Response to Terri - Playing Home Videos On A DVD Player

I just got a new camcorder, and I'm learning how to make dvd's with music. I'm able to transfer video to my computer and import it to windows movie maker, then when I burn the video on the dvd it acts like it is burning and says the video is finished but when I play it on the vcr it wont play. I've put it in all 3 vcr's we have in our house. Do you have any ideas why it won't play? I'm about to throw in the towel, when I call Dell customer service I can barely understand them because they are from a different country! And when I call the geeksquad, I sit on hold FOREVER! My computer is older, got it in 2002. I had to order a dvd writer from Dell. But still no luck with being able to actually watch the dvds. I've also tried 2 different types of DVDs,: DVD +RW, DVD-R. I've tried it with Memorax brand and Sony. Just thought I would ask you seem to be pretty smart with computers.

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I don't have the Windows Movie Maker any more since I've upgraded to Windows 7 and I can't remember the publishing options. I was just looking at the Windows Live Movie Maker and there is a function to burn it to a DVD but I checked the codec (codec is the program capable of encoding and/or decoding the data stream) the video is converted to and it is not compatible for a set top DVD player. Window Movie Maker gives you the option to save the videos you have created directly to a DVD.This DVD is for storage of your video to play back later on a computer. I think your problem is you are in need of a DVD authoring program, rather than a program that can save your data to a DVD.

DVD Flick is a program I came across some time ago while trying figure out the same problem. It is a wonderful DVD authoring tool to take videos from your computer and turn them into a DVD that will play back on your set top DVD player. With DVD Flick, you can also create a DVD menu and chapters to organize larger videos for easier navigation. So if you want to put several home videos together on one disk, you can make a menu to provide quick access to individual videos.

There's one problem though Teri... your computer. I'm assuming that since it was built in 2002 it is probably running XP and maybe has only 512 MB of RAM. If you were to use DVD Flick with XP, you need at least 256 MB of free physical RAM to run it. Depending on the speed of your processor, it could take a very long time to generate the DVD video file. You might want to think ahead for a huge project and have DVD Flick create the video overnight, since it could potentially take that long. (I convert videos for my Zune and Blackberry all the time and it ALWAYS bugs me with how long it takes to encode a video. I guess that's why patience is a virtue.) Don't get me wrong though. It is still possible to do it on your computer, but, it would be easier with a newer computer.

Head over to DVD Flick to check it out yourself and to get the download. Also, be sure to read over the guide to create a simple DVD before you decide to jump into a project.

Edit I forgot to mention that it if you are more comfortable with editing video with Windows Movie Maker, then use it but be sure to save the video vile in the best quality possible. You can then take that video file and import it into DVD Flick to save it to a DVD player compatible DVD.