sending home movies to soldier in Iraq

[NHWburn]

My brother is stationed in Iraq and we are trying to figure out a way to send some home videos to him. Like a number of soldiers there he has access to an army issue DVD laptop. He has no problem viewing DVDs but I tried to send him a video CD of MPEG1 files and he couldn't open the disk. Does anyone have an idea about this? for this will be actually have to transfer everything to DVD? Other ideas has to how to do this?

Thanks so much for your help!

[fbreve]

VCD uses MPEG-1 files with a VCD header. So you can locate the .dat files and tell Windows to open them with Windows Media Player

[Prospero424]

If the laptop in question is running a version of Windows XP (most likely) than there are known, but easily repairable problems associated with playing Video CDs.

There are several things he can try, first and easiest is to install a version of ASPI, the version I prefer and have NEVER had any problems with is this one:

http://www.afterdawn.com/software/cdr_software/cdr_tools/frcaspi.cfm

This should allow Windows XP to properly recognize the VCD.

If this doesn't work or you would prefer a different option, he can extract the video from the VCD to a simple MPEG file with Isobuster, available here:

http://www.smart-projects.net/isobuster/

A guide walking you through the process is available here:

https://www.videohelp.com/forum/userguides/141726.php#vcd

Of course, I'm not sure if he has the internet access necessary to download these files, so you might have to send him the software on a floppy or CD-R or something. If none of this will work, let me know and we'll try something else. Anything for those guys


Prospero

[ZippyP.]

You can just put the mpeg1 files on to disk in data mode instead of burning as a VCD. It won't hold as much information though, an 80 min. disk will only hold 700 MB in data mode instead of 800 MB as a VCD. Mediaplayer should recognize raw mpegs that way.

[spiderman2k1]

There free software on this site that's good at the tool's link. Also you can look at www.doom9.org you could buy powerdvd for $10.00 dollar's most Pc store's sell it for that price. And I would say thats the best PowerDVD

[NHWburn]

thanks for the suggestions on for how my brother might be able to view a video CD of home movies on his army laptop. I've been assumming that since this is a milatary computer that he probably can't be adding any software that could interfere with the operations he's involved with in Iraq. It will be several weeks beforel I'll know if burning a data CD instead will work as it takes 3-5 weeks to get anything to him by mail. I really appreciate all your help!

[SquirrelDip]

Check out the Roxio products - I'm not usualy a fan of their stuff but I recall seeing that there is an option to include an autorunning VCD player when you burn the VCD.

[freestyler]

Thats correct SD, I know older versions had it and new ones may too.