Burning digital camera videos to CD/DVD

[Fitz]

I'd like to burn my 40-second videos that I take on the Nikon Coolpix to either CD or DVD so that I can play them on a DVD player. They play back fine on my computer as MOV files but are not detected at all by my DVD player.
I'm clearly missing something elementary but I am quite new to this game. Besides, as they say on another forum like this one, "There's no such thing as a stupid question, but they are the easiest to answer"...

[tigerman8u]

you have to convert the mov file to a dvd compliant mpeg 1/2 with Tmpgenc plus or similiar. Then author the mpeg 1/2 with a program such as Tmpgenc dvd Author. As a freeware solution you can try VSO divx to dvd. I haven't used that program on an mov so can't say for sure if it will work on an mov or not.

[Fitz]

Thanks for that. I'll try that. I must say it does seem strange that one has to convert the format, given that short movies on digital cameras are very common. Perhaps there is an option on my camera whereby I can shoot movies which are already capable of being burned to a DVD/CD that can be played on a DVD player without such conversion.

[mastercontrol]

I must say it does seem strange that one has to convert the format, given that short movies on digital cameras are very common.

It's not strange at all. The DVD specs only allow MPEG-2 video with certain dimensions (as well, MPEG-1 VCD files). Anyone who shoots footage that's shot on DV cameras have to encode the video to MPEG format within the DVD specs.

There are players that support playback of DivX files, but not other file types. Even if DVD player manufacturers wanted to add support for other file formats, there are so many out there it would take a long time to support them, not to mention negotiating licensing to be able to support the different formats.

As far as your camera, I'm not sure if you can change the format of the video, but I doubt that MPEG-2 would be supported. At the most, it would be MPEG-1 352x240, which should work in all players, but is not what most DVDs are made with.

[tigerman8u]

mov is actually an mpeg 4 format. .mov extension is quicktime. mpeg 4 is highly compressed. that way you can get alot more on a given camera's storage device.