Making a DVD that works in my DVD player

I have WIN XP Home, SP-2. I use a DVD-RW and DVD-RW disks. When I download a video and copy it to my DVD disk, how do I get it so I can use in my DVD player in my entertainment center. The disk plays fine in the PC but not in my player. I use Roxio Easy CD Creator 6.
Thanks in advance.
Floyd

 

Go to http://www.videohelp.com/dvdplayers and put in your player. If it is in their data base it will tell you what kind of DVD it plays. Also what type of file are you burning to the DVD as the player may not play that type of file.

 

Great site Russ, Thanks. You are right. I downloaded mpg's and apparently it doesn't play those. I looked at some of the comments about the player from users and one reviewer said,

"Lack of ISO MPEG support is a major pain(requires re-author for VCD/SVCD on DVD). "

Do you have any idea what's involved in the "re-authoring" that he refers to and do you think that's what I might need to do?

Floyd

 

I get the impression you are just copy and pasting the mpg rather than burning it as a dvd project.
I know nero does the conversion, and easy cd creator should do it too if you do it correctly. When finished, if you were to explorer the DVD you would find two folders not one.
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/moviemaker/expert/bridgman_burndvd.mspx

http://www.roxio.com/en/products/enterprise_solutions/ecdc/features.jhtml

You would use the dvd builder feature .

 

Pete, thanks. I think you hit on it. My Roxio CD Creator won't do DVD's or MPG's. It was some of the bundled software that came with a CD drive. They want me to upgrade to do that.
Do you or anyone else have a suggestion for a freeware program that will do that? Call me cheap but I hardly ever need this feature.
Thank again.
Floyd

 

Have never tried it (have Nero), CDBurnerXP Pro has been referred to "Poor man's Nero ". Having more than one burner program installed may cause problems. Many of us have multiple burning programs with no issues... a few do. May want to consider removing old Roxio program.

Edit - Addition ....
You would use the above CDBurnerXP Pro with programs such as Movie Maker 2

 

Russ your web link was very helpful. I have an Oritron 3116 DVD player and according to that site I can't play MPG's. So that explains my problem. But if I understand what it is saying it will accommodate VCD and SVCD. my question is does that mean if I could convert my MPG files to VCD or SVCD I could play them and if so how do I go about doing that? If my question is stupid forgive me I'm a neophyte at this DVD burning stuff.
Thanks again
Floyd

 

floyd,
First off you question is not stupid. By asking questions is how we learn. I take it that when you used Easy CD Creator you just made a data DVD. You just put the MPEG file on the DVD. I don't use that program. Does it let you burn to make a DVD. In using Nero it has a program Vision Express that you can drop the MPEG file in and it makes a DVD that can be played on a DVD player. Also I used dvdSanta to make a DVD. They have a demo version.
http://www.dvdsanta.com/index.html dvdSanta I use that when I want to make a DVD for Photo Story 3 for Windows. It converts the file so it can be player in a DVD player. With the demo version it will show a text "Demo Version" in the beginning of your video. As for VCD and SVCD I have never made one and if your video is large file it may not fit on a CD with out some way to compress it.