AVI writing problem

[Ashman007]

I have got a 698 MB AVI file on my hard disk. I wanted to write as a VCD file but I got the message that it exceeded the CD capacity, so I am writing it as a Data CD.

My present DVD player only plays Mpeg files.

My question is, will I able to play this Data CD on a DVD player which plays AVI files later?

Thanks

[jagabo]

You will not be able to play the AVI file on a data CD on your DVD player. The exception to this is if you have a Divx/DVD player and the AVI file is Divx or Xvid encoded.

The problem you had converting it to VCD was because the length (time wise) was too long. You can only put about 1 hour of video on a VCD. It doesn't matter how big your source file is.

[edsmith77]

ashman007,
First off trying to write an avi file to a cd as a data file will generate the error message you got. What is needed is to convert the file to an mpg file then burn to cd as a vcd. Using this approach, my experience says that once the avi file is converted to an mpg (or mpg2) file and either burned to a vcd or dvd, you should not have any space problems.

You can quite easily get more than one (1) hour of video on a CD (as a vcd). I have in my library several VCD with well over 90 minutes of video. I am not certain what jagabo had in mind when he said you can only put about 1 hour of video on a VCD. This just is not the case. His last statement "It doesn't matter how big your source file is" needs a bit of clarification for intent.
Obvioulsy, some time needs to be spent in front of a bit rate calculator in order to assure your self that this statement is just misleading.

Look in the tools section on the left hand side for bit rate calculators.

Ed

[jagabo]

To be more precise, at the standard 1150 kbps MPEG1 video and 224 kbps audio that most VCD encoders encode at you can get 74 minutes (ok that's an hour and 14 minutes, not the hour I specified earlier) of video on a 650MB CD. You can get 80 minutes on a 700 MB CD. You can use a lower bitrate to get more but 1150 kbps is already poor and there is no guaranty that a VCD player will play lower bitrates properly.

Regarding the source file size: Video can be comrpessed with different degrees of compression. A 685MB AVI file could be 5 minutes of DV, or 5 hours of (really crappy, or very small frame size) Divx. To create a VCD the video must be converted to VCD spec MPEG 1. The size of the file may grow or shrink as a result.

Note that Video CDs are written on the CD in mode 2. This has fewer error correction bits than the mode 1 that data CDs use. Hence it can hold about 15 percent more data. So you can write an 800 MB VCD file to a 700 MB CD as a VCD, but not as a data CD.