I know a fair few photographers produce DVD's for customers .. and I regularly panic phone calls asking what to do when the intended recipient turns out not to have a DVD player that recognises a DVD-R, nor have they a DVD in their computers. The latest was from a hospital that had to get *something* out urgently to quite a number of doctors across the country I thought a simple solution worth worth posting here for others who may encounter such problems - my advice is to make the content of the movie into an AVI and distribute it on a CD. just a straight DivX AVI. At least they will be able to play it on their computers (all) The simplest and by far the quickest program I've encountered (unless someone is prepared to troll the doom9 forums and download a dozen programs) is the freeware program from http://www.pocketdivxencoder.net/ - a 7Mb standalone divX encoder that's quite new and very intuitive. you just point it to the appropriate VOB on an unencrypted disk, select the output location, name it and hit encode. it will also batch if you have a number of DVD's loaded to the hard drive.. it's amazingly fast and does an exceptional job. I've used a number of programs in the past but this one is a stunner! it has inbuilt profiles on starting for everything from home cinema to PocketPC, Smartphone or Palm devices :) once the avis are created just burn them to a disk (or drop them on your 'phone!) and away you go If for some odd reason you've enabled some DRM or level of encryption to a DVD compilation, you'll need something like DVD Shrink to rip the original disk to a hard drive first.. The hospital was actually contemplating sending out VHS casettes (!) but the program did the job a lot quicker than real time, and the CD's were well received at the other end :) karl
