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VCD
Movies FAQ
1) What is a
Video Compact Disc or VCD ?
A Video Compact Disc or VCD
is a compact disc that plays movies instead of music.It is in
multi-platform format which means you can use many different kinds of
equipment to play them
VCDs look
exactly like a CD or CD-ROM except that it stores video/audio clips
using the compressed and standardized MPEG-1 (Motion Picture Expert
Group) format. It was jointly developed by Philips and Sony and were
introduced in 1993. A single disc can only hold 74 minutes of video but
usually only 50 to 60 minutes is actually used. So a typical movie will
be held in two compact discs that are packaged in a single jewel case.
2) What are the
advantages of VCD?
1.VCD is
multi-platform.
2.Random Access for quick search.
3.Multiple audio/voice tracks for multilingual support.
4.It's a cheaper alternative for DVDs and Laser Discs.
5.Its the exact size of your regular CDs and its so much easier to store
compared to VHS.
6.Its picture and sound WILL NOT deteriorate with time, unlike VHS so if
you are a movie collector,you can keep your collection for a very long
time.
3) What is
the quality of VCD like ?
Because of the capacity to
hold more data, DVD movies are of more superior quality compared
to VCDs. DVD can hold up to 26 more times (6 Gigabytes) of data as
compared with VCD (650 Megabytes).
One of the objectives of the
MPEG-1 standard for VCD was to get the quality comparable to S-VHS. In
practice, picture quality when using a VCD players may somehow be almost
as good as laser disc, depending on the encoding.
VCDs are playable on any
machine capable of playing VCD anywhere in the world. This is because
VCDs have no incompatibility problem caused by different formats such as
PAL, NTSC & SECAM, and also do not have lock-out codes that disallow
you playing movies that are not bought in your region.
4) How can I
play VCD on my computer ?
Almost any computer can play
VCDs because they are based on MPEG technology. You only need a basic
pentium PC (minimum pentium 166), a 20xCD-ROM drive, a good video card
with 32MB or more and a software-only MPEG decoder.
There are two most popular
MPEG decoder software that is from Xing Technology called Xing
MPEG and Active Movie from Microsoft. You can try out Xing's latest
version of MPEG program by downloading it from WWW.XINGTECH.COM.
This software is highly recommended to play VCDs. If you are running a
windows NT/95/98 machine you'd probably have the media player as a
plug-in in Internet Explorer.
Just follow these simple steps:
1. Insert VCD into your CD-ROM drive.
2. Open XingMPEG player.
3. Click at File and then Open. From the Look
in menu: Choose the cd-rom
drive. Open the Mpegav folder
and you'll get either .dat or .avi files. Click at
it and ENJOY your movie!
Windows Media Player /
Active Movie supports popular video and audio formats including AVI
video, QuickTime, WAV, MIDI, AU, and AIFF. It also supports playback of
MPEG video and audio. With the support of MPEG video, ActiveMovie
gives you television-quality video on your computer.
To enhance the performance
of your computer, get a MPEG card from your local computer shop to
relief the decoding work from your main CPU. That way, the
movie you are watching will play more smoothly.
Another
recomendable software to play VCDs is Taiwan Cyber Link's The
Software-only VCD PowerPlayer. It requires no hardware VCD player or
MPEG card, saving significant cost. It is said that this software is
much better than the XING MPEG Player that is, it’s easy to use and
has high quality graphic. Pls go to http://www.cyberlink.com.tw/
to download.
5) How do I
play VCD on a Apple Macintosh
You will need Quicktime,
Apple's video technology that allows you to play high quality video
directly to your computer. You can download it from WWW.APPLE.COM.
A 4x CDROM and a 604e proccessor is good enough to play VCDs.
However, you cannot play certain VCD movies
such as The Matrix and Notting Hill using Quicktime alone.You WILL need
a software called CD-ROM
SpeedTools from Intech Software. You will have to replace your CD/DVD
Driver Extention with CD-ROM
SpeedTool so that you can watch ALL the Blockbuster movies on VCD.
Please note that on certain movie page, there is a disclaimer stating
that the movie cannot be played using Quicktime
alone. This problem is solved when you use CD-ROM
SpeedTool to replace your CD/DVD Driver Extention.
The FREE DEMO version
lasts for only 10 restarts and you can get another 10 restart extentions.
After that, you will have to pay $39.95 for it.Well its still quite a
bargain considering a DVD module or upgrade will cost you $300-$500!
Download
Microsoft Windows Player 6.4 for Windows NT 4 and Windows 95
Download
Microsoft Windows Player 7 for Windows 98 and Windows 2000
Download
Apple QuickTime for Windows
Home
Call 1-877-684-7058
Fax: 1-817-866-2216
Fort Worth General Store
7120 Rufe Snow Dr. Bld.
106 Suite 157
Fort Worth Tx. 76148
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