StarDestroyer.Net BBS

So imagine I want to put a pile of videos in avi and various mpg formats on a dvd that's playable on your average dvd player. I hear you have to create an image for a regular burning soft to put on the disk; what software should I use, and what kind of file expansion could I expect? Using xvid etc I get great compression/quality, but I imagine I'll have to convert these files to shit old codecs to work on a DVD player, yes? Imagine some more, that I'm not at all lame for asking and you're all wonderful helpful people...

I don't know what type of computer you have; iDVD is probably the absolute BEST program for n00bs and non-pros. But you need a Mac.

For Windows, I'm not really sure. The DVD burning stuff that came with my Sony suck.

EDIT: Oh, phong's right, you'll need it to be in MPEG2 format. Though I think the occasional rare DVD player can play DivX if there's a little DivX sticker on it.

The average DVD player will not be able to understand anything except MPEG2.

AFAIK only commercial authoring software will transcode AVI's, etc for you and output to VOB/IFO in one step - but it's not too hard to do the conversion in a separate program.

Anyway, read through doom9.org; they have excellent tutorials and point to cheap or free software wherever possible.

Try starting here: http://www.doom9.org/?/mpg/tmpg-dvdauthor.htm

Current DVD software, like Nero, should be able to transcode AVI's into the Mpeg format as you burn. Kinda like how CD-R's can burn straight from MP3 to a readable format for your average CD player.

Though I think the occasional rare DVD player can play DivX if there's a little DivX sticker on it.

Nuh-uh. The DivX players of yore (Circuit City's proprietary format) has nothing to do with the DivX video codec.

Thanks for your help, guys. The Nero that came with my burner won't transcode, and specifically tells me to author it myself. I've got all the links I need now.