Their seems to be a lot of confusion over VCD-DVD's

[austin316gb]

A great many posts seem to be about putting VCD files on a DVD so I don't feel so stupid asking this question as many seem to be having similar problems.

My DVD player (Sony DVP-NS400) will play VCD's quite happily and for things like the TV rips of Buffy, Angel and Friends I am very happy with the quality. Want I want is to be able to burn these to a DVD-R without doing any conversion of the file at all. At the mo I select "make a new VCD" in nero, select the file and push burn with a CD-RW in my CD Burner.

As I have just bought a DVD-Writer (Sony DRU-500a) I want to be able to do exactly the same but get more files on the DVD. Unfortunately nero wont let me and I can't see how to get round it.

Anybody know how to do this??

I have read a tutorial on vcdhelp but it seemed like a lot of messing having to de-multiplex and re-sample the sound etc. etc. etc.

Surely it must be easier than this. Does the DVD player automatically detect a DVD-R disc and try to decode it as one no matter what files are on it? Or could I make a VCD disc image (file structure etc. correct) and then burn it to a DVD?

[bugster]

Does the DVD player automatically detect a DVD-R disc and try to decode it as one no matter what files are on it?

The vast majority of DVD players do this which is why you must go to all the trouble of making your VCDs DVD compliant with 48Khz audio etc. It also explains why most players wont play mp3's on DVD-r when they play them happily on CDR.

[kitty]

You would think things like this are easy and if you work in the factory adding the extra smarts to play "nonstandard" stuff is probably trivial. But it is a bit extra work and most people are not allowed to be creative even if the extra features might sell a couple more units.

A smart company would take the time to "play most anything" - it worked for Apex until a few months ago (they dropped VCD support).

At least Sony seems to be breaking the mold with lots of firmware updates on the DRU500a - that again is innovation.

Until someone decides to not detect the disc type based on the DVD disc being inserted we're stuck with the original standards :^(