Hi!

I am using PowerVCR II 3.0 for recording TV. PowerVCR produces MPEG2 (*.mpg) files partitioned in 600MB blocks. Each part is right to burn a CDROM with DVD file structure for playing on a standalone dvd player.

But how can I create this set of files? There is no extravagant dvd navigation needed.

-- Guenther Bindl (Guenther.Bindl.External@mchm.siemens.de), February 12, 2002

Answers

No offense intended, but your question is very inappropriate to this forum. This is a VCD forum and most of the people here who post are very inexperienced. You should consider asking advanced questions such as this to the SVCD forum at network54.com/Hide/Forum/70438. To make a miniDVD (this is DVD format on CD-R or CD-RW) you need some kind of DVD authoring program. None are free. The cheapest I've ever seen is about $250 US for one, unless you can find one on a warez site. Even if you get an authoring program, you should be aware that most standalone DVD players will not play miniDVD. You should check the DVD player compatibility list at www.vcdhelp.com to see if your player supports miniDVD. Many DVD players won't play anything on CD-R and CD-RW. Even among player that support CD-R and CD-RW almost none recognize miniDVD. It's a firmware issue. Basically manufacturers never considered that people might want to burn DVD format to CD-R media, so the players do something roughly like this: Is this CD-R or CD-RW? If yes, is it audio CD? If yes, play it. If not... Is it MP3? If yes, play it. If not... Is it SVCD? If yes, play it. If not... It must be VCD, so try to play it as VCD. Most players never check to see if DVD format could be on CD-R or CD-RW, so they never play it. Finally, I should warn you that if the DVD player compatibility list says your DVD player will play miniDVD, you might want to confirm that elsewhere before you spend a lot of time and money trying to make them. The only players I am aware of that will play miniDVD are Apex (also sold under other names such as Hiteker), Sampo and Afreey. Apex and Sampo require you to do a firmware hack to play miniDVD, which will ruin your player if you mess it up.

-- Jason (Jason.Shumate@equant.com), February 12, 2002.

At only between 10 to 30 mins of MPEG-2 on a CD-R mini-DVD (depending on the wretched average bitrate, and you can argue on whether or not it will be played on your particular type of DVD set-top), why would any serious TV program hogger even contemplate the whole shebang?? Just sit it out and I'm sure we'll see $1 DVD-R blanks. CD-Rs were $20 each at one time, you know.

-- Mehmet Tekdemir (turk690@yahoo.com), February 13, 2002.

I'll assume that you really need help for the sake of immediately archiving your... "data". First, go to this link:

http://www.vcdhelp.com/burnmpg.htm

Then, you can check out the different means to burn to CD-ROM for use on a DVD player under "How to author and burn a MPEG2 to a compliant SVCD". Scroll down to the heading "How to author and burn MPEG2 to a compliant DVD" where you will find links to various solutions to do that instead, once the time comes.

HUN-YA!

Akai Rounin

-- Akai Rounin (akairounin@hotmail.com), February 17, 2002.