DVD Creation Advice

[Yoshimoto]

I've got some .wmv files that i wish to put onto a DVD so that i can view them on a normal DVD player.

Never done anything like this before so can anyone please give me a quick run down on what software i need and what to do...in in dummies English please as i'm useless at anything like this.

The files are on my laptop which has a DVD R/RW built in.

Cheers.

[charlesr]

I bought Nero (not too expensive), which does everything for you. Even helps you build a dvd menu. Possibly not the best software, but definitely very easy and the package includes so much functionality.

[marcus]

Id imagine you would need to buy the MPEG encoder and Im not so sure Nero would convert WMV to DVD format either.

Try getting TMPGENC and converting the files to dvd format first then burn with nero.

http://www.videohelp.com/tmpgencdvd.htm

[charlesr]

As far as I've tried, you just add any movie file that your PC can display to a dvd project and nero recodes it to the dvd format for you. I havent tried wmv though, but I can't see why it wouldnt work.

[charlesr]

Just tried a quick wmv. It made it into a dvd fine.

[marcus]

Cool, only other downside to that is that it costs 25odd euros for it, when TMPGenc is free

[charlesr]

Yep. Free software is good.

Another cool feature of Nero is Nero Recode. It will take a 9gb dual layer disc and recode it to work on a single layer 4.5gb disc (more compression, but looks ok) in 40 mins on my ancient 1.5GHz athlon.

[marcus]

Nice little conversation we are having here Charles

For that, I use DVDShrink which is quite fabulous free software, and also allows you to remove crap like foreign languages, extras, menus and so on.

[charlesr]

Sounds like the same kit. Go for what marcus recommends cos its all free
I only got Nero cos the oem version came with my cd writer and the upgrade to full version was tiny.

[Valken]

I bought Nero 6 in January and it's great for making DVDs with basic menus etc... it'll even make em from other video files and does an ok job of keeping audio sync.

Nero Recode's great too but when I tried to use it to copy DVDs and compress them it complained about copyright so I needed to rip the discs first.

[Pavey]

I need to do this but with a mac. The majority of my files are .avi's and they only run on my computer,not my DVD player?
Any ideas?

[Valken]

Roxio's toast I would imagine but I'm not really sure. I have a Mac but it doesn't have a DVD burner so I never investigated it further.

In fact, maybe iDVD or iMovie are enough for your needs. Perhaps investigating the built in software first might be worth a try!

[mid]

Cool, only other downside to that is that it costs 25odd euros for it, when TMPGenc is free

Except that TMPGenc's MPEG2 encoder is only licensed for a fortnight, and then costs more than a fully-boxed copy of Nero to buy. I use TMPGenc all the time for MPEG1 encoding, so I wish this wasn't the case...

[Yoshimoto]

Thanks for all your help and advice guys.

The Nero method seems nice and simple so i'll get myself kitted out and give it a go. Thanks again.