I have a couple of video files on my Mac; one is a .iso, and one a .mkv. I’d dearly love to be able to burn a DVD, playable on a DVD player. Apparently this involves more than just dragging & dropping the file onto the DVD (tried that…) What does it take?
Running Leopard, if that matters.
I doubt that the .iso file is a video file - sounds like a disk image to me.
Can you play either of these files?
You may need to transcode them into something that Quicktime can play, and then use iDVD to make a DVD.
Roxio Toast can also do this.
I can view both of them, but I had to get special viewer software (VLC) to do it.
So it sounds like if an .mp4 version had been available, this would be simple?
Yes.
But, VLC is supposed to be able to transcode (although I have had poor luck trying it), so you might want to see if it will work for you.
On PC you would use something like ConvertXtoDVD which converts most formats and burns to the DVD with one click. Is there equivalent software for Mac?
.iso is a disc image. You should be able to simply burn it to a DVD with any burning program, like Nero.
My DVD player can play DivX files straight from the disc. I find this to be most convenient indeed.
Burning the .iso file directly to disk resulted in something that my DVD player couldn’t read.
But I’m getting closer. The VLC transcoder works…once I correctly determine the right audio and video format I need. My first attempt created an .mp4 file with no audio track. My second attempt created a .mpg (probably with an audio track) but QuickTime can’t play it and iDVD can’t burn it.
This seems wonderfully helpful. I’ll try it out as soon as I get home. Thanks!