Need help buring a DVD for the TV
 

Guys,

Am failing pretty good here at making a DVD of some misc videos (NO, not that kind!) that I want to play on my DVD with the Television.

These are for the most part antique airplane and car stuff that are in wmv format. There are a few that are in .avi or mpg format but not a lot.

Am using Nero to burn things and have done this in the past but am doing something wrong this time. Every DVD I have burned seems to go through the process fine but when I put it in the DVD it pop's it right back out and will not even read it.

Any suggestions on how to make it fail-safe for this dummy? Should I use +R or -R disks? Write it using AVCHD format? DVD-ROM (UDF/ISO) format?

TIA... Joe

Last time I burned a DVD there was a "finalize" command required. Basically it closes out the disc so no more material can be added and makes the disc readable to other machines.

http://www.ehow.com/how_6816282_finalize-nero-dvd-disk.html

Are you using Nero burning rom? Or Nero video? Nero video would be the best way to do this. Also what is the original format of the video files?

Lee, will give that a try.

Scott,

Yes was using Nero rom. I tried to use Nero video and it would not allow me to drag the files over to the "burn" area and said they were not the right type.

I have no idea what the original format was, these were mostly old WW2 type videos that have been transferred over to other formats years ago.

Sounds like really cool videos. Depending on the format you probably need to convert them, or use software that can create dvd's straight from the original format. Nero is good for AVI's, MP4's, however it has real trouble with MKV files for instance. (sometimes you can use Nero Recode to reformat) If you look at the properties of the video files it should have a ".xxx" extension, that will tell us what you're trying to burn.

Scott,

Mentioned that above. Most are .wmv format with some in .avi or .mpg.

What do I convert them to?

.avi is a container that can carry content from various codecs

.wmv is a codec

.mpg can be a codec or container, mpeg 1, 2, 3 are codecs while 4 can be a container

I generally avoid avi.

.wmv is a pretty good format

I am partial to using mpeg specifically mpeg2. Makes big files but it's very flexible.

Most of your video editing, conversion, creation software will only be as useful as the amount of codecs that you have.

They use the codec to do the background work.

I really like a product called mpeg streamclip from squared5. It's cross platform and free.

Get some codecs, ffmpeg is a must, Divx does not hurt.

Your final DVD ends up as a .vob.

What you start with will determine how long it will take to convert. Using an mp4 to make a DVD is torture.

Sometimes it's quicker to go to an intermediary format like mpeg2 and use that to create your DVD.

Or, you could get a Mac.

:D

(/ducks)

I could as well get a frontal lobomoty and vote for Obuma... but that aint gonna happen either! :)

or you could (depending on age of tv) just connect PC to TV and use TV as a huge monitor ;)

While I would always recommend that I know Joe is not a fan.

Besides that if you don't have the right codecs it does not matter what OS you use.