Specifications

CD-i FAQ 2000 Edition Revised February 21, 2001
Latest version and more CD-i info: http://www.icdia.org
42
6.4 I have a Video-CD. Why won't it play on my CD-i?
It is known that several so-called Video-CDs exist that do not play on a CD-i player. This is mainly
the case with certain titles from China and the Far East. Mostly, this is due to the absence of a
CD-i application on the disc. As mentioned before, such a CD-i application is a mandatory
requirement for a Video-CD, and a disc that does not include it violates the license terms (but this
is often the case with illegal discs for which no license fees were payed in the first place!). When
no 'Play CD-I' button appears when you load the disc in a CD-i player, or when it does appear but
the player resets moments after you selected this button, you can be fairly sure that this is the
reason the disc won't play. It has nothing to do with CD-i being unable to play some Video-CD
discs (2.0) as is sometimes incorrectly stated in newsgroups among others.
When a disc does include an application and it shows the track numbers, but it won't play the
video sequence when you select it or it will 'hang up' the player, this is probably due to the fact
that the MPEG video on the disc is not according to the Video-CD specification. It is extensively
specified in the White Book how the video and audio should be encoded on a Video-CD. When
the video is in a different format it might still play on a PC with a very tolerant video playback
application, but it is no actual Video-CD so it won't play on CD-i among others. This is also often
the case with illegal Video-CDs from the Far East.
6.5 Why can't I fast forward or reverse with some discs?
To enhance the performance of the scan forward and backward (search) functions in the 3.x
versions of Video-CD on CD-i, Philips defined a file format for entry point lists. Such a file
contains the absolute address numbers of sectors that contain MPEG I-frames that are needed to
display an image when performing a search. For each of the MPEG-files on the disc, an ASCII-
file similar called to the MPEG-files (such as AVSEQ01.DAT) should be placed in the /CDI
directory. When such files are not present, the application disables the search functions by
default.
Since such entry point files are CD-i specific, Video-CD creation software usually does not
generate those files. When you still want to be able to use the scan function without putting the
entry points on the disc, you should add the line SCAN=ALWAYS to the CDI_VCD.CFG file in the
/CDI directory. It is extremely important in this case that the MPEG stream is 100% in accordance
to the White Book specification. If MPEG I-frames are more than 2 two seconds apart from each
other (which is not allowed by the White Book), searching will result in a hang-up of the
application.
Beware: with most CD-Recording tools it is either impossible to add files to the /CDI directory, or
to modify the supplied CDI_VCD.CFG file.
Note: this info is only applicable to version 3.x of the CD-i application, not the 4.x (Video-CD 2.0)
application. This version should be able to provide scanning without an entrypoint file, provided
that the MPEG stream is 100% according to the White Book standard.
6.6 What is Video-CD 3.0?
Video-CD 3.0 does officially not exist. The only versions of the Video-CD specification released to
date by the official Video-CD creators Philips, Sony, JVC and Matsushita are 1.0, 1.1 and 2.0.
Some Chinese Video-CD players claim compatibility with Video-CD 3.0. It is unclear what they
refer to, or wether all so-called Video-CD 3.0 players refer to the same system. They should at
least be able to play 'real' Video-CDs.
6.7 What is CVD or Chao-Ji?
CVD and Chao-Ji are two of the extensions to Video-CD that were developed in China. Both
systems use MPEG2 to encode video and hence the discs are not compatible with Video-CD or