayed in the menu. I resized tose videos to be about like button size. I arranged them in a nice fashion placed a number under each image so I would know what key number to press for that clip. I added a music track and then I exported the project as a VCD compliant mpeg-1. Easy CD allowed me to use it as a menu. Done. Thats all there is to it.

so basically all i can do is create an mpeg which displays the tracklist. which is fine, but i just didnt know that before.
http://www.greenspun.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg.tcl?msg_id=00BL3A

[killingspree]

have you read this post at all?

http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&postid=512049#post512049

[insurrection]

Originally posted by killingspree
have you read this post at all?

http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&postid=512049#post512049
heh i feel so dumb now
oh well.... :eek:
i guess you cant believe everything you read :rolleyes:
anyway do you know if there's a way to make my menu not look grainy and stuff? the source jpeg that i am using is the correct resolution (352x240) and when i open it in photoshop or the m$ picture and fax viewer it looks fine. but when i make the mpeg still in VCDeasy it ends up looking pretty damn ugly to me. Some words are almost unreadable actually. any way to fix this?

[smiller667]

You can use hi-res stills ... try http://www.vcdimager.org/guides/ for detailed info about menu stills, aspect ratios etc.
This link http://www.geocities.com/mikk999/VCDStills.htm explains in more detail how to create them.