How to use TMPGEnc to create assets for the Philips Video CD 2.0 Toolkit:

The VCD templates supplied with TMPGEnc do NOT create MPEG-1 files that are compliant with the VCD 2.0 White Book specification.  However TMPGEnc can create video and audio streams that can be used as inputs to a VCD 2.0 compliant multiplexer like VCDMUX.

The steps to creating VCD 2.0 compliant video and audio streams with TMPGEnc are:

1.      Start a new project.

2.      Select your video source.

3.      The audio source is selected automatically if your video source has audio.

4.      Select “Video Only” as the output stream type.

5.      Press “Configure” or “Setting” (depends on version)

6.      The following settings under the Video tab are critical for VCD compliance:

a.       Stream type: MPEG-1

b.      Size: 352x240 (NTSC)

c.       Frame Rate: 29.97 fps

d.      Rate control mode: Constant bit rate (CBR)

e.       Bitrate: 1150000 bit/sec

f.        VBV buffer size: 40

7.      For GOP structure, it is recommended that you use IPB counts of 1, 4, and 2 with 1 sequence header per GOP.  Disable detect screen changes.

8.      The output file will have the extension .m1v.  If you are using VCDMUX, change the filename to a DOS 8.3 name with a .mpv extension.

9.      Press “Encode” to encode the video file.

10.  When the video file has finished encoding, select “Audio Only” as the output stream type.

11.  Press “Configure”

12.  The following settings under the Audio tab are critical for VCD compliance:

a.       Stream type: MPEG-1 Audio Layer II

b.      Sampling Frequency: 44100

c.       Channel mode: Stereo

d.      Bit rate: 224

13.  The output file will have the extension .mp2.  If you are using VCDMUX, change the filename to a DOS 8.3 name with a .mpa extension.

14.  Press “Encode” to encode the audio file.

15.  When the audio file has finished encoding, start VCDMUX.

16.  From the menu, select Functions -> Auto Mux.

17.  Select Browse and find the video stream.  If you did not use the .mpv extension, list all files.

18.  If your audio stream has the .mpa extension and it’s in the same directory as the video stream, it will be automatically added.  Otherwise repeat the step above to find your audio stream.

19.  Press “OK” to multiplex the video and audio streams.  The multiplex file will have a .mmd extension.

20.  Start the Philips Video CD 2.0 Toolkit program.

21.  Add the .mmd VCD file as you would any other asset file.

This process creates a NTSC VCD file.  Unfortunately, I can’t verify PAL VCD files, but it should work with PAL settings.  The other configuration settings can be left at their default settings.  Most can be changed without impacting compliance, but this isn’t guaranteed.