is there a simple way to convert an avi to vcd?

[lks9042]

Hi, I am sorry if this has been asked before but I have searched through this site quite a bit and I am lost in the lingo and acronyms. I am trying to use the guide(https://www.videohelp.com/guides/category/how-to-convert-to-vcd-mpeg1-4;11#193) on how to convert divx to svcd, but I am feeling a little overwhelmed. All I really want to do is be able to watch the avi movies that I am taking of my family, filmed on my Nikon coolpix camera to a disk so I can watch them on a DVD player and preserve them. Am I going about this the right way or making it to complicated?
Thanks,
Lisa

[Ai Haibara]

If you have a DVD player, why not create a DVD-Video disc? Use AVS2DVD or DVD Flick, for example (or ConvertX2DVD, if you don't mind using commercial software/shareware), to create a DVD-Video disc from your videos, and burn with ImgBurn.

[lks9042]

Because I don't have a DVD burner. I am assuming that I would need one for that. Do I?

[Ai Haibara]

Yes.

I believe there's a way to create a DVD-Video-compatible disc on a CD (MiniDVD? I can't remember, offhand), but I'm not sure how much video you would be able to fit on a single disc.

Alternately, you could buy one of the newer (cheap) DVD players that supports playing of DivX/Xvid AVIs from disc/USB.

I haven't created a VideoCD in a long time, but I used to do it the hard way - encode to VCD-compatible MPEGs using TMPGEnc, and feed the results to Nero v5 (which, thankfully, didn't re-encode the video again...).

[lks9042]

i do have one of those newer ones, and it specifically says that it plays divx, but I thought I would still have to convert it to something. So are you saying that i could just burn the avi file straight to a cd and play it in the dvd player?

[Ai Haibara]

Probably not. Your camera most likely uses a different codec for the video (and probably the audio, as well). You can check how your camera's AVIs are encoded using GSpot, MediaInfo, or similar utilities.

Re-encoding the AVIs to DivX/Xvid is easy, however. You can do that in VirtualDub, AVIDemux, etc., if you're aware of which settings to use (see this post for issues which might cause a DivX/Xvid-capable DVD player to not like an AVI). However, it might be easier just to use AutoGK, with ESS compatibility enabled, to convert the videos.

Then, just burn the converted videos to a data CD. (I recommend using ImgBurn, in this case, because it'll try to detect if you're burning an AVI video disc for a DivX/Xvid DVD player, and offer to make sure you're using the correct settings for that.)

[lks9042]

That sounds like a process I can handle! Thank you so much. I am going to try that now.

[lowellriggsiam]

If you really want to create a VCD from an avi, you can use one of the NERO OEM versions, they do it. And if overall you don't have a DVD writer and would like one PM and I'll send you one. I have some older ones lying around here.

[lks9042]

Well, I ended up doing it the way Ai Haibara said to with a minor adjustment. After messing with a few of the programs and being unsuccessful, I decided to use arc soft media converter that came with the last cam corder I had bought but sent back. I had to change the audio to mpeg Layer-3 and then I used image burn to write it to the cd. put it in the player and walla there it was. So thank you both for your advice.