possible to make a dvd/divx "hybrid"?

[maca]

Apologies if this is a stupid one. We're all familiar with burning a dvd which is maybe only 3gigs or something, and feeling bad about wasting the unused space. Since I have lots of divx/xvid movies and a dvd player that also plays these, I'm wondering if anyone's ever come up with a way to create a sort of "dual boot" dvd, on which a divx movie or two can be put outside the conventional dvd structure yet be recognized by the player? I don't know if this is even possible, or if anyone's tried it. Would probably depend on the player itself I'm thinking. Thoughts?

[guns1inger]

Not possible to do consistently.

You can create folders outside the Vide-TS folder, and put anything you like in these. I often put photos etc. on a disc that has a DVD slideshow, so there is nothing stopping you putting Divx/Xvid encoded files onto a DVD Video disc along side the DVD structure.

But . . . . most players will not browse a DVD Video disc. Once the see the DVD Video structure, that's it. So even though you have the other files available, stand alone DVD players will not be able to access them. They are, of course, accessible on a PC or PS3.

[maca]

Thanks for your thoughts, that's pretty much what I've encountered. While of course it's possible to put anything you want on the disc to view on a PC, I was hoping someone out there had come up with a way to do it that would let a standalone player see it. It's a shame the player is capable of playing the file, but won't see it once it spots the video_ts folder. I guess it's just something for me to experiment with, and see if there's any way of putting a link to viewing the divx within the dvd menu somehow. Not that important, just something to ponder on and play around with.

[guns1inger]

Divx/Xvid support is not mandatory, and is not standards based (outside Divx certification, which is only for the actual playback of the file). The DVD specification does not allow for Divx/Xvid playback or linking to Divx/Xvid files. A small number of authoring tools that use their own software players may allow you to link to non-DVD objects, but these are only useful on a PC, if you install their player, and therefore a waste of time as you can easily access these files on a PC anyway. A very small number of off market players may allow you to read a disc structure, but this behaviour is not the norm.

Basically, what you want to do is not supported, and cannot be done. You are wasting your time. Better to keep DVD Video as DVD Video, and fill you disc by properly encoding the content to utilise higher bitrates where possible, or keep everything Divx/Xvid and fill the disc with AVI files.

[maca]

You're right of course; it dawned on me that the simple way to accomplish what I'm trying to do is to do it in reverse. Rip the dvd movie into a raw mpg, which my player will handle, then put that video on a data disc with divx movies, rather than the other way around. No menus, of course, but at least I'd be making better use of the space than to burn a dvd with a huge chunk of empty space on the disc.