Putting short movies on CD
 

I want to put a short movie on CD that will play on most (or all) DVD players. Can I do this? And how would I do this? Also, is MPEG2 the basic compression scheme that most DVD movies are encoded in? Thanks.

Hi Glenn

As far as I am aware you can't author a CD, but simply burn your video file onto it...
Yes, DVD's are in MPeg2 and this is the best format to go for. Some DVD players will play other formats, most won't...

PC's often won't play Mpeg 2 (unless you have DVD player and software) but will Mpeg 1 which is more universal but of lower quality.. WMV is probably the best quality / compatible encoding for computers... (Quicktime is the one if you're Mac based)... All these are easily burned to CD, and will play in Media Player.

The main problem I've found is that it really depends on your blank disk stock... not all DVD players are the same and even those supposedly able to read CD's will either skip, drop sound or picture data on some makes of CD disk... it's a bit hit and miss.

Due to the relative ease & cheapness of authoring a DVD why not simply go that route... use any of the downloadable DVD Authoring softwares, I've been using DVD Lab Pro this month and it's very nice..
You can get try outs of most of the popular ones...

DVD disks although not universal will generally play a lot better and on more machines than the CD's... DVD-R's are the most universal in Europe... I find TDK very good and a study I found on the web showed that they the TDK DVD-R disks play on about 86% of household DVD players.

The situation is getting better as more recent players are getting their act together and playing far more types of disk...

These are my findings... Hope this helps.

Regards

Gareth

Actually CD's can be authored and this is called VideoCD (VCD).
The format on a VCD is:

- MPEG-1
- half resolution (320 x 240 or 320 x 288)
- full framerate

It was/is quite popular in the eastern part of the world. Any DVD
player that I've seen has no problem playing this.

Another format is called SVCD. This isn't supported by all players,
but most play this fine:

- MPEG-2
- 3/4 resolution (480 x 480 or 480 x 576)
- full framerate

Most MPEG encoders (and in most recent NLE's) have presets for
both standards, so it shouldn't be too hard to encode.

A good SVCD can (almost) look as good as a DVD, a good VCD
should look inbetween a VHS and DVD copy.

Check out your encoders and burn programs what they support.
Again, VCD should play on all DVD players, SVCD on most (new ones).

'Just a quick note concerning Gareth's comment about discs. A few years ago I tried producing SVCDs and found that CDR discs didn't work in my Toshiba DVD player, but *CDRW* discs would (I believe they were Imation). Apparently the reflectivity was different and agreed with the DVD player better.

Granted I still couldn't get the SVCD format to play on many players, but maybe things have changed since then.