Re: [xine-user] Simple questions: Video Input plugin

[Florin A. <fl...@an...>]

On Wed, 2002-12-11 at 04:32, Haines Brown wrote:
> 
> First question, the DVD option knows to look for a DVD disk in a
> drive. Is that true of VCD as well? Do I always have the choice of
> file and VCD to play a VCD disk?

To play VCDs, just click on the VCD button, then click on play.

> I downloaded and played a sample file, but a) it lasted only a second
> or two, although 20 or 40 Mb in size, b) it was crude looking. This
> does not sound right. Shouldn't I expect better?

The VCD format has very bad quality.
SVCD is signifficantly better. Always use that instead of VCD, when
possible.
xine can play SVCDs too, with the same "VCD" button. Works very well.

> Although sampleVCD was part of the file's name, its extension was
> mpg. Another file has a .vcd extension, but it wouldn't play. What's

the .mpg is the actual movie.
VCD, SVCD and DVD are all in the MPEG2 format.

> the relation? And I see that VCD comes in two formats: PAL and
> NTSC. And then there's XVCD, VCD 1.0 and VCD 2.0. Would someone shed
> some light on all this?

On the mjpegtools mailing list was a recent discussion about these
formats.
You may want to ask these questions there, that list is much more
focused on (S)VCD issues.

> What's the point of vcd, which I understand is
> no better than VHS. Is vcd (2.0) what people produce with their home
> video cameras?

Digital video cameras ("digital camcoders", usually Digital8 or DV)
produce a video stream in DV format. Using transcode or other conversion
tools, you can convert that to pretty much any other format.

For example, i convert all my NTSC DV cassettes to DivX and SVCD. I
could convert them to DVD if i had a DVD-writer.

DV cameras are really cool. You can plug them into the IEEE1394
interface (commonly known as "FireWire" or "iLink") in your computer,
let the camera run without a cassette, but run the capture program on
the computer: it will record the movie directly on the hard-drive. ;-)

> Do I need a separate plugin for VCD? I looked on the web for VCD and
> it seems there do exist plugins, such as gstreamer or VdR, but no
> indication they would be used with xine. Does the newest xine out of
> the box support VCD, or do I need a plugin?

xine-0.9.13 plays (S)VCDs out of the box for me. Just put the CD in the
CD-ROM, click on the VCD button in xine, then click on play.
It Simply Works (TM). ;-)

-- 
Florin Andrei

http://florin.myip.org/