General Guidance and Hardware req. for making VCD with Digital Camera

[dpilot83]

I am trying to take the video files (.avi) from my digital camera and send them to a friend of mine who is in the military as a morale booster. She has a portable DVD player her parents bought her and they tell me when they bought it they chose it because it could play a wide variety of DVDs, CDs, and Video CDs so I'm assuming it's compatible with quite a few formats but I'm not sure what I'm dealing with really.

First of all, here's how I'm planning on doing it. Record the video with the digital camera (Fuji F31fd if it matters). Transfer it to the computer. Convert the .avi video to SVCD with AVI2DVD. Burn with Nero.

Is this the most efficient way to approach it (taking my hardware listed below into account)? If so I'm willing to do the necessary research to get it done. If not, how would you approach it? I'm definitely willing to put the research time in, I just need to be pointed in the right direction so I can get this done as quickly as possible.

The other question I have is I'm wondering if I'm going to run into problems with the hardware of my desktop computer.

P4 1.6 Ghz
640 MB of RAM
320 GB on two different hard drives
128 MB ATI video card
WinXP Pro SP2
1 DVD drive (not a burner)
1 CD drive (iburner)

I would imagine if anything will flat out prevent me from doing it, the RAM will be the problem. I would also imagine the processor will make it a really slow process. Maybe doing SVCD is impractical and I just need to pony up and buy a DVD burner? If so I may just decide to not put off my new computer purchase any longer. It would be as follows:

Laptop
Integrated graphics
Core2Duo7200 Processor (2.0 Ghz)
2 GB 667 RAM
DVD burner
120GB Hard Drive
Dual boot XP Pro and Vista Ultimate

Would any of those specs limit my ability to do this process efficiently? I wonder about the integrated graphics...

Thanks for reading all that mess. I would really appreciate any advice you can give to this newbie.

[thecoalman]

SVCD is not an official spec and may not play on her player, I'd suggest using DVD or VCD. You won't even need a DVD burner for VCD.

VCDEasy ...

As far as thw hardware goes assuming you are referring to a digital still camera that you transfer the video via USB it shouldn't be any trouble at all. Just make sure you pack a lunch. :P

[mats.hogberg]

Well, besides the fact SVCD is an official std, many DVD players refuse to play SVCD, even if they do play VCD.
To make sure your disks are playable, leave Nero out of the process. As thecoalman suggests, VCDEasy is your best bet for VCD & SVCD authoring. You can encode to VCD mpg with TMPGEnc - it's free for this task. Just use the VCD template.

/Mats

[Baldrick]

Please change the subject title to something that describes the topic better. You can click on edit on your first post to change it.

[dpilot83]

Thanks for the help guys and Baldrick, sorry for the initially vague title.

I looked at VCDEasy and it looks like a pretty decent program. I'm going to be on the road for a few days but when I get back I'll do some research on that and TMPGEnc and if I get stuck I'll revive this thread to ask for some more help. Thanks again for the good suggestions guys.