Burning a DVD that will work in a DVD player

[rcomma]

So, I have an older MacBook, and apparently the DVD drive is broken. I found this out by trying to play my friend's DVD on it, and the thing proceeded to essentially choke on the DVD and then scratch the crap out of it. I'm not as concerned about this because I can borrow my friend's external DVD drive/burner/thing.

But, I'd like to give my friend some semblance of a DVD back. Except that I have no idea how the heck to do this. Ideally, said DVD would play in a regular DVD player, too, not just on a computer. And it was a disc of a TV show, so maybe some way to make chapters for episodes? And my friend has a PC, so this can't be a Mac-specific thing, either (does that exist?).

I have the AVI files of what was on the DVD, and I'd like to know how to turn them into a DVD that's readable in a player. Or if there's a way to legally and easily do it from iTunes, I'll spend the money to buy them.

Disclaimer: If you didn't already figure this out, I don't know much about computers. So yeah.

 

[chas_m]

No TV show you buy from iTunes is burnable on anything, so that route is out.

What you want is Toast Titanium. In terms of the least amount of hassle getting from "a bunch of AVI files" to a burned DVD that will work in DVD players and computers, Toast is the way to go. It costs about $80.

There are some free and low-cost programs that can do the converting and even put together a disc for you, but they are more work and in some cases require a bit of technical finesse. Given your disclaimer, I'd suggest Toast. You'll find more than enough reasons to use it in future to justify the cost.

 

[xstep]

It will take work to make the AVIs playable in a regular DVD player. You may be able to convert them with iMovie so that iDVD can use those results to again convert them for a DVD. iDVD has a 2 hour limit I think. Look that up in the iDVD Help menu.

To just create a DVD with the AVI files, insert a blank disc, drag the files to it, hit the burn button. This works with internal or external drives.

You can burn iTunes bought material to DVD, but only the files as is, not as a playable disc in a regular DVD player.

 

[mistersob]

I am desperate for some help here.

I also need to convert AVI files into a format that will play on my TV's DVD player. I've bought Toast because it seemed to be the most highly recommended programme to use, but I'm at a loss as to what format I need to convert to??

Everybody seems to be saying MPEG2 but there is no option as far as I can see to convert to this format.

The procedure I am following is thus;

Open Toast
Click on Convert icon
Select video files
Click ADD
Find video on imac that i want to convert
Click the big convert video button

I then get a dialogue box with 3 drop down menus:
DEVICE
QUALITY
SAVE TO

This is where I think I'm going wrong. I select the device drop down menu and there are the following choices:

APPLE HARDWARE
- Apple TV, ipad, iphone/ipod touch, video ipod

VIDEO GAME SYSTEMS
- PSP3, Sony PSP, XBOX360

MOBILE DEVICES
- Blackberry, Plam Treo, 3g phone, streamer

FILE FORMATS
- Digital Video (DV), High Definition Video (HDV), H.264 Player, MPEG-4 Player, QuickTime Movie


i've tried converting to MPEG4 and then burning onto a DVD but this won't play on my TV DVD Player, and I've converted to Digital Video format, but when converted, the AVI file went from 700MB in size to TWENTYFOURGB in DV format???

Can anybody guide me here or which I need to select to convert from AVI into a format that will a.) fit on a 5GB blank dvd and b.) play on my DVD player.

I don't know if it makes any difference at all, but for clarity I am in the UK and use Region 2 DVDs!!

please help before i crack up!!

thanks

 

[cwa107]

Open Toast. Click the Video category. Click the DVD-Video option. Drag and drop your AVI files onto the window. That's pretty much all there is to it.

 

[chas_m]

Sometimes you just gotta have a Big Red Arrow to make it clear.

 

[lolipop21]

Hey I did everything fine but it's still not working on my dvd player. I wonder, may it be a problem with my firewall? My firewall causes me lot of problems...

 

[lolipop21]

Nevermind. I just found the problem and fixed it.

 

[cwa107]

Keep in mind that some set-top DVD players are picky about burnt media. You may have to experiment with DVD+R, DVD-R, etc.

 

[Slydude]

Nevermind. I just found the problem and fixed it.

For the benefit of future readers/posters what was the problem? My suspicion would be type of media. the player was expecting DVD-R and got DVD+R