Movie Maker and Burning CDs
If you are not burning CDs, VCDs, or SVCDs yet, and considering your options,
there are many....
For a professional finishing touch to a CD, consider adding an 'auto-start' feature and
playing the movie in an HTML webpage. Check this AutoStart Tutorial
by Dan Conklin. It's a bit heavy in technical content, so you might just try
inserting the CD and see if it autostarts without the e
-DV Camcorder
Professional Video CDs - from Celebration Theater
In 2008 my local Celebration Theater started giving away discs with movie trailers, poster images and other things on it. The video clips are mostly flash files and the whole disc is a very impressive interactive experience, much like a DVD.
PapaJohn's Products and Services
Thumbnail To burn a standard VCD or SVCD, you need other
software to supplement Movie Maker 2... first to convert a saved
movie to an MPEG format, and then to burn the disc.
• VCDs, the lower quality of the two, are made
from MPEG1 files. • Higher quality SVCDs are made from MPEG2 files. There is a
licensing fee associated with the MPEG2 codec, so you will pay a modest fee to
make SVCDs.
TMPGEnc is considered the best software to convert WMV or DV-AVI files to
MPEG.
Use one of many software products to burn the
discs.
• Use Movie Maker 2 to burn CDs with a HighMAT menu structure. They
use the same blank discs as VCDs and SVCDs, but the WMV files on the discs
are a much higher quality, one that aligns more with DVDs.
Use today's DVD players to view VCDs and SVCDS. But
you'll need a new player to play the WMV files on a HighMAT disc.
Newer models that support playback are expected in early 2004. Until then,
playback is limited to computers. HighMAT™
Microsoft included in Movie Maker 2 a feature to burn video CDs that use the
new HighMAT™ technology, jointly developed by Microsoft and Panasonic. The CDs
that are produced are really great, but currently limited to playback on
computers. CD and DVD players that support the HighMAT™ technology (and play
both WMA and WMV files) are not out yet. Be careful - some are starting to
purchase players that have the HighMAT™ logo, but find. when they look closer,
that they play the audio WMA files, but not the video WMV files.
HighMAT devices have a logo that indicates their capability. The logos are
audio, audio/image, and audio/image/video. The players that ship today are
either audio or audio/image. You can see the logo on the device, its packaging,
and point of sale materials. Unfortunately, the Panasonic web site is
confusing, but they are addressing this.
I'm waiting for the first report from someone who makes a HighMAT™ CD with MM2
(video+audio), brings it to a store which advertises a new player, and
successfully watches a movie on it.
As players are released, you can consider the HighMAT™ CD produced by Movie
Maker 2 as an alternative to a VCD or SVCD.
Note: HighMAT™ and the HighMAT™ logo are either trademarks or registered
trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other
countries.
'Standard'
CDs
Movie Maker 2 does not have a feature to directly burn a 'standard' VCD or
SVCD. And they haven't provided any software development tools for
third-parties to provide such utilities, that would work directly with Movie
Maker. Here's a Microsoft post that sums it up:
11/5/02 - Scott Randall - For the benefit of other readers who might have the
same question... If you want to make a DVD or VCD from video you edit in Movie
Maker, I recommend that you capture in DV-AVI, edit your movie, and Save out as
DV-AVI to be compatible with most programs that can convert to VCD.
If you are making SVCDs, you should save your movie to a high quality file
(preferably, for quality purposes, using the DV-AVI format) and then use
third-party software to convert the DV-AVI file to an MPEG2 file that is needed
for the SVCD software. Most people who post to this and related newsgroups feel
that TMPGEnc does the best job of making the MPEG2 file from the DV-AVI one.
Although it is a free download, the use of the MPEG2 encoder for it is limited
to 30 days.
Once you have made the MPEG2 file from the DV-AVI file, you then need other
software to author the SVCD and burn it.
If you are limited in disk space and can't hold enough files in high quality
DV-AVI format to make a high quality DVD, and still want to make one, you can
save the movie from Movie Maker as a WMV file and use that as the source for
the MPEG2 file.
A
Great Alternate Approach - use WMV in lieu of DV-AVI
7/13/03 - email from David Ellis - People save their movie fine, and then use
Nero to try and burn a VCD or SVCD, or use TMPGEnc to convert file to MPEG1 or
MPEG2, then burn VCD/SVCD. When they come to play on their entertainment system
DVD player, the playback is jerky and corrupted. The problem is bitrate. Their
movie bitrate is too high. SVCD uses MPEG2, with a max bitrate of about 2.5
mbps *total* - video and audio. If people are saving in MM2 as DV-AVI or "high
quality for local playback", the video bitrate is likely up near 2.4 or more
(PapaJohn note: yes, my DV-AVI files are 3.4 MB per second). Add audio to that,
and it could pop over the SVCD max, but there is no interface way to see this.
