Multimedia Disc Problems - What's the Difference?
 

Hello: Can anyone advise me if something can be done? I have received through a trade a nice collection but I can't watch it. My machines won't recognize the discs? I have two versions of xbox and one new blue ray player and an old dvd player and non will play the discs. Those that respond with any kind of information, say they are "multi-media discs"? They look like regular blanc discs used to record but I suspect the program used to record on the discs rendered these useless to me. Any advice is appreciated. Thank you

The disc may have been burned wrong.
What, exactly, is on the disc? What are the files

Good afternoon Lordsmurf: The disc has no manufacture mark on it but the trader marked it as avi files. The show is Whiplash.

Those are computer files. Unless your player supports playing those files, you need a computer to play them.

thank you ndbs9u3. I guess I'll just play them on the PC. Could I use dvd flick or dvd shrink to convert them on my pc?

no, you would need video conversion software. I think those particular programs can extract from DVDs but not convert TO DVD-Video.

I will say this - new blu-ray players can often play MPEG4 files. You might want to try looking in your player's user manual for a list of supported video file formats.

If it supports MPEG4 files (mine is a sony), then all you'd need to do is convert the AVI files to MPEG4 and put the files on new discs or a USB pen drive (if your player supports it). Then you could watch them through your player.

Otherwise, you'll need to import them into an authoring suite, create menus, etc. and burn as DVD-Video discs. It would obviously take a lot less effort to just plug in files rather than take those computer files AND author DVD-Video discs.

As for software, you might try xilisoft video converter or TMPGEnc Video Mastering Works 5. You can drag and drop files and batch process AVI files into MPEG4 using either. It really doesn't take much effort.

multi media disc conversion etc..
 

Thank you again. It all sounds sort of ... hmm, how shall I put it? Just not worth the effort. I am not that gifted. Oh I like to try stuff but I seem to screw up a lot of files when I try. I guess I'll just sit at the PC to watch them and be wary with my future trades. Lesson learned. Thank you for your guidance and time. I do appreciate it.