I have captured all my home movies (birthdays, weddings, etc) onto my PC and compiled many DVDs from these files. I can play all my DVDs fine but when I make copies for other family members they can't play them. I think the age and model of their standalone players may be a contributing factor to this problem.
As an experiment I converted some of the movies from one DVD into VCD format. I burnt them onto a CD-R as a test (to not waste a DVD-R disc) and to my surprise the VCD worked on EVERYONE's standalone player. The quality was lower but was only noticeable on larger televisions.
I went on to convert all the movies on the DVDs to the VCD compliant format and found I could fit almost the entire collection onto one DVD-R. This is where the problem starts. My burning software (RecordnowMAX) does not support burning a VCD onto media larger than a CD (800Mb).
I went searching for answers to my problem, forum after forum, post after post. I tried one method which said use TMPGenc DVD author but found all it did was convert the VCD compliant files back to a DVD compliant format (IFO's and VOB's).
I guess what I am after is a way of making a 4.7Gb VCD disc which contains the same file structures as a VCD.
I have never tried this and dont think it is Possible, Basically VCD is MODE 2 burning on a regular disc, which means its more the minutes that count than the MB's, like 800MB = 80mins, now you couldnt fit, 800MB onto a Mode1 disc (well there are methods but nothing that is perfect).
Only thing I would recommend to you is you try alternative DVD-R media. Some DVD Players will play almost anything, wheras others are very picky about the media you use!
If their players won't play DVDs on recordable media I'd say they definitely won't play VCDs recorded on the same media. I agree with Dela that it's probably an issue of what media you're using. Have you been using +R media? If so, that's probably the issue for older players. Even if you use -R media, some players (especially older ones) are very picky about what media they recognize. If you browse through the media forum you'll notice that most people recommend either Ritek Grade A or branded Verbatim.
@vurbal, exactly. I dont see why people actually buy DVD+R's, i get mine free, well, kind of, i do a small, very small amount of work for a friend and he buys them, im hardly going to tell him "hey man, next time get -R! lol". I use Riteks too but in the past I had trouble with Verbatim CD-R's, how is their branded DVD-R media??
@Dela: I've had great luck with them. The ones I've had have all used Ritek dye. I think all their branded DVDs have either that or AZO. And I agree about the +Rs. The only reason I've ever bought them (the Verbatim's in fact) was because I forgot to order discs until it was too late and the only good ones I could get locally were +R.
@heavensed, you can find comments and information on certain models of dvd players at http://www.videohelp.com/dvdplayers - i forgot to mention it earlier :-)
@ALL: Thank you for your responses and input. I am in fact using Ritek DVD-R G04 discs for all my work. I have also read all the stats for DVD players prior to posting this message and although most the players listed state they play DVD-R it's only in theory. What I might do is try different DVD-R media and recording tools and keep a sample pack to test on all players I come across. I can then go with the disc/method which works best for them. Thanks again.
