My eyes are tired!

[Timster]

Wow! There’s a lot of reading to be done here. I just bought a DVD player for my computer. I was wondering if someone would be so kind as to answer a few questions for me. First I find this website to be really confusing. It seems there are a lot of guides and a lot of different software to choose from. Unfortunately I don’t have all the time to try these all out. Here’s what I want to do. I want to rip a DVD movie and burn it to a VCD. My PANASONIC doesn’t read svcds so I’m stuck with Vdcs. I preferably would like to do it on the fly and fit a movie on 1 to 2 CDS. VHS quality is fine for me though I don’t want any jumpiness in the video or audio. I have Nero so I can use that to burn if I need to backup everything on the hard drive first though I only have 4.5 gig of hard drive available so I may need to burn on the fly. I tried a program called “copy DVD version 6" which wouldn’t recognize my Iomega CD-RW drive so I copied it as an mpg and when I played back the mpg it was awfully stuttery. So that’s deleted from hard drive.So what’s the best program for on the fly burning? Thats reliable and has a pretty decent picture. Please don’t tell me to do my reading as I am doing my home work just need a faster solution. I also like to watch my movies in pan and scan so I need that feature too. Dolby sound is fine for me. I’m sure everyone has there opinions but I could really use a little help here. Thanks as I continue reading. Man I sure wish there was an easy “do it all in one” program. I’m running XP if that’s any help and a fast lite-on DVD player.
Thanks,
Tim

[twodogs]

mmm, sounds like you might be looking for http://www.vcdhelp.com/dvdbackup.htm

This will produce an mpeg file which is burnt to CD using a method such as http://www.vcdhelp.com/nero.htm

Give it a try.

[Timster]

OK, I think I'm getting it. Just ripped about 5 minutes of a movie and burned to VCD. Not too bad resolution. Not quite DVD, a little more like my Tivo. But I think it's going to work. Divx estimates about 965megs so looks like I'll need a splitter which will be my next project, along with finding the right template I can live with. I'm hanging in there.
Tim

[rip-em-up]

http://www.vcdhelp.com/pinoy2201sdvdrippinguide.htm

this guide is also helpful. i've used it in the past (though not recently), and it worked fine. it's all just a matter of which you're more comfortable using, i guess. but if you're looking for DVD quality with VCD, you're not going to get it. it's going to be, at best, along quality of VHS, with lots of blockiness and motion blur.

if you're looking for VHS quality and pan & scan, why even bother with DVD?