Music on DVDs to play back on CD players
 

Hey guys,

I do a lot of concert videos for musicians, and it occured to me that a good marketing medium would be a DVD that included a live convert video for watching on a DVD player and a separate music track to play on the home CD player. I played around with this by burning files of video authored for dvd playback, and music as wav. files, both on the same DVD-R disc.

The video played back fine on my dvd player, but the music would not play on my home cd player. The music would, however, play on my computer if I opened the dvd and selected the music file to play on Media player.

Any suggestions,

R. Webb

No strictly CD player can read a DVD with audio on it. The laser in a CD player won't work. That's why you can play it like an audio CD on something that can read DVDs, but not CD only.

Thanks Mark,

I guess we will have to include a CD in the package separate from the DVD for use on home stereos. The cost is not significant, and the consumer may well be less confused and feel they are getting more for their money with a double disc package. I knew someone like you could help my ignorance on the subject. What gave me the idea was a music cd my sister had that would show video if she played it on her computer. I assume the codec used was for a VCD that the computer could read as well as be read by the standard home CD player.

I am sure that one day the discs and lasers will standardize to DVD only for all media, but that may be a while, and discs may be repaced before then anyhow.

Gracias and adios,

Richard

There are new releases coming from one of the big studios that
have one side DVD and the other side as a CD. So you flip the
disc over depending on where you want to play it on. However,
I doubt these will be available for the smaller artist/studios at
an interesting price anytime soon. Otherwise it will be two
seperate discs I'm afraid.

For more info: http://www.dualdisc.com/index.html

The disc from your sister was pretty surely a standard CD with
a data track (which IS possible) with either VCD, SVCD or a
computer movie (with an autorun.inf file) in the form of AVI or
QuickTime. However, the quality should not have been as good
as a DVD.

There will be no CD players that can read audio tracks from a
DVD since there is no standard that supports this. There are
however new formats like SACD and DVD Audio. Although not
a lot of people have players/support to play that back (one of
the reasons being the difference in audio isn't that great to
many ears in the consumer market and the market is divided
by the two formats).

There are those hybrid CDs out there... some are pretty cool. One of the first I ever saw was for the de caprio/claire daines version of Romeo and Juliet. They used macromedia director to create an autorun media experience that included video.

Your idea to simply include a CD is probably the best way to go at this point in time.

Your wish for discs to become standard... not likely! With HD DVD and Blu-Ray coming soon you will have CD, DVD and these hi-capacity discs all at once. Each with its own needed laser for reading them! Manufacturers are going to release HD DVD and Blu-Ray players with 2 lasers and decoders so that they can play just about everything (CD, DVD, their new standard). Only time will tell what will win out!

Thanks to Mark and Rob,

I am beginning to understand; it is a different laser reader in the two types of players. In order to be compatible to the widest audience, it would seem safe to say that even if they do make a player that can read multiple formats, one would still want to be safe and produce in dvd and cd. The projects that would need this will be reproduced at 1,000 plus copies, which allows me a quality replication at less than $1.00 per cd and about 1.75 per dvd, including the jewel case.

Thanks again guys. I feel like the hobo trying to catch the fast moving train of dvd technology, but I think this is the up and coming future of music video, at least for a few years anyway.

Thanks again,
Richard

And remember, always drink upstream from the herd.

Will Rogers

Exactly Richard. To get 6x more data on the same physical space (CD vs. DVD) they had to make the little pits of data even smaller. To read and burn those pits they need a better laser with a narrower beam. So they are incompatible in that way. 1000 copies is a lot... I hope it goes well!

I haven't tried it myself but there are more and more DVD players that would allow you to play unauthored DVD-R/RW.
This means you can browse the folders and play the WAV or MP3, DivX, MPEG2 (thats the normal DVD) etc. formats without the need to use different players.
I hope this wouldn't mean you have to give such player to every of your clients ;)