View Full Version : Just got a CD-RW drive, have no idea what the hell I'm doing. Advice?


Josh Bass
December 29th, 2002, 01:46 AM
Just what it says up there. I've been trying to make a copy of my animated short on a CD, and have not had luck. Tried it from Vegas Video using the Burn CD command, and my CD came out with a bunch of folders on it, and no movie. Then tried using the software that came with the drive, dragging my 55 meg mpeg file and burning it to CD. Came out as a realplayer file, and when I play it, it says "rebuffering at 1392 kbps." What ever that means, it translates to "takes forever to play." Little help?

Marc Betz
December 29th, 2002, 06:04 AM
Whats your operating system? I have XP and a yamaha ez3200cdrw and all I do is take the movie file or avi and just drag it to the cd drive in "my Computer".

The right click and choose write these files to CD.

Thats it.

As long as it's less tha 800mb you should be fine.

Robert Knecht Schmidt
December 29th, 2002, 07:37 AM
I use Adaptec Easy CD Creator 4 on Win 2K. All you do is drag and drop and click the burn button. I've never had a problem with it, never once a bad disc.

For making bit-for-bit copies of your CDs, CloneCD is a handy utility.

Josh Bass
December 29th, 2002, 08:07 AM
Sounds like my main problem is that it's an mpg instead of an AVI file. I can fix that. Was nice having it be only 55 megs though. Anyone know some compression methods to make it a manageable size without losing too much quality? I'd have to make the file in Vegas.

Robert Knecht Schmidt
December 29th, 2002, 09:46 AM
That's not your problem. There's nothing wrong with an MPEG. In fact, CDs burned in VideoCD MPEG format will play on DVD players--very handy.

Matt Betea
December 29th, 2002, 10:48 AM
i think it's more of a problem stemming from how realplayer is such a piece of #@$!$%. sorry to get carried away, i get emotional sometimes about realplayer(it's the devil).

anyways, mpg is fine to use. what you want to do is one of a couple things:

1. open realplayer, go to tools/preferences/media types. uncheck everything (with everything uncheck it will play ONLY *.rm files). then double click the mpg. when it asks what program you want to open it, choose and make sure "always use this program to open this type...." is checked.

2. right click on the mpg file and select open with from the menu. then follow the last part of #1.

more than half the things realplayer is "supposed" to be able to support it can't, at least w/out any glitches. hope this helps.

matt

Zac Stein
December 29th, 2002, 06:29 PM
Josh,

To fully help you, i need to know what you are trying to achieve with the cd.

Do you want to make a vcd of your work, or a super-vcd?

Just to back up your work?

Creat just a cd of simple avi or rm files to have for future use?


Anyways, for any of them the absolutely best program out there is Ahead Nero. Nero will do simple data cd's, vcd's, super vcds, audio cd's (which will convert mp3 to pcm on the fly for you, bit naughty but good feature) it will do a cd of mp3's, cd copys, cd images.... u name it it has a wizard.

kermie

Josh Bass
December 29th, 2002, 06:33 PM
Is this Nero fella free? Sounds cool if it is.

I want to use it for employment demo reels, in place of VHS tape, and for possible submissions (both for screening and as my submission medium) for film festivals. I just don't see that it's worth it for me right now to invest in a DVD burner. The CD burner is a decent alternative.

Zac Stein
December 29th, 2002, 06:38 PM
Then you would be delivering it most likely in super-vcd format, or using the small business card ones with an auto mated file started for an mpeg file.


kermie

Nero is not free.

Josh Bass
December 30th, 2002, 12:51 AM
Sounds groovy to me. I'll try those RealPlayer modifications in the mean time.

Josh Bass
December 30th, 2002, 03:47 AM
Alright, a couple of things.


I don't have a "tools" tab on my version of RealPlayer. Closest thing is "View/preferences" etc. According that, it's already disassociated with all file types! Why's it still coming up as the mpeg player?


Also, tried opening the mpeg file with the quicktime player, and it gave me some business about "missing a component needed to open the file" or some such. Is this cause I made an mpg-2 instead of an mpg-1? I don't know much about the difference between these, but it seems -1 is limited to 320x240, while -2 allows fullscreen.

Andrew Petrie
December 30th, 2002, 09:16 AM
Ya'll should break down and get a copy of NERO. Kicks any other CDRW program's proverbial butt! Make V-CDs in a snap and lots of other handy features.

Josh Bass
December 30th, 2002, 01:57 PM
Finally got my bastard machine to create an Mpeg that plays in the quicktime player.. .it's an Mpeg-1 with full screen resolution and high video quality. Don't know why I thought it was limited to 320X240. That's my bad everyone. Should not have problems now.