I can create a VCD with Nero 6 and autoplay it in Windows XP (WMP 9) by putting an autorun.inf file in the root pointing to an .asx file that lists MPEGAV\AVSEG01.DAT; this autoplays fine. But if I create a menu in Nero (and this menu works fine in VCD-capable DVD player), I would like Windows autoplay to start up with a representation of that, and then be controllable more or less as the DVD playre can be--can that be done? TIA! /David Babcock
Nah i wouldnt think that would be as easy, VCD's dont have much options like this at all unfortunately. Personally I dont even bother with VCD menus!
Dela, Thanks--I had been discovering the limitations during the past few days myself. Fortunately, an .ASX playlist lets WMP provide the menu, in effect, and by printing the "menu" on the jewelbox insert, and listing the keystrokes to do this and that, the viewer can know what to do even when WMP is set to full-screen playback. So, this is something of a solution. I've made it a bit tidier by writing a little program that is run from the AUTORUN.INF and tries to run mplayer2.exe (a/k/a WMP 6.4, which can be coerced to start full-screen, unlike the newer versions) and falls back to the app associated with .ASX otherwise--I did this first with a batch file, but the .EXE keeps enough control to stop useless error messages from showing up. They don't bother me, but they would rattle the family members who will get the VCDs. If there's any interest, the list is welcome to the .EXE. /Dave
Hi Dela, Not usually, but I'm not sure what family and friends would be watching them on. The autoplay thing is just meant to make things as easy as possible for them *if* they have, or want, to play them on their PC. /Dave
That's right. The VCD player sees a VCD-compliant disk (Nero, or one's VCD burning program of choice, sees to that), and does its thing. What else is on there, besides the stuff it expects, it has no reason to worry about--a consumer product like a VCD/DVD player is not going to go out of its way to refuse to play a disk that it can make sense of, unless the manufacturer is nuts. /Dave
hmm an idea would be to put a shitty player on the vcd, nothing big that will just play the vcd so that it would work in any computer and completely work off the disc? then again that is asking a but much of the drive! lol
Hmmmmm. A standard- (i.e. White-Book-) compliant VCD will already have a program on it to play the VCD in CD-i players, so maybe something on the disk to emulate what a CD-i player does with that program, but with the computer screen as output...do-able in principle, I would guess. "Left as an exercise for the reader". LOL! /Dave
