Ported by LouiSe

more info and other AMIGA ports at:
http://louise.amiga.hu

-----------------------------------------


                  ****** Making Video CDs under Linux ******



***** What are VCDs, what are the VCD tools for ? *****

Video CDs are ordinary CDROMs in a special format which contain MPEG-1 encoded
video. For long times this type of CD was mostly known in Asia whereas Video
CDs and the according players were mostly unknown in the USA and Europe. Since
almost every DVD player can also play VCDs (and since the recordable Video DVD
for a reasonable price seems still far away) VCDs are getting more popular
everywhere.
VCDs use a special type of CD sectors (mode 2 form 2) and have a special form
of the filesystem, so they can not be mastered with the usual Linux CD-Tools
(like mkisofs and cdrecord).
If you want to know more about VCDs, visit the VCD_FAQ or do a search in the
web.
The VCD-Tools should enable you to create your own VCD under Linux. The VCD-
Tools contain two programs, vcdmplex for multiplexing a MPEG audio and video
stream in a form suitable for the VCD and mkvcdfs for making a raw image of the
VCD.



***** Actual Version of VCD-Tools: 0.4 (Sep 15 2000) *****

New in version 0.4:
    * Fixed some problems with sound blibs that were introduced with version
      0.3

New in version 0.3:
    * Location of some files was wrong in previous version, some players
      refused to play the VCDs produced. This has been corrected and the VCDs
      should play now in (hopefully) every DVD player.

    * Removed optional files, this improved the behavior of the DVD players
      during playback (at least true for mine). Time and track info is now
      shown.

    * VCDs should be able to be played back by the windows Media Player now.
      Just drag and drop the AVSEQxx.DAT files into the Media player since they
      are not recognized as MPEGs by their extension.

    * MPEG system streams from other sources should make less problems now,
      file size of MPEG files needs not longer to be a multiple of 2324.




***** HOW TO MAKE A VCD: *****

    * create a MPEG-1 video stream with the dimensions 352x240 (NTSC) or
      352x288 (PAL) and a bitrate of 1152 KBit/sec
      (use the encoder of your choice, you find one for MJPG encoded AVIs or
      Quicktime files in the lavtools).

    * create a MPEG-1 layer 2 audiostream with a sample rate of 44100 Hz,
      stereo and a bitrate of 224 KBit/sec
      (use the encoder of your choice, you find one for MJPG encoded AVIs or
      Quicktime files in the lavtools).

    * multiplex these two streams with vcdmplex
      (vcdmplex is contained in the VCD-Tools).

      I got the information that a tool called mplex may also be used for
      multiplexing and may give better results. I have not tried that myself,
      you may try it if you think that audio/video sync is not satisfying.
      Don't ask me for details! You find mplex for example at http://
      www.leo.org/pub/comp/general/graphics/mpeg/mplex/

    * use mkvcdfs to create a VCD image of one ore more of those MPEG streams
      (mkvcdfs is contained in the VCD-Tools).

    * use cdrdao to actually burn the VCD image to disk
      (you may get cdrdao from http://www.ping.de/sites/daneb/cdrdao.html).



***** HOW TO CREATE THE VCD TOOLS: *****

    * get vcdtools-0.4.tar.gz

    * gunzip and untar it with tar zxvf vcdtools-0.4.tar.gz

    * go into the directory vcdtools-0.4 and type make




***** HOW TO USE vcdmplex: *****

vcdmplex MPEG_video_stream MPEG_audio_stream MPEG_system_stream

    * MPEG_video_stream and MPEG_audio_stream are inputs, MPEG_system_stream is
      a output.

    * vcdmplex should be able to multiplex any MPEG video and audio streams,
      not just VCD compliant streams. It can be used even for MPEG-2 video
      streams, I don't know if the output adheres to any standard, however.

    * Messages in the form: "Inserted padding sector ..." are normal when
      multiplexing VCD compliant streams, they just tell you that your actual
      bitrate is slightly below VCD bitrate.

    * Messages: "***** BUFFER underrun - output may not play correctly *****"
      are more severe, they come if the actual bitrate of your MPEG stream is
      higher than the one specified in the header. The resulting system stream
      might be unplayable!

    * If video and audio stream bitrates comply exactly with the VCD
      specification (1152 KBit/s or 224 KBit/s respectivly), exactly 75
      sectors/second are generated and the system stream is stuffed with
      padding sectors as needed. Otherwise no padding sectors are created.



