As discussed in elsewhere on this site, the VCD format allows you to play videos and movies on your DVD player using normal CD-R media. One thing that you might want to do is create a continuous loop VCD - you can use that to give yourself a constant background of favorite material from YouTube, create a looping product demonstration for a show or for a store, or even turn your television into a fishtank - using a movie or two of aquatic life. The VCD format can accommodate menus and considerable complexity. All the information that you need to understand VCD menus is [5]here on PCByPaul and [6]here (in detail). However, if you want to create a continuous loop playing video using VCD - you just need to do the following. Start with two flash movies, say video1.flv and video2.flv. First, create the necessary VCD format mpg files:
ffmpeg.exe -i video1.flv -target ntsc-vcd -ac 2 video1.mpg ffmpeg.exe -i video2.flv -target ntsc-vcd -ac 2 video2.mpg
Now you need to create a template xml file to control vcdimager's production of your movie. You use:
vcdxgen -t vcd2 video1.mpg video1.mpg
...to do that.
This command creates a file called videocd.xml. You need to change this slightly to create the looping effect. To do this, remove the <playlist> portions in the pbc section in the file. Replace these with <selection> items, as follows:
<selection id="lid-000">
<next ref="lid-001"/>
<timeout ref="lid-001"/>
<wait>1</wait>
<play-item ref="sequence-00"/>
</selection>
<selection id="lid-001">
<next ref="lid-000"/>
<timeout ref="lid-000"/>
<wait>1</wait>
<play-item ref="sequence-01"/>
</selection>
Take a look at the changes and you will see how the looping effect is achieved. When the first section times out, it moves to 'lid-001' (the next section). When the second section times out, it moves to 'lid-000' (the first section) - and so on.
Once you have updated videocd.xml, you can use it to create the image to be burned to cd with:
vcdxbuild videocd.xml
And then finally burn the VCD with:
cdrdao write --device 1,0,0 --driver generic-mmc-raw --force --speed 4 videocd.cue
Now you can create some nice endless, atmospheric video backgrounds - and display them on your large screen television. If you need more than 2 movies - just create the appropriate number of <selection> sections and make sure that the last one times out to the first.