I am having great fun making a VCD home movie for my baby. Initially I was looking for a way to sent my mother our collection of video clips. She is tech illiterate and does not have a computer. So YouTube is out of question. VCD seems to be a great option. Just put it in the player and press a button to play. Even my mom can do it.

I have used two programs, the iMovie bundled with a Mac for authoring and a trial ware iVCD for conversion and VCD burning. iMovie has a wealth of editing functions for an amateur. I mixed still and video clips, tried different transition effects and then added sound tracks. I was bitten by the film editing bug and was toying with things like choosing between 1/3 second gap versus a 1/5 second gap between stills (1/5 second works great to get a slide show feel!) iVCD just works (for the most part), i.e. it burns a VCD from the film made by iMovie.

Before that I have spend several days and destroyed many blank CD in failed attempts to make VCD with various Windows programs. I have tried open source programs, freeware and trial wares. I have learned more detail about different video format and the chain of video production tools than I have thought. Nothing work as wells as the freebie iMovie and the $30 iVCD. The only drawback? For the first time, I want more speed from my tiny Mac mini.

2006.11.21 [personal, video] - comments