Is it possible to burn vcd's or SVCD's onto DVD-R discs thus using their 4.7gb capacities rather than be limited to burning to cdr's and a measly 700mb (don't require DVD format resolutions).

If so, what app?

Cheers

-- UK Confused (deantimms@hotmail.com), December 09, 2002

Answers

Some formats are associated with some media. For example, MPEG-1 VCD is associated with CD-R and if u have a DVD-writer and put in a DVD-R while authoring a VCD (or SVCD) in Nero u will be told to put in a CD- R. You can choose to put in VCD files on a DVD-R but that will just be a DVD-ROM and will not be playable on a DVD set-top. This is the reason why, for those without DVD-writers but want to author a DVD, some programs (like Sonic DVDit!) will give you the option to create a DVD volume on CD-R but will caution that it will NOT be playable on a DVD player, only on your PC through a DVD player program. If you are a glutton for space/playing time why not create a legit DVD, restricting the maximum bitrate to ~6Mb/s and using Dolby Digital for a measly audio bitrate of 192Kb/s (or lower)? Your video may be blocky but u just might succeed in putting ~3hrs worth on a 4.7GB DVD- R.

-- Mehmet Tekdemir (turk690@yahoo.com), December 10, 2002.

Yes, it is possible to do this. As Mehmet says, your DVD player may or may not play such discs. Standalone DVD players do media detection. Once it sees a DVD-R disc, it may only look for DVD format on the disc and refuse to play it otherwise. This is one of the reasons, but not the only one, that most standalone DVD players won't play DVD burned to CD-R. They detect CD-R media and the firmware never looks to see if the disc might be in DVD format. VCD resolutions are valid for DVD as is. All you have to do is re-encode your audio to 48 KHz and you have something that's valid for DVD. SVCD resolutions and audio are not valid for DVD so you either have to re-encode or use various tools to fake DVD authoring programs into accepting your SVCD video streams. There is a discussion on doing this at the forum at http://network54.com/Hide/Forum/70438 if you are interested.

-- Root (root@yahoo.moc), December 13, 2002.

Yes this is possible. I use Sonic DVDit burning a dvd using a dvd+rw. It has worked on just about every dvd player I've played it on (about 39 of them so far)

-- Rob Parham (kickbxn5@aol.com), January 02, 2003.

sorry but i have a question - I want to put whole bunch of VCD files to a DVD-R disk - if i'll choose in some programs "create vcd" it gives me option only for 650mb disk but i want to do that kind of format (vcd) only on 4.3 gig DVD-R disk - what should i use?

-- Igor Mozheyko (igormozheyko@hotmail.com), June 18, 2003.