AVI's to DVD's

[Yoyoman]

I'm trying to convert some AVI's to DVD's. Can you guys point me to a good free online converter? If you cannot, then can you point me to a good paid online converter.

P.S. Is there any difference between DVD and VOB?

Thanks.

[KHg8m3r]

Do you mean you’re trying to burn video files to a dvd disk to play in a media player or something? Cause dvd is not a file extension.

[Yoyoman]

What file extension would I need to convert my AVI to so it can play in a DVD player? Would I need to convert my AVI into VOB or something?

[AnyOldName3]

It might be a little more complicated than that as I'm not sure that the filesystem on a DVD is a standard OS-friendly one, so even if you converted the file and burned it to the DVD the player might not be able to find it. Some details are discussed here: https://superuser.com/questions/55982/what-is-the-necessary-file-structure-for-a-dvd-to-be-playable

Your best bet is to find some DVD burning software that outputs video DVDs, not data DVDs.

[Yoyoman]

But DVD-RW is a video disc because my DVD player supports it. It doesn't support AVI's, but I read that I need either .DVD format or VOB format.

[AnyOldName3]

There are .VOB files on a video DVD, but not in the same way as you'd end up with if you converted your videos to .VOB files and just burned them to a DVD as files. Whether or not a DVD is a video DVD or a data DVD has nothing to do with the DVD itself, so if you have a blank DVD it could become either. As explained in the link I posted earlier, a video DVD has to be formatted with a specific file system and have specific files present in specific locations, but if you were to generate these files yourself and burn them to a disk, you'd almost certainly end up with it not working as it would probably have a different file system (such as FAT or NTFS). VOB is a file format that a DVD player can play if it can find the file, but if the file system isn't the right kind the player will have no idea that the data it's being offered is something it can work with. .DVD sounds to me like it's a sort-of made up file format that probably holds an ISO image of a video DVD or otherwise contains the same data so that a specific bit of software designed to work with the format can work out how to burn it to a blank DVD to end up with a video DVD.

Depending on what software you use to burn a video DVD, it might just be able to take your AVI files and convert them as it burns them. If not, then you might find another bit of software that could take an AVI file and give you an ISO image of a video DVD and convert it as it works. Once you have the ISO image, you can burn it to a disk. You might find a tool that converts your AVI file to a VOB file, and then you can feed the result to something which will give you an ISO image of a video DVD containing that VOB file (or a tweaked version) or even burn it directly. However, generating a VOB file and just putting it on a DVD that you've done no setup specifically to make it a video DVD will not give you something that will work in most DVD players.

[Yoyoman]

Am I better off just using a DVD authoring software? Sorta sounds something like that anyway.

[AnyOldName3]

Yes, you almost certainly are. It'll save you a lot of completely unnecessary work.

[Yoyoman]

OK then. Thanks a lot for the help!