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There are some nice PD titles I've found at this site.
My question is, how does one get these onto a DVD which will play in a normal DVD player? I dislike watching films on my PC.

There are some nice PD titles I've found at this site.
My question is, how does one get these onto a DVD which will play in a normal DVD player? I dislike watching films on my PC.

I just use Nero Vision to import the biggest file of the title (usually .mp4 or .avi) and burn a DVD-R that will play on any of my players. Many of the Internet Archive PD titles have video files which are overcompressed and will look terrible when played on a large screen. Some of the titles have an .mpeg file you can download which should be as good as the original PD disk it came from. I think there are other free converter/burners if you don't have Nero, DVD Flick ISTR would work and is free.

I use Freemake Video Converter, another free program, it works pretty well. Of course the DVD will only look as good as the original material.

Of course the DVD will only look as good as the original material.

Aye, there's the rub! I've never tried to do this myself, & never will, so long as I can buy them ready made for $6 ea, but the originals are often so far gone, it's hardly worth the trouble.

Thanks, folks. That's been helpful.

I downloaded this PD title and burned it onto a DVD-R using Windows DVD maker. It looks excellent but the sound is a little out of sync. Whats the cause of this? I downloaded the Cinepack .avi 650.8MB file. Would the MPEG file have been better?

http://archive.org/details/They_Drive_by_Night_1938" target="_blank" target="_blank

ps: Looking at the actual source, I see the sound is out of sync anyway. However, just out of interest, generally speaking, is the MPEG file the better one to download?

If you are to transfer it to DVD, then MPEG2 is the one to download, because MPEG2 is the native video format of DVD. Not MPEG4 or MPEG, but MPEG2. But as you notice, the formats offered by archive.org are mostly MPEG4, FLV, etc. due to their smaller file sizes and better compression.

Thanks.
It's probably easier to ask which files will NOT play on a standard DVD player?

[Christopher Jacobs]

Some newer players (at least my Sony Blu-ray player) will actually play mp4 and a variety of other media files over your TV or video projector, directly from a flashdrive, eliminating the need to burn a DVD or convert a different format to the mpg2 format (losing more quality in the process). A number of new digital TV sets even have USB ports for flash drives or hard drives, and can play certain movie files (usually mpg files of various flavors but not all) directly onto the screen from your flashdrive/hard drive. Note that in some cases, they will only play the original pixel size it was encoded in, so a 640x480 or 320x240 video file will look pretty small in the center of a 1920x1080 screen, and the standard 720x480 files used for DVDs will also look slightly squeezed.

Note that in some cases, they will only play the original pixel size it was encoded in, so a 640x480 or 320x240 video file will look pretty small in the center of a 1920x1080 screen, and the standard 720x480 files used for DVDs will also look slightly squeezed.

A friend of mine provides me with DVDs that sometimes exhibit these anomolies, which he understands no better than I. Those disks are promptly ejected directly from my player to the trash bin, because such techno-defects I find more intolerable by far than the scratches, wash-outs, nitrate burns, & other ravages of time, that I'm accustomed to seeing on many silents & (especially) early talkies. If the best surviving print is marred, well, that's something I can accept, as I would the ruined condition of a classical building, but not problems originating from someone's failure to press the right button.

I've had success downloading from archive.org and then burning to disc with Real Player Plus, if you want a cheap and quick solution.

So, it would appear that DivX files such as at

http://archive.org/details/TheMostDangerousGame

won't transfer to DVD-R disc?

I've used DVD Flick to convert Divx to DVD with no problems. If Divx doesn't work, try the MP4 version.

If you have a lot of video files, it would probably be best to look into ways to stream your video files directly to your TV. That would eliminate the headaches of authoring/burning DVDs altogether. This would be a good solution for long term too as your video collection grows.

There are set top boxes like Apple TV that can play MP4 videos from your PC. In fact, the Apple TV lets you use your iPad/iPhone to open up online videos and send the output to your TV directly: http://www.apple.com/appletv/airplay/" target="_blank

I'll give DVD Flick a go. Thanks.