I would like to know what I have to do to get two .avi files, each 696MB in size, converter to be able to wathc on my DVD player. I do not have a DVD burner, so do I need to convert to SVCD? Then what? Thanks a lot guys, I am glad I found this forum.

in your situation, svcd is probably the best bet. you will need to convert to svcd format first. tmpgec works the best for me http://www.tmpgenc.net/ and i've done alot (hundreds, at least). you can find it all over the net with a serial if you look hard. use this page for step by step directions. http://www.videohelp.com/tmpgenc.htm instead of vcd use svcd, the settings are all the same. now, you can only get shortly under 50 minutes on an svcd and others claim you shouldn't go over 35 for maximum quality. close to 50 seems to work for me. so as you see some movies require 4 disks or more. it don't matter about mb's on svcd files. its the time that counts. you can put more than 700 mb on a disk as long as its under the minutes. after you have the files converted and ready to burn, use cdr's and your favorite burner program. i use nero. just remember that svcd's are not data files and are not audio files. they will be called something like svcd, super video or video cd, something like that. different programs call it different things. if you do want to try vcd instead of svcd, the quality may not be quite as good, but vcd's hold 80 minutes.

now, about playing them buggers, it is iffy at best. some players only play vcd. some players only play svcd. some players play both. some players play neither. then, some players don't like some or any cdr blanks. it's just a crap shoot getting them to play. so if you make one and it doesn't work, don't assume you did something wrong. try it in some other players before declaring failure. good luck.

Thanks! Very helpful. I'll give it go.

i didn't want to make a new tread so i'll just use this one. yes i'm new to this vcd and svcd stuff so i need a bit of help. i'm using that tmpg program to try to convert a file so i can burn it but each time i hit browse on the video input or whatever it says that it cannot find the file. is it becuse the file is mpeg-3 or what?

i have the same problem sometimes. tmpgenc doesn't recognize every file in every situation. sometimes it don't recognize avi's and some mpg's. for instance if your mpg is already in vcd format and you try to go to svcd it may not like it. any time i have a problem like this i use main concept mpeg encoder and convert to mpeg-1 from whatever it is and then convert to svcd with tmpgenc. i've had lots of files that tmpgenc has a problem with but after turning them bacxk to mpeg-1 with main concept every single one has then worked with tmpgenc. main concept (and its crackz) is another program that is free all over the internet if you look.