***** HOW TO USE mkvcdfs: *****

mkvcdfs mpegfile1 mpegfile2 .....

mkvcdfs takes MPEG files produced by vcdmplex and creates the raw CD-Image data
suited for burning with cdrdao.
mkvcdfs creates 2 files (names may be changed by editing defaults.h):
    * vcd.toc contains the table of contents of the VCD
    * vcd_image.bin contains the CD-Image itself
Use vcd.toc as the argument for cdrdao for burning the CD!



***** HOW TO BURN THE VCD: *****

cdrdao write --device your_CDR_scsi_id --driver your_CDR_driver_name vcd.toc

For further details see the cdrdao man page or visit http://www.ping.de/sites/
daneb/cdrdao.html.



***** POSSIBLE MODIFICATIONS: *****

My DVD player plays back VCDs up to the double bitrate of normal VCDs. I use a
video bitrate of 2500 KBit/s (and the usual audio bitrate of 224 KBit/s) for
that. It refuses to play anything above double bitrate.
Reportedly double bitrate is possible with most DVD players. It enhances the
image quality greatly, but the time you can store on a VCD is reduced to 37
min.
My DVD player also accepts VCDs where the MPEG video stream is in SVCD format:
MPEG-2, image size 480x480/576, 2500 MBit/s. mpeg2enc from the lavtools is able
to encode such streams. I multiplex these streams also with vcdmplex.



***** DISCLAIMER: *****

I have no documentation about the VCD standard (the "white book"). These tools
where created mainly by reverse engineering the content of a VCD. I am pretty
sure that VCDs mastered with these tools are NOT adhering to the standard.
Actually I ommitted the CDI stuff completly since only a few people have a CDI
player.
These tools are just a try to make it possible to produce Video CDs under
Linux!
It may be that they work not correctly with every input even if the input is
completly ok.



***** AUTHOR: *****

Rainer Johanni, Rainer@Johanni.de
But not all stuff in this directory is from me!
vcdisofs.c has many things I copied from mkisofs
edc_ecc.c is from the cdrdao package and is written by Heiko Eissfeldt


Home
Created 15.9.2000, Dr. Rainer Johanni
Rainer@Johanni.de

 PERMSSN    UID  GID    PACKED    SIZE  RATIO     CRC       STAMP          NAME
---------- ----------- ------- ------- ------ ---------- ------------ -------------
[generic]                 2982    6919  43.1% -lh5- 4f34 Oct 18  2001 vcdtools-0.4.readme
[generic]                  226     337  67.1% -lh5- 92f2 Oct 18  2001 vcdtools-0.4/burn
[generic]                 1776    4929  36.0% -lh5- ff6d Oct 18  2001 vcdtools-0.4/crctable.out
[generic]                  279     464  60.1% -lh5- 4bf4 Oct 18  2001 vcdtools-0.4/defaults.h
[generic]                 1452    4197  34.6% -lh5- 3509 Oct 18  2001 vcdtools-0.4/ecc.h
[generic]                 4275   21219  20.1% -lh5- 29b0 Oct 18  2001 vcdtools-0.4/edc_ecc.c
[generic]                 7781   10809  72.0% -lh5- b30f Oct 18  2001 vcdtools-0.4/edc_ecc.o
[generic]                 5186   12925  40.1% -lh5- bb51 Oct 18  2001 vcdtools-0.4/encoder_tables
[generic]                  126     207  60.9% -lh5- 78dd Oct 18  2001 vcdtools-0.4/Makefile
[generic]                20241   36540  55.4% -lh5- b3dc Oct 18  2001 vcdtools-0.4/mkvcdfs
[generic]                 3594   11359  31.6% -lh5- 8292 Oct 18  2001 vcdtools-0.4/mkvcdfs.c
[generic]                 2832    5865  48.3% -lh5- ebb2 Oct 18  2001 vcdtools-0.4/mkvcdfs.o
[generic]                 2855    6622  43.1% -lh5- b4dc Oct 18  2001 vcdtools-0.4/README
[generic]                 3435    8650  39.7% -lh5- 2cee Oct 18  2001 vcdtools-0.4/README.html
[generic]                 5105   17937  28.5% -lh5- e908 Oct 18  2001 vcdtools-0.4/vcdisofs.c
[generic]                 3170   10488  30.2% -lh5- 5714 Oct 18  2001 vcdtools-0.4/vcdisofs.o
[generic]                 8407   16492  51.0% -lh5- d042 Oct 18  2001 vcdtools-0.4/vcdmplex
[generic]                 7145   23117  30.9% -lh5- 515a Oct 18  2001 vcdtools-0.4/vcdmplex.c
---------- ----------- ------- ------- ------ ---------- ------------ -------------
 Total        18 files   80867  199076  40.6%            Oct 20  2001