I'm a newbie...is there any way to convert a DivX, avi, MPEG file, etc. that I downloaded from the Internet into a regular DVD format so I can watch the movie on my DVD player and TV??

marvinr@adelphia.net

We got plenty of guides that instruct how to convert your videos to DVD format, here are some of those:

http://www.afterdawn.com/guides/archive/convert_multiple_formats_...
http://www.afterdawn.com/guides/archive/divx_to_dvdr_with_dvd2svc...
http://www.afterdawn.com/guides/archive/vso_divxtodvd_2_guide.cfm

Additionally, we have couple of more "one-click" tools to convert your videos to DVD format on our software archive, so feel free to browse through http://www.afterdawn.com/software/

Also, one way to do this is to create miniDVDs out of those files, but you don't gain much in this process -- instead you actually lose even more of the quality what you have in DivX / MPEG files.

Instead, you can encode your movies into VCDs or SVCDs -- those formats work in most of the stand-alone DVD players very nicely. In most of the cases when you download a MPEG movie (named as .mpg or .mpeg) it is already in VCD compliant format. In case of DivX ;-) movies, you need to encode them to VCD format -- this is a bad method as you lose even more picture quality (encoding anything twice is always a bad idea). But if you really insist encoding all your existing video clips again into VCD format, use TMPGEnc -- it's free MPEG-1 encoder that has VideoCD templates ready for your use (just open a file, choose the format you want it to be encoded to and _wait_).

You can write your VideoCDs to CD-ROM with almost all regular CD-R tools -- including Easy CD Creator and Nero. Just remember to select VideoCD as your format before proceeding, then just add your .mpg files and if they're valid, software adds them to the CD and burns you a valid VCD that works with your existing DVD player.

you not forgetting something?? you wil need a dvd writer to burn movies to dvd so i would not recommend it and any way here in the uk dvd r discs are priced at around £9 which i would say $7 us is it possible to buy cheaper dvd r discs folks cause there are so many pirate copies about

thanks in advance

booter_44

We're talking about miniDVD's and VCD's here -- while both work in the regular stand-alone DVD player, both are also burned on regular $0.20 CD-R.

i have a quick ? for you dr.d. i've tried to follow up on what u said.mpg files can be burn
directly to a cd burner. i've used easy cd creator as my burning software, and it did burn.
but then when it came the time i played the
cd-r on my dvd player which is also a vcd compatible type i don't hear or see anything.
even when i tried opening it up on my comp. all i am seeing is a bunch of different types of folder. i opened each and every file and nothing comes up but the type of folder they are in.

please help a newbie here....
pam

go to http://www.vcdhelp.com/burnmpg.htm they have some very good instructions

How do you Convert DivX, avi, MPEG to DVD Format, to be used in a DVD player without needing a DVD burner ?

b-baluver: You need to use VCD or SVCD instead. Guides are available in various places, but basically only thing you need is CD-R writer, TMPGEnc and Nero (or similiar CD writing software).

I have Easy CD Creator on my computer (it came installed) but not a DVD ROM. If I download TMPGEnc can I convert AVI with DIVX codec to VCD and play them in a stand alone DVD player or will I need something more? Do you have to have a certain version of Easy CD creator?

You need to have writable CD drive and a version of Easy CD that supports VCD.cfm" class="forum_link" target="_blank">VideoCD format -- Easy CD Creator 5 Platinum (commercial) is at least one that supports VideoCDs.

dRD, what programs, if any besides nero, will burn svcd's? when I install nero on my computer, my computer will no longer recognize any of my cd drives.

Virtually all CD writers can burn SVCDs, only Nero can also author them -- you can create ISO SVCD images out of your MPEG-2 files with VCDImager and those CD images can be burned with almost all CD writing tools, including CDRWin and (not sure about this) EZCD. You can download VCDImager from here:

http://www.afterdawn.com/software/video_software/video_tools/vcdimager.cfm

...alternatively, if you can get I-Author from somewhere (not sold anymore outside China) you can author your discs with that one -- it's also the only known option currently to author SVCDs so that they contain also subtitles. I-Author creates Easy CD Creator (=EZCD) CD images.

So to convert AVI to VCD all I need is Easy CD Creator 5 (or another software that supports video CD format), TMPGEnc, a CD writable drive, and any old CD-R? Also, I'm just familiar with Easy CD Creator taht is why I keep referring to it, but what software would you reccomend?

Yeah, you just encode the AVI to MPEG-1 (in case of VCD.cfm" class="forum_link" target="_blank">VideoCD, not SVCD) with TMPGEnc and burn it to CD using EZCD or other CD writing tool.

I personally like Nero the best, but there are people who love EZCD, CDRWin, etc -- pretty much your call :-)

Will I lose a tremendous amount of quality if I convert avi format movies aoready on CD to the VCD format?

You lose quality, definately. But it's up to your original material how much quality you'll lose. Consider also converting your clips to SVCD which is very good quality format, but takes more space (average movie fits to 3 CDs).

Would I need anything different to convert onto SVCD? Maybe the file size wouldn't matter for me. The movies are only 30 minutes, so hopefully I could just fit 1 per SVCD?

Yeah, one SVCD disc can hold very good quality video of 30-40mins.

You need TMPGEnc (use the SuperVCD template), VCDImager and CD burning software for this process.

Please forgive my ignorance . . . what is an ISO image and what kind of cd do I want to create. Will it still be a VCD in the cd burning program, even though it is an SVCD ISO. Please explain. Thanks.

Another question....can I do all of this with Windows millenium edition?

b$j: CD image is basically a one signle file that contains the stuff that CD will contain -- it's a "photo of the CD" containing the exact data in the exact same way as it will appear on CD once it's burned, whatever the content - audio, video, PSX game, PC game, regular data, etc.. You burn images by choosing "Burn from image" from your CD software and open the image file (600-800MB file) from your HDD and burn it.

slimvargy: Yes.

Since Nero v5.5 has the encoding included in it, if that is used could I just open the AVI files send them through Nero and then burn them onto a CD-R?

NO!!

Read these forums, man! Nero's encoding quality _sucks_ -- it produces horrible quality if you compare it to any stand-alone MPEG-1/2 encoder, like TMPGEnc (which is free).

OK thanks...and I read that...but I find good/bad reviews about everything...I'll stick with you though so now I need some help. What OS specs do I need to support everything I will need to create the movies I desire. Maybe this is a stupid question but while looking at TMPGEnc stuff they made it sound like you needed a huge amout of space and I'm just not sure if I have it.

Operating system can be basically any Windows -- you just need lots of HDD for DVD conversions, gigabytes and gigabytes of free space. If you plan to rip your original DVD and make a DVD-R copy out of it, you need to have appx. 10GB of free HDD space -- luckily HDD is cheap nowadays.