Hopefully the right forum

[LucasBuck]

I had posted a few days ago about building a computer to be a home theater component. I've started buying my parts (went with the All-In-Wonder 9800).
What I was wondering is, is there a program that will let me make a video cd, make menus, etc. that would play from the computer? In other words, since I'm playing it straight from the computer, I don't want to mess with converting to vcd/svcd. I'd rather just be able to put avi/wmv files on a cd, with a menu to navigate through.
Hope I explained what I meant. Thanks for any help.

[808smokey]

If your going to hook up your TV directly to the video card then you don't need to do anything but setup your video card for dual output. Then just play your video file thru Windows media player, DivX player or what you want to use and that's it. You really don't need to make a VCD that your going to take out of your burner then put in your CD-ROM to watch the same thing as on the hard drive. That's a lot of extra steps and wasted time I think, accessing the CD and what not. If you want multiple files to play one after another you could use Windows Media Player - Create a playlist and just add whatever to it. That's what I do. When I Download a movie it's usually in 2 or 3 parts, then add all of them to the list. No menus or anything. You could just make a data disk and that would work but only in your computer. If you want menus there's a program called MenuEdit that would work, I think, it's for DVD's though from what it says. I never tried it

[LucasBuck]

Thanks for the reply. I know I could just play the files, but I actually want to do the menu thing.

[gmatov]

If you have the room, and want XXX gigs of avis or high bitrate MPEGS, no, you don't have to.

If you want to cap a buncha hours on any reasonable sized drive, you will have a card that will cap in a res that you CAN watch, and be happy, or cap higher, convert, save, and be happy.

[LucasBuck]

I'm afriad I didn't explain things well. I'm hooking a computer up to my entertainment center. I don't want to store everything on HD''s. I understand that I can play everything in a media player.
What I want to do is put avi/wmv files onto a cd, and be able to play them in the same way I'm used to making vcds. With menus, selection, etc. It would be nice to save space by just burning wmv's to a cd. But I'd still like to make menus and such. Personally, I get tired of converting things to compatible mpg files.
So it would be nice to burn a cd, with a handful of wmv files, and with a menu that would load them. From a computer hooked straight to a tv. Again, thanks for any help.

[808smokey]

I know there's a program that will allow you to put Mpeg's AVI and what not on a DVD and give it the right "header" to fool the DVD player into thinking they're VOB files. I can't remember what it's called I search for it and can't find it.

[LucasBuck]

See, I really don't want to go through that much effort. When I was buring vcd's to be compliant with a dvd player, it was a pain. The computer, hooked to the tv, will play anything (avi,mwv, mpg, whatever). That's not a problem. I just want a program that can make menus for a set of files.