New to dvd rewriters avis divx mpeg & need help!

[CaptainChaos]

Hiya!

I am a complete novice so be gentle with me .....

I am just about to buy a dvd rewriter & want to put loads of stuff on the discs to watch on my home dvd player.

How? I have been totally confused so far. I have (at the moment) an .avi file that wont play on my computer ..... firstly, how do i play the avi on my computer? Then ..... how do i convert it to dvd standard so I can watch it on my dvd player? What do I need? How do I do it? I want good quality so I dont really want to burn onto vcd's .... just dvds.

I dont know what else to ask, so any input or help will be much appreciated.

Thanks

Ian

[bugster]

What you are asking for is what this site is all about. However I believe the best way for you to learn this stuf is start reading. Look to the left sidebar and start from the top. You don't have to read everything fully but I suggest you give each article a quick glance to be sure if it is applicable to what you want or not, the title does not necessarily tell you everything that can be learned. Once you have don reading, start trying. The guides here are very useful, even if the one you decide to follow does not work 100% for you, you will learn the basic principles and tools required.

As for your avi, find and download gspot, load your avi in there. It will tell you what codecs you need (for audio and video) and wether you have them installed (probably not in this case). Then simply find and install the relevant codecs and the avi should play. Once oyu can play it, you can think about converting it to DVD compliant mpeg-2, ready to author and burn.

I will say again, read, try, read. When you come unstuck (which everybody does at sometime or another) come back and ask specific questions giving as much detail as possible about what you have done so far and what has gone wrong, then maybe someone will be able to help.