The VIDEO CD is the combined specification among CD format, MPEG videolaudio compression and Multiplex technology. It has started from the KARAOKE CD format which was developed for the linear motion picture and sound aimed to business use. It has been added high resolution still picture and playback control features for more wider application requiring simple interactivity . Therefore it can be used for not only linear program play but also for multimedia package programs. It is the opening to the new era ofthe digital videohound to the consumer market. The Birth of VIDEO CD from KARAOKE CD It was 1982 when the consumer audio was digitized by the CD system. It is ten years since then and now the time consumer video is to be digitized. There are three key technologies making it happen. The first is the development of MPEGl decoder IC chip, the second is the presence of almost error free CD-ROM media. The MPEGl is not protected against error, it is important to be supported by strong error correction system. The third is the high-performanced workstation which enables choosing compression algorithm rightly to obtain good picture and sound. The low bitrate of CD-ROM requires high level bitrate control and picture process technology to pursue acceptable quality output. These algorithm can be developed and implemented by today’s fast workstation through trials of various sequences. This is the background of the birth of KARAOKE CD specification besides the rapid grow of the CD-ROM business last few years. We have added some of interactivity with still picture and playback control on it and renamed to VIDEO CD in order to expand the market applications. The Points of VIDEO CD We chose video/audio MPEG parameters suitably to the consumer product. We adopted the lPACWlPACKET in a sector for both video and audio for the sake of simple authoring and CDROM accessibility and used variable sector interleave system. We included the both capabilities of the PQ( Subcode) search and VD(Vo1ume Descriptor) search so that even low-priced player has the chance to access quickly on the disc. We also included the music information area for the use of database or information inquiry in the future. The playback system of VIDEO CD is shown simply in the Figure-1. It is made with the normal EFWCIRC decoder, sectorinterleave decoder and MPEG decoder. MPEG1 requires only 46KByte memory for video plus 4Kl3yte for audio, this fits for the consumer products. This disc can be played on CD-I and CD-ROM XA hardware. 136 0-7803-1453-0/94 $3.0