Problems with AVI to MPEG2 and MPEG1 and playback from CD-R

[Cedders]

I hope someone can help. Please read the scenario below:

I edited some Digital8 film in Vegas Video, rendered the completed film back to AVI then used TMPGENC to convert to MPEG2 and MPEG1 as a test. The 2gig AVI file (8 mins long) went down to 558mb in mpeg2 and 88mb in mpeg1 (both PAL). I wanted to see if I could play them back in my domestic dvd player having been burnt to CD-R.
Watching both in WMP8, the mpeg2 file (2 pass VBR encoded) was erratic. Scenes of people walking would slow down fractionally and then speed up to normal resulting in a jerky motion. I suppose this could be due to my PC (500celeron Win XP Pro 394mb ram) although DVDs normally play back OK. The mpeg1 file played back perfectly.
After burning to CD-R my domestic dvd player (Kiiro 838) picked up both MPEG files and identified them as VCD. The mpeg 2 file played back in the same erratic motion but now the sound was intermittent. The mpeg1 file played perfectly and was quite watchable.
I was hoping to create short mpeg2 files to burn to CD to play in the DVD player (I don't have a dvd burner yet). Do I take it that if you don't author with suitable DVD authoring software then thats why the sound screws up? Is that why there are vob files etc? Why would the encoding create erratic video? The original AVI is OK and so is the mpeg1 file. If one is not bothered about chapters and menus do you really need dvd authoring software? Should you just be able to playback an mpeg2 file?

Thanks in advance

Cedders

[Tommyknocker]

The MPEG-2 file, did you make a SVCD with it, or had a program convert it to a VCD disk.

[Cedders]

Both the mpeg2 and mpeg1 files were generated from the same AVI source file using TMPGENC.

Cedders