Totally Green about MP4's to DVD

[Heathsideboy]

Okay, as the title suggests, I am just learning about this video lark.

I bought my first camcorder recently and after trying some recordings, I saved them to my laptop computer in MP4 format of course. I then put in a blank DVD disc and did what I do with my music files (in Windows media player) and add the video MP4 files to the blank DVD disc.

When I burnt all the MP4 files to the blank DVD disc and tried to play it back, it would not play on my DVD player. I was expecting to see it playback the files as a normal video, but it would not play at all. I've obviously got a lot to learn!

So what do I need to do or download to make these files so that when burnt to a DVD disc, they playback normally as a video? They play fine on the computer as files but I want to know how to burn them to disk so that they play on a DVD in a DVD player? Do I need to convert them in some way and if so how? I need some expert advice please.

Also, is it too much to ask how you use Windows movie maker to make your movie into a bit more professional movie? Also, once you've made your movie in movie maker, how do you burn it onto a blank DVD from Windows movie maker?

Lots of questions I know, but I'm willing to learn.

Thank you

HB

[admin]

Usually only Blu-ray players would play MP4 files straight from a disc, and it also depends on whether the MP4 was encoded in the right way as to be compatible.

If you want the movie to play properly on a DVD player, you'll have to convert the MP4 to DVD-video disc. Windows comes with a tool called Windows DVD Maker that you can use to burn movies (and pictures) to create a DVD-video disc that is compatible with DVD players. It's not compatible with MP4 files though, which is why you may need to use Windows Movie Maker to edit the file(s), and the use the Save Movie -> Burn a DVD option (which creates a file that is compatible with DVD Maker, and then starts DVD Maker to finish the burning process).

I normally don't like using Microsoft's tools for dealing with MP4 videos though, since it encodes the video twice, first to WMV, and then to MPEG-2 for DVD (it wastes time, and reduces quality).

A quick and easy (and free) way to convert MP4 directly to a DVD-video disc is via DVD Flick:

AVI to DVD using DVD Flick Guide | Articles - Digital Digest

It's free software that hasn't been updated in a while, so it can be buggy.

There's also TMPGEnc Authoring Works 5, a commercial tool designed for home users that does the same as DVD Flick, with more customization options (eg. create your own menus ...).

[nancyjahn]

I have prepare a video converter and dvd maker on my computer, so I always do some video conversion in order to edit video with video editor, then use a dvd maker to burn all the video I want to dvd.