Putting a movie file onto a DVD.

[_Mayday_]

Hey everyone :)

I have a movie file on my computer that is 120 minutes and 800MB. I want to transfer that onto a DVD CD so that I can play it on a DVD player at my friends house.

The movie file is in AVI format.

How do I put that file onto the DVD CD? Do I need a special programme or can I just do it through iTunes? I don't want to try and fail because the DVDs are not rewritable.

I'm also not 100% what type of DVD player my friend has but, he will be playing it through a playstation 3. I have a DVD+R and a DVD-R.

Any help would be much appreciated :) I'm a noob as you can probably see lol!

 

[mgb_phys]

There are a bunch of free tools to perform all the steps in convertign and encoding the avi, there are also a couple of gui front ends (eg http://www.trustfm.net/divx/SoftwareAvi2Dvd.php?b2=1) that make the process easier.

Your dvd writer probably came with a cut down version of some commercial software to do this see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DVD_authoring#DVD_Resources

 

[russ_watters]

Well first of all, you need to find out what codec it really is, because .avi is just a general purpose wrapper. Open the file in media player, then click file-> properties and see what the audio and video codecs are. Then check the manual of your Playstation to see if it will play them. Odds are probably pretty good that it will.

If it does, you're golden and you can play it directly in your Playstation. However, there are DVDs and CDs, but no such thing as a "DVD CD". Find out exactly how big the file is and see if it will actually fit on a CD. If it does, then burn it to a CD as a "data cd". If not, burn it to a DVD as a "data dvd".

If your dvd player doesn't play that codec, then you have to re-encode it in a format the Playstation will play. You'll have to get some software to do that for you and it can be a little more involved...

 

[_Mayday_]

Says "DivX Decoder Filter"

 

[mgb_phys]

divx is a more compressed form than dvd - which is why you can fit a 2hour movie into 800mb.
If you want to make a regular DVD you need to re-encode it as mpeg2 and write all the correct files and folders for a DVD. check the link above for the software to do this.

 

[rcgldr]

Here's a website with a lot of info about video and DVD stuff, called doom9.net, although this just redirects you to doom9.org:

http://www.doom9.org

Your dvd burner should have come with some type of software to write DVD's with. Find out what input formats it can use.

Playstation 3 has a Blu-Ray dvd player, and it should be able to handle DVD-R, DVD+R, DVD-RW, DVD+RW. I don't know if it can handle both Blu-Ray BD-R and BD-RE formats.

 

[russ_watters]

Says "DivX Decoder Filter"

According to a quick google, a PS3 will play Divx, so you're probably good to go.

 

[TheStatutoryApe]

My friend's XBox (original) would not play rewritable DVDs, only regular DVDs, though this apparently is not the case with all XBoxs. There are also a lot of companies that are making their products in such a way as to prevent the use of pirated material so they may not accept avi or divx burned to disk in the place of a DVD as a data disk. It may take some work but if you google around you should find articles and forums answering these questions for you. These new consoles are attempting to be media centers and have large hard drives so you can load content onto the hard disk and play it from there. The PS3 may only play DivX files that are loaded directly to the hard disk or that are part of a properly encoded game.

I found a program a while back that re-encoded media for play on a normal DVD player. Unfortunately it took several hours for it to do this. The one project I tried, and couldn't get to work, took about 17 hours I think. It was a large project though.

 

[Cryptonic]

Mayday, check out the videohelp.com "tools" section. http://www.videohelp.com/tools/sections/all-in-one-dvd-converters" is a list of converters.

ConvertXtoDVD is one of the best "all-in-one" solutions, but is payware.

For freeware, I personally like Avidemux. There is also WinFF, which is simple to use. Avi2DVD probably has the edge on quality, because it uses the excellent (free) HC Encoder.

For burning the DVD, I use ImgBurn.

The nice thing about the videohelp Tools list is that it is kept up-to-date with very latest versions/betas etc, and you can read users' opinions on the various applications and judge for yourself what is right for you.