DIVX Enabled DVD player!

[jaeone]

Hi Guys,

I picked up a Phillips something or other DVD player the other day and just noticed that it is DIVX 3.11 enabled. Neat!

If I get this straight... I would burn DIVX AVIs, as many as I can fit on a regular ol' DVD-R, as a Data DVD? I assume that when I pop in that DVD the player will present a menu of the AVIs asking which one I want to play? Does it just like... work... ? Sounds to good to be true. :]

1) what about AVIs labelled XVID? Not gonna work?

2) would a DVD-RW work just the same? ie: burn & have 3 or 4 AVIs, re-burn and 3 or 4 different ones... don't see why not right? ;]

This would save me a headache of encoding AVI to MPEG2 and compressing and burning and what not...

Thanks for any info guys,
- Martin W

[only_emo_kid]

yes! i've got it also, and its awesome!! thats all you hafta do is burn .avi to dvdrs or whichever media you want.

[Frobozz]

Double-check the Philips manual. I recently checked into this with some kind of DVD player and the Divx movies had to be burned to CDs, not DVDs, to play.

[only_emo_kid]

i've burned a bunch of random stuff I just wanted to watch on tv to dvd-rw and it played fine... divx .avi's to dvd played fine for me...

[canadateck]

Same here, Xvid,Divx,Mpg2,Mpg1,

[jaeone]

That's probably the coolest thing EVER. :]

Thanks guys!

- MW

[rorschach]

How does it work if the files are widescreen? Does the player automatically add the black bars?

[AntnyMD]

Actually it doesnt add black bars, it just fills as much of the tv screen as possible without distorting the image.

On a widescreen tv you have to set the tv's display mode appropriately.

As a Mac user, I find it best to encode to the highest resolution the player can take (for NTSC, 720x480) and then using my tv's display mode to stretch 16:9 content to the correct aspect. It makes great quality encodes but the bitrate is sometimes too high for CD burns (chokes on playback from CD but plays smoothly from DVD).

I noticed on a couple of old DivX movies from my PC days, the fast-forward and fast-rewind didnt work, but with my Mac encodes they always work. I think this comes from having used an extremely large number of frames between I-frames (more than 300).

[rorschach]

Oh, it squishes a widescreen to 4:3? That's baaad...

[AntnyMD]

Oh, it squishes a widescreen to 4:3? That's baaad...

Thats not what I wrote.

[jaeone]

I just played around with my DVD player by burning some widescreen and fullscreen AVIs to Verbatim DVD-R... :] :] Very pleased, they all played in the correct aspect ratio and pause/fastforward/etc... etc... all worked GREAT. :]

I have a question though... my DVD player doesn't really present a menu, each DIVX is a chapter like you hit next to get the next one...

Is there a program that I can use to make a cool little menu at the start of the DVD w/ the movie titles and the order that they are in?

OH AND - should I be burning my data CDs w/ any of the special options in toast? I've been making them as "Mac & PC" but there is also DVD-ROM UDF, ISO 9660, Mac Only etc...

Very cool,
- Martin W