Having trouble burning from hard drive to DVD

[becassier]

Hi all,

I am pretty new to all this and a complete idiot - so bear with me!

I have a number of movies on my hard drive and I want to burn them to DVD. Problem is that some I can do this with using Windows Movie Maker or Nero. Others I have burnt onto DVD I cannot get to play them on my DVD players (I have tried several players at home with same result) I can, however, watch them on my PC from the disc I have burnt onto or from the file on my hard drive.

All the movies have come from the same source, by the way

Can someone please tell me what is going wrong?

Thanks

Becassier

[AlanHK]

Some DVD players can play different file formats, similar to a PC.
You can just copy an AVI file, for instance, to a data disc and play it.

However, a standard DVD player can only play "DVD video".
See the DVD link at top left, under "WHAT IS".

To make one of these, you need to convert whatever video format you have to MPEG2, and use an authoring program to produce a set of files that you can burn to a DVD.

All-in-one programs, like Nero, can do all that for you, though after you learn a bit more you will probably want to be more hands on.

[filmboss80]

Like AlanHK said, most set-top DVD players can only play DVD-compliant files (VIDEO_TS folder containing VOB, BUP, and IFO files within). You do not describe the file type of your source files. If they came from downloads, they could be divx/xvid avi, mp4, mpeg1, wmv, or flv. The easiest way to convert for DVD would be through programs like DVD Flick or ConvertXtoDVD. It is always best to save to a hard drive folder before burning to disc. ImgBurn is the best software to make the final burn to DVD disc.

[becassier]

Thanks for that guys. I think I may know what to do now. The files are .avi according to the info I can glean from the saved file. I assume because they are readable on my PC there is some sort of conversion to wmv. Is this why I cannot read on the home DVD player?

I will use a file conversion programme my son had acquired for me to convert these to MPeg2 as Alan suggested and let you know what happens.

Thanks again.

Becassier

[jman98]

Thanks for that guys. I think I may know what to do now. The files are .avi according to the info I can glean from the saved file. I assume because they are readable on my PC there is some sort of conversion to wmv. Is this why I cannot read on the home DVD player?

Your assumption is not correct. AVI support comes from specific programs that may (it depends - LONG technical explanation I'll skip) or may not be already loaded on your PC. NOTHING on your PC is converted to WMV to play on the PC. NOTHING. Your AVI files are played as AVI files on the PC.

Either your home DVD player doesn't support AVI files at all or if some play and some don't, then there are specific encoding options in the files that don't play that might be a problem. Here is a sticky that covers what options are problems for DVD player playback of AVI files.
https://forum.videohelp.com/topic352457.html

[becassier]

All great stuff guys!

I'll keep you posted.

Can I get two answers for the price of one?

I need to post video on my website but need it to be small enough to load quickly so as not to put off visitors with long download time.

Any suggestions?

The term Luddite come to mind when I think of myself!!

Becassier