Part of my Father’s Day gift for my Dad will be a disk with videos of some of his favorite songs performed live. (My Dad is not computer literate, and thus has completely missed the joys of YouTube.)
I’m going to burn these videos onto a CD, as I understand most modern DVD players will regognize videos on a CD disk and play them. (I don’t know how to burn DVDs.)
I’m wondering what file format will be the most likely to be recognized and played without any problem — should I use MP4s? Or AVIs? Something else?
You need to take a look at your dad’s player and figure out what it plays. It may not play video files at all and you’ll need to make a standard DVD.
If it does play files it’s usually not a file extension thing rather an encoding thing. If it plays files it’ll play DIVX and maybe XVID encoded files.
Modern DVD players can handle most anything thrown at them, but to be sure of absolute compatibility, you should burn a DVD (not CD) in the standard DVD format, which is not just a file or an extension – it’s more complicated than that. Use Nero or a program designed just for this purpose (a DVD creator).
If you don’t know how to burn a DVD, maybe it’s time to learn?
That wasn’t what thicksantorum was saying - current versions of Nero install so much software that is so invasive in it’s behaviour that it borders on being malicious. It also sucks performance and your email inbox gets filled with messages about updates and add-ons that you don’t want or need. No irrationality involved.
I’ve paid for Nero in the past (it was and maybe still is a good Disk burner tool), but after trying to cope with it’s behaviour and overarching desire to manage all my media when I have better tools already in use, I did not bother during my last rebuild. Also trying to figure out what you have to pay for to get the media converter to work properly made my head hurt. I haven’t missed it, and I unsubscribed from all their email lists, but sill get the occasional email from them.
Folks, the word is “bloatware,” not “malware.” One is an ill-informed decision to add features of questionable utility to a legitate program. The other is adding features of questionable morality to a possibly questionable program.
To pile on: if you can’t tell what DVD player he has, the VIDEO_TS native format is probably best. That said, even my $40 Walmart special DVD player (although it is a Sony) can play certain Video DVD formats.
While most DVD players will play VCD and SVCD formats, only a few will play DivX (in .avi wrapper) files. If they do, they will have a DivX logo on the front. If it does have the logo, it’s very easy. Convert the videos to .avi specifying the DivX codec and just burn to CD.
SVCD is much better quality than VCD. You need software that knows how to create and burn the disc. More about the format and lists of software here.
If you have an at all recent version of MS-Windows and a DVD burner, it really isn’t that hard to create a simple DVD using Windows DVD Maker.
I got Nero 7 from where I used to work, and although it was designed for XP (I think) I’ve continued to use the same version with Windows 2000, XP, Vista, and currently Windows 7 64-bit without any problems. The windows don’t like to maximize correctly but other than that it still works great. But I agree, I bought a newer version of Nero from a bargain bin and it screwed up my system so bad I had to restore my OS partition from a backup!
As others have said unless your dad’s DVD player is really old (and it possibly could be) it will play most any format of DVD recordable disc you can burn. But you’re more likely to run into problems with CD-Video as it was never popular at all and some players won’t support it.
I would burn a short film onto a disc and try it out. It would be most annoying to spend hours making a beautifully edited DVD, only to find that it doesn’t work.
yeah he is asking , if it doesnt know, what could he assume,
Stick to MPEG2 in SD .
It may be it will reject some HD or obscure codecs (like intel’s or quicktime)
Most dvd burners come with fairly simple movie creation software (i.e. powerdirector/power2go, Nero, etc.) designed for people just like you (generally tech-savvy, but inexperienced with making dvd’s).
But, to answer your original question, stick with the mpeg container (has .mpg extension), format the video as mpeg2, and the audio as PCM (may also be called LPCM). Use short filenames (<32 characters) and limit yourself to letters, numbers, dash, and underscore. Uppercase, lowercase, or a mix of the two are okay, as long as you don’t have the casing of letters as the only difference between two files (e.g. Movie.mpg and movie.mpg).
Don’t just stick with MPEG. Look for programs that will allow you to author a (S)VCD. Since DVD players have to play CDs, and have to be able play the specific MPEG formats allowed on a (S)VCD, most will also play actual (S)VCDs. Unfortunately, at the worst rate, that limits you to around an hour of video per disk.
Burning DVDs is not any harder as long as you have a DVD burner, a DVD-R, and software that will convert videos to be burned on a DVD. With DVD, you’ll be able to fit at least a couple hours on a disk–maybe even three times as much if you lower the quality.
