I was wondering if anyone has tried recording a short DVD formatted video onto a CDR?

It seems that a CDR should hold a few minutes (I think I calculated 15 min or 30 min?) of DVD quality video on it. (depending on the compression...) The question is, will a DVD player play dvd formatted media from a CDR? If the DVD player can play VCDs burned from computer, it seems like it should work, unless the DVD player cannot read the CD fast enough.

If this would work, it would be a cheap way to archive short videos.

[mitchell_pgh]

good idea, but it won't work. DVD's spin much faster and the media is designed to permit fast sustainable file transfer. CDR's aren't fast enough for DVD quality video.

[dymanohum]

dvd's spin slower than cdr's 1x is all that is needed for a dvd because of the density, to get the same transfer rate from a cdr would require a much faster spin....that said yes you can burn a dvd on a cdr and the mac dvd player will read it but I do not know if there are any set top boxes that can do this...a set top box senses the media type first then looks for the file structure.

aah, that is exactly what I was afraid of...though it might be worth a try...it all depends whether it spins at the slowest speed necessary...but most like it would spin at the speed for the media rather than the data. Do VCD's spin at CD speed?

[dymanohum]

Cd &Cdr media spins at one speed, Dvd's at a slower speed the data is more compact on a dvd so much more data can be read at a lower speed.

[elvisripley]

One of the new features that Toast 5 talks about is the ability to make video cds that will play in a DVD player. It even says burn your iMovies onto a cd.
http://www.roxio.com/en/products/toast/toast5.html

The question still is, has anyone done it with an iDVD or a DVD Studio Pro project.

Ho hum. This topic is such an FAQ! You should check on the *.dvd.* Usenet forums if interested.

To summarize:

A small (20 min or so) DVD project burnt onto a CD-R is technically known as a "miniDVD".

No, there are virtually no set-top players on the market that can play a miniDVD (there is a Korean made model which can allegedly play them).

No, the reason is not due to the spin rate, as many recent generation DVD players can play VideoCDs (recorded on CD-R) just fine.

The reason that miniDVDs can't be played on set-top DVD players is that the engineers simply didn't think anyone would want to, so the mechanism which checks for a DVD only checks for DVD media and doesn't check for CD media (by refocusing the laser, etc) before giving up and saying, "nah, no DVD here."

miniDVDs can be played on computers just fine, however.

Yes, you can burn a the VIDEO_TS folder from a DVD project onto a CD-R and play it with Apple DVD Player.


To the post above me: Toast Titanium's claim to fame is that it will burn VideoCDs, that is, the MPEG-1 medium that preceded DVD that was/is popular in Asia, but not so popular in the US, because mainstream Americans were a bit dense really (oh, and because crappy VHS tape is *so* wonderful). They've been popular through US piracy channels however.

(Earlier versions of Toast could do this too, but they had to be encoded with Astarte's M.Pack MPEG-1 encoder. Apple bought Astarte and turned their developments into iDVD and DVD Studio Pro. Small world!)

[dymanohum]

Toast 5 adds an encoding ext. to quicktime pro for a toast vcd...you can then export to this format directly from imovie with a single click, but I hope you have time ( took me 20 hours for a 1 hour vcd).

[mitchell_pgh]

dymanohum

what machine were you encoding the movie on, an iMac, G3, G4, cube... that sounds very long, and I'm about to do it at a work machine over the weekend... Gladiator, here I come...

I wonder if iMovie supports MP?

[dymanohum]

I was using an imac dv 400 w/384 ram...The toast codec is decent but the time it takes is grueling. The toast 5 codec may be altivec aware/enhanced so if you try it on a g4 please post your results.

it works, on all dvd computer player, i've tested it on PC and Macintosh, great result, but hard to finalize it, lot of steps (media cleaner, astarte DVDirector, toast DVD, and finally toast and a lot of patience) but worth the result...

and that not all, check this link, some home dvd player can read what is called miniDVD http://vcdhelper.com/dvdplayers.php?...&viewall=0
hey guy at apple, just let iDVD make possible to burn on regular cd-r (bordel !!!), can't afford a new 733 G4, but a new imac with cd-RW, yes i do