[john gilliver]

Hi, New to this site. I have a problem playing DVD on my tv.It is a Bush with video and DVD built in.I bought a new digital video camera that uses an SD card.I downloaded my videos to DVD disc But can't play them on my TV.I tried two discs one was DVD-RW 4x 4.7GB the other was DVD+ 4x 4.7 GB.My OS is Vista home premium.I get messages (NO DISC) on one and (incorrect disc) on the other.I don't know much about these things. I would be grateful if someone could help me get it sorted.Thank's John

[senu]

wrong forum .Ill move it
You need to "know about these things" or you ll waste more than a few discs, time and still not get to watch your footage
You dont say which camcorrder it is you have and whether your footage is SD or Hi Def
Im assuming SD
DVD discs need to have the video data on them in a certain structured way in order for a DVD player to read them
DVDs which can be read in this way are called "DVD video" . it seems to me that you expect to simply copy the footage to a disc and then play them
Not so.. that is merely a data disc with video files on it. playable on the PC but not on your setop box

I suggest you try and use
THIS
or similar instead of simply burning files to disc
If you have infact used similar I apologise.. are your discs "finalised" .. This ( another thing to know.) is a process by which DVDs can be universally read, especially DVD-RW which can be reused but remain unreadable outside their writing application until finalised
Some Settop DVD recorders and DVD camcorders also need their DVDs " finalising before anything else can "read" them

[Mr Lazy]

Don't forget that Vista Home Premium has Windows Movie Maker built-in and is perfectly acceptable for this sort of task. You will need to give it menus and backgrounds but if you are not bothered about these just accept the defaults to make things simpler.

Personally I think that this job is quicker and easier with a standalone DVD recorder, you can get decent makes (ie. Philips) now for around the 90 quid mark. All this assumes that your camcorder is standard definition, if high definition things will be very different.

p.s. the discs should have been finalized (or 'session closed' in Windows-speak) by Vista when they were ejected from the PC after burning.

[senu]

Originally Posted by Mr Lazy

Don't forget that Vista Home Premium has Windows Movie Maker built-in and is perfectly acceptable for this sort of task. You will need to give it menus and backgrounds but if you are not bothered about these just accept the defaults to make things simpler.

This is true but as with a microsoft free bees it wont be long before you run into its limitations

Personally I think that this job is quicker and easier with a standalone DVD recorder, you can get decent makes (ie. Philips) now for around the 90 quid mark. All this assumes that your camcorder is standard definition, if high definition things will be very different.

I wonder about that though. If the camcorder only has a composite video output to a standalone DVD recorder there is a good chance of ending up with poor quality video.
The advantage of DV or HDV here is firewire transfer to settop with no loss of quality during the digital transfer
Hence the use of PC with the natively recorded digital files rather than composite analogue output.
Canons HG10 has a fantastic HDMI/component output .. but its composite analogue output sucks.. I recorded to a setop with it via composite and then compare the mts files.. no comparison

[john gilliver]

senu, it was only a cheap digital camera the name is ZENNOX.It uses an SD card.I don't have a clue what i'm doing. I think i will be just as well to donload to disk and look at them on my pc.Thank's to both of you for your help. JOHN