[hillhater]

Hi everybody,first post.I have a dvd recorder that plays DivX encoded movies but what else will play on this for europe region.Am I right in thinking that .mov encoded movies will be ok.I mostly want to do training dvd's for a sports club from a wide range of sites that show 5 minute clips and do a compilation,or do I need to convert these to divX.Is this the same for movies downloaded.Sorry if this is a stupid question but I am in the dark about this. What will encode this to divx.

[philthomas]

Are you talking about a standalone DVD Recorder ... i.e. one that connects to your TV ? .... or a DVD Writer in your PC ?

[hillhater]

I waant to playback with the dvd recorder that is under the tv .

[philthomas]

OK ... first off, if you are looking to produce training DVDs, remember that although your standalone DVD Recorder can play DivX, this will probably not be the case for others, so if you are planning to produce DVDs that can be played by any machine, DivX is not the format to use.

You will be better off converting your files to a DVD vobset. This can then be burnt to DVD and will be playable on most standalone Players or Recorders.

The method, however can be quite complex and to be honest, is outside the scope of a forum post.
Having said that, there are programs around that will allow you to create DVDs from other formats. These will re-encode the video and allow authoring, such as creating menus etc. to allow playback selection.

A program I use quite often is ConvertXtoDVD. It's fairly simple program to use, but is not as professional as some higher priced programs on the market. It is a good starting point however.
If you want something a bit more professional DVDLAB Pro 2 Edit Suite is another good piece of software ... it's a bit more complex though and needs a bit of learning.

The whole subject of video encoding & authoring can be quite complex and I would suggest doing a bit of homework/reading and test out some trial packages first. As I said above ConvertXto DVD is a good starter package and I believe they offer a free trial version, to get your feet wet with.

This is a good website to learn more, with tutorials and free software, but there is a learning curve, mastering several pieces of freeware to complete the task. The programs I linked to above, simplify things and provide all you need in one package.

Hope this gives you some ideas.