Stupid Question- I'm having a hard time making a dvd

[sj022698]

I have a video that is in MP4 and I can't seem to find a freeware program that burns it to disc properly. They either have errors or no sound (sorry, I don't have my list here of what I've used)
I've tried burning directly with Roxio Creator 10 Plus DVD and it creates it in a UDF and doesn't recognize as a dvd.
I've created an ISO and burned with Imgburn and same issue
I’m not sure I understand the authoring part, etc…
I don’t want to lose quality but is there a way to convert mp4 to a different format to simply create a dvd to play in a normal player? I have several converters but not sure what format to go with. Thanks for the help!

[jagabo]

You need to convert to MPEG 2 and AC3 then author a DVD. You will lose some quality.

[usually_quiet]

If you want the DVD to play in a regular DVD player, you will need to convert the MP4 file at the very least, and probably author a DVD video disc.

All DVD players play DVD video discs. Some DVD players, but not all, can also play standard definition DivX or XVid files from a DVD. If any play MP4s, I haven't seen one. No DVD players can play HD video.

You will loose some quality by converting from H.264 to MPEG-2 (for DVD authoring) or XVid. That is unavoidable, especially if the MP4 contains HD video.

AVStoDVD + ImgBurn or DVDStyler + Imgburn will allow you to convert the video and audio to be DVD compatible, author a DVD with a simple menu or no menu, and correctly burn the files and folders to a DVD.

[Baldrick]

And some few players doesn't like all dvdr media.

Did you just burn with roxio? Or did you convert to a dvd-video? A dvd-video should look like https://www.videohelp.com/dvd#struct

[sj022698]

I used anyvideoconvertor and made it a .VOB and it took it from 3.7gb to 2.84gb
Do different convertors do better jobs than others or is it just the additional features it allows?

[Baldrick]

Just one vob file? That is not a dvd.

Use avstodvd and imgburn. Or maybe the easier freemake video converter(ADWARE) or convertxtodvd ($$) or the old but free dvd flick.

[orsetto]

Roxio often has issues creating compatible DVDs. Use something else.

If all you're concerned with is this one MP4 video, take the easy way out and try DVDflick first. Its free, its integrated, and probably the least counter-intuitive of the simple DVD conversion programs. Not sure if it will run under Windows 8.1: if you have that OS, you may need to use AVStoDVD instead (fantastic program, but the interface requires an Einstein mindset compared to DVDflick).

When you say you want to be able to play this MP4 video on a normal dvd player, we're interpreting this to mean lowest common denominator: very basic older players that cannot play any format aside from official dvd specs. This requires multiple conversion steps: the MP4 has to be converted to MPEG2, then to the VOB spec used by the DVD video format, then the VOB(s) needs to be structured within a roadmap folder that tells the DVD player how to play the disc. This is all done automatically by programs like DVDflick or AVStoDVD, you only intervene if you want to change how the DVD will function once loaded (play the video immediately, or present a menu screen). For just one video, you should probably avoid a menu and let the the DVD software default to autoplay the video (these DVD creation tools rarely crash, but when they do its inevitably at the DVD menu creation stage: no menu=no problems). The end result of the conversion process is a VIDEO_TS folder, which will have VOB and various other files inside it. Use ImgBurn to copy this VIDEO_TS folder to a blank DVD-R (ImgBurn will ask if you want to specially optimize the disc for a DVD player, click OK to that).

Quality will drop somewhat, depending if the MP4 is standard def or hi def. But it should be perfectly watchable unless the MP4 is poor quality to begin with. The only issue that occasionally occurs is audio lipsync drift, where lip movements are slightly ahead of or behind the dialog. This is sometimes fixable by changing some settings in the DVD conversion software, but sometimes not. This is one of the reasons people eventually buy newer DVD or BluRay/DVD players: most recent models will accept a plain ordinary "data" dvd with MP4, AVI, MKV, etc and play those files directly. No conversion means no quality loss and no audio drift (BluRay players are more compatible with more formats because they can handle high definition files).

[Cornucopia]

We could help better if we knew what was in your MP4 file. Uploaded exceprted sample would be good, as would a detailed text readout from MediaInfo.

Scott

p.s. There ought to be a VH sticky about including MI readouts on files in question!