Both Nero's convert and TMPGEnc's standard convert to mpeg2 does not try to
reduce the bitrate to fit under the bitrate limit. Once it converts, it happily
burns to CD. It is even playable on the PC, as the PC can handle MPEGs of
variable rates. But DVD players usually do not, so it tries to playback, but is
"choked" with too much data, giving crappy playback. Simple answer - in MM2,
save as the 2.1 mbps option. More complex answer - use TMPGEnc settings to
limit video bitrate. I had success using 2.2 mbps, and with CD quality audio on
top of that, it was OK after I did a SVCD burn in Nero. I think most VCD/SVCD
burn methods are "dumb" and not self checking, but I would be suprised if DVD
software didn't do some format and data check. So you shouldn't extend this
approach to DVDs.
Dated
but Timeless Posts
6/15/03
- Probably more of a Burning question than MM2. I've just burnt my videos onto
SVCD, and they play fine but... There are 3 seperate videos on there, created
from 3 seperate .avi files. I can select and play each one from a crude menu
screen. What I really want is one video, that plays continuously, but that I
can skip forward and back to the different breaks if I want to. Rather like
tracks on an audio CD. So I have 2 questions. 1. Is it possible to create the
equivalent of 'tracks' on an audio CD from a single avi file? 2. Is it possible
to create one continuous movie from multiple avi files (obviously this is
possible in MM2, but if I can't do Q1 then I'd rather not). > It's possible
to do both. You can join your mpg files using TMPGenc using its MPEG tools. For
creating "chapter" points, you can use VCDEasy, available at
www.vcdeasy.org. It's apparently not a free program anymore, and despite its
name, it's not particularly easy to use, but it can do what you want. Note that
I don't think you can create an SVCD "menu" that references the chapter points
- it's just not in the SVCD specs. For this, you need to go to DVD.
6/22/03 - When I try to record to the CD, the message I get is "A recordable
CD was not detected"
. I can't save my movie except to my hard drive. > Perhaps because unless
you are using the appropriate software (NOT windows CD Recording software), you
cannot record directly to a CD-R. > You need to make sure recording is
enabled for the CD-RW. Right click on the CD-RW through My Computer and click
Properties. Click the Recording tab and make sure "Enable CD recording on this
drive" is ticked. > I have a new laptop with a combo DVD/CD burner. It
burned DVDs fine and reads both CDs and DVDs. But when I tried to use MM2 to
save to CD, I got the message "A recordable CD drive was not detected...." Your
fix worked great. The new laptop came with the option unchecked, and turning it
on resolved it instantly, without having to restart MM2 or my computer. But it
raises a couple questions: 1 - why would the computer come with it not checked,
if it needs to be enabled to burn CDs with MM2? 2 - my desktop computer has
never had a problem burning CDs with MM2. I just checked it and found the
option to enable CD recording on this drive to not be checked. So, it being not
checked hasn't been an issue - I'll leave it that way.
6/11/03 - When I try to save to a CD. I get the message, "a recordable CD
drive was not detected"
. I have a CD-RW drive as well as a DVD- RW drive. > Make sure that the
checkbox is checked that allows you to record digitally to the CD-RW in the
properties for that drive (eg in the My Computer). I have multiple burning
drives and evidently only one can be selected at the lower level, for MM to
recognize. > This Knowledge Base article might help:
It looks like you might have to physically change the order of the CD-R and
DVD-RW.
5/17/03 - When I attempt to save small movie files to a CDR, the program cannot
detect a recordable drive
. I know both my cd RW drive and DVD R drive work because I have used them in
other apps today. > What type of drive is it? Does it show up in the WHQL?
If you right click on the drive in "My Computer" and go to properties, go the
recording tab, and make sure it is enabled. > That fixed one portion of my
problem - enable the recording on your drive > I also changed from CD+R to
CD-R discs and it started working right away!
9/19/03 - I've copied a movie onto CD and I'd like it to run it automatically
whenever anyone inserts the CD into a drive. Can anyone tell me how to do this?
> Make an Auto Starting, Multimedia CD with a Video Embedded in an HTML File
http://www.corporatemedianews.com/2002/03_mar/tutorials/1makeacd_conklin.htm -
the link will walk you through making an auto starting CD with video on it.
Just pop it in to any windows PC and Internet Explorer will open up and start
playing your video with Windows Media Player. It is a little complicated to set
up, but once you get it working it is a great way it distribute your videos to
friends, family and business associates and no configuring required on their
end.
4/7/03 - VCD and SVCD formats are stop-gap formats that will likely not be in
use for very long. The only reason VCD and SVCD became popular was because they
allowed video to be burned to standard CDR and CDRW disks, which are cheap.
However, once DVDRs become cheaper and DVD burners more prevalent, why would
anyone want to use VCD or SVCD? > SVCD and VCD will be around for a long
time, because they work, and they aren't going to stop working. As things
stand, you can't create a 4 hour DVD quality movie on your PC anyway, so it's
not much of an advantage.
