DVD 'Authoring' n00bness

[Stark]

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...

[Praxis]

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.

[phongn]

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

[The Dude]

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

[SPOOFE]

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.

[Stark]

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.