know anything about making video cd's under linux?

This will soon be a moot issue, since I plan on buying myself a new computer for Christmas. ;)

But I've made some video cd's to play on the tv. About every 30 seconds, the movie will pause for about a second. It may just be the junk dvd player I'm using. It's brand name is "Digix." I think I paid between 20 and 30 dollars for it, and I bought it at Winn-Dixie. :D

The files as found on the internets were wmv format. I converted them to vcd-compliant mpeg 1 using mplayer. Then I made bin and cue files using vcdimager. Finally, I burned them to cd using cdrdao.

Are there any settings/command-line switches that I need to be aware of that cause the symptom I described? Or should I just wait till I buy myself that Christmas present and make actual DVD's? :shrug:

The problem is with the player, or at least the player trying to play anything but the most expensive (high quality) media you can purchase; that is, it's the discs themselves and how they interact with the hardware. Not saying, for certain, that's true in your situation, but it's been true in mine.

I've used the latest and greatest proprietary Windoze software to make SVCD and DVD discs, and I've used patched together Linux software. The result has been, without exception, the same. Some players will play it well, some not at all, and others with stuttering. If I make a disc using reasonably priced media, the results are almost universally bad for my player. If I use a high-grade media that costs a couple dollars per disc, I *might* get a disc that plays on my player, but then again, I might not. The same thing will happen with the new computer too, again in my experience, again with the latest and greatest. My DVD player, which is going on five years old now, won't play anything well I've created with a computer. I've tweaked every setting, used ever variation of software, added obscure options to the encoding process. Nothing helps really. At best I go from unplayable to playable if you don't mind tiling or obnoxiously placed pauses.

As a brief example, I recently converted an entire series of old cartoons from non-standard .avi files to DVD compliant mpgs, authored a DVD, and burned it. It will not play in my player for my television. (Plays fine on my computer's DVD drive.) I have the disc to a friend with a more modern player, and he had no problems at all.

FWIW, I recommend scripts that utilize transcode, ffmpeg, and mplayer to author your video. I've had excellent results using those tools. A series of scripts packaged under the name videotrans makes really good, simple DVD, SVCD (and a couple other formats) compliant files that can be compiled into an .iso that burns well to DVD or CD. If you want fancy menus, you'll either have to do it yourself or find another program, but for general purposes, this works well and allows for a lot of options with simple switches which in turn create complex switches for mplayer, transcode, and ffmpeg without you having to do all that yourself.

I will look into videotrans -- that's a new one to me. And maybe I'll try to find the most expensive cd's possible. (Ha, that's a new one too :) )

almost all of my problems have related to the media. As an alternative, you can get multi-function standalone DVD players that play DVDs, (S)VCDs, DiVX, and many other formats for under $50 these days

That's two votes for media. Probably the case then. Going disc shopping...

tovid is wonderful. I use it all the time. It isn't perfect, but it comes pretty damned close. The latest versions of this utility has a single command, todisk which basically publishes a DVD from just about any video file in one simple step.

tovid Wiki

It's a great tool.