Playing video from my Mac on a DVD player

I just got a new TV/DVD player (a Toshiba 22DV713B). I was under the assumption that I would be able to play video burnt onto disc from my Mac on this (AVIs mainly). Turns out I can’t - in the small print it says it doesn’t support HFS (this is an Apple way to format discs, from what I can gather).

From my own research the only way round this is to buy something like Roxio Toast - which apparently can burn the discs in a way that my TV will approve of. So 1). Will this work, before I shell out? and 2) Is there a free way to do this?

I love my Mac (10.6.7, by the way, in case it matters), but compatibility can be an issue . . .

Thanks in advance.

Toast will certainly do it, but you might want to try using the Terminal first: http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20070612161317338

100%? And easily? Just asking because I often find technology throws up new hurdles in my face.

Help an old(ish) man here. What’s Terminal? The link make’s my head hurt . . .

Honest thanks for trying to help, though.

The command-line utilities to do what you want are more powerful, but if you’re not familiar with the terminal, I’d avoid them for now.

I would try using Disk Utility to create a burnable image.

Hopefully easiest and quickest option:

Before starting, make sure all the files you want to burn are in one folder.

1.Open Disk Utility (do a Spotlight search, or go to the default location: /Applications/Utilities/Disk Utility.app)

2.Under the File Menu, select “New -> Disk Image From Folder”. You’ll then have to select the folder with the video files in it.

3.Once you’ve picked the folder, you’ll get another window. At the bottom, there is a selection for “Image Format”. Select “DVD/CD master.”

4.You need to give the image a title and save it. [I think, but I’m not sure, that if you change the extension to .iso it will produce one, though you should be able to leave it as .cdr and have it work].

  1. Once the image is created, Disk Utility will add it to its list on the left. If for some reason it’s not there, click “Burn” in Disk Utility (with nothing selected in the left pane) and find the saved image where you selected in step 4. Otherwise, just select the new image in the pane and click “Burn”.

  2. Burn it and give it a try.

The more complicated version, which is probably less likely to work:

In Disk Utility, click on New Image. This will bring up a sheet with several options on it.

For “Image Format” (at the bottom), select DVD/CD master.

For “Format”, try MS-DOS(FAT).

Select an appropriate size (several CD and DVD sizes are options).

You need to name the disk image and a file to save it as. When created, it will be mounted in the finder. You then have to copy files to it, go back to Disk Utility and burn it.

Yes, Toast can burn UDF format Data DVDs.

Before you buy Toast, you might want to try some free solutions, like:
http://burn-osx.sourceforge.net/Pages/English/home.html

or

http://www.maconnect.ch/download/LiquidCD2.08.zip

Many thanks for the help.

I gave a try to both your suggestions with no luck - very possibly due to my own incompetence, so in the end I got Toast. But still no luck!

I’ve tried burning discs in various formats - ISO, UDF etc. Again I may be doing something stupid / missing something obvious. The 2nd best I’ve managed so far is that my TV recognises and lists the files on the CD, but then won’t play them. The best result is when I burn them as a DVD from Toast. This plays, but isn’t what I’d hoped for as a) you only get about 1.5 hours of video on a disc, and b) the quality is terrible (way worse the original AVI files).

Any clues?

Is there a specification that lists the files / disk format this player accepts? That would help a lot.

It could be a problem with the video format as well. AVI is just a file format, more or less, so being in that format doesn’t mean that the video player will be able to play it. I would especially look at this since it seems to recognize the disc but not the file on them.

In particular, how were the video files created?

Hi guys, thanks again and sorry for late replies - different timezone and lots of work to do . . .

Here’s what the manual of the TV says about specifications:

The particular vids I’m trying to put on disc were originally .mkv files. I changed them to .avi and then did Toast to burn them. Most of the stuff I have on my computer is .avi already, but I haven’t tried them yet.

Hope this helps. If I don’t find a solution soon the TV will have to go back, as the supposed ability to play .avis and the like was why I bought it.

Ok, just reread this, and not sure what it means for me. I couldn’t tell you where some of the files I’ve got came from originally. All I know is how they are saved now . . . sorry to be unhelpful!

When you say “changed” what do you mean?

I used Burn (this one Burn - Home), as I knew the TV didn’t list mkv as supported.

What resolution / frame rate are your AVI files?

The manual says the TV can only support -
Resolution: 720 x 576 at 25 fps (max), 720 x 480 at 30 fps (max)

The key part of the info is the bit about DivX. It would appear this only plays video encoded that way. We don’t know just by being an .avi or .mkv whether it is or isn’t.

The recent versions of DivX is not free as far as I know. Look here.

It may be that you can find an older version - it’s useful that they give you the details:

Before shelling out for DivX, I would try to use Xvid, which is a free alternative. It’s entirely possible, even somewhat likely, that your player will accept that.

Yes, this kind of thing is a royal pain in the butt. There are just so many ways to create a video file; so many, in fact, that there’s a program called G-Spot that does nothing but describe the format of video files you give it.

But it’s only on Windows. For the Mac, there’s a list of Mac OS video tools at VideoHelp that mentions MediaInfo, which might work for identifying just what kind of video files you have.

Not to insult your intelligence, but you are burning CDs, right? It doesn’t look like it supports DVD-R.

Well that was all a bit of a struggle, but all has turned out well. Many thanks to all who have replied and helped. The thought that it might have something to do with the file types, rather than being a Mac issue, led me to give it a go with some discs I burnt a while ago. Rather to my amazement they worked. I’ve since burnt other video straight from my computer, just using the normal procedure (not Toast or anything) and it works fine. It seems it had a problem with the .mkv files, even after they were converted to .avi. So it does support discs made straight form Mac, and it does support DVD-Rs, despite what it says. Weird.

Thanks again.