What you are referring to is commonly called a miniDVD, or CDVD. This is DVD data and file structure, but burned onto a CD. You can generally get about 10 to 15 minutes of good quality video. Authoring software like DVD Complete can do this, but I understand that DVDA can't (not that I've tried). For what it's worth, the miniDVD or CDVD format is VERY unreliable in home settop players. I believe the last number I heard (from www.vcdhelp.com) was that about 5% of the home player market can play them.

My DVD burner has not yet arrived, and I was needing to show someone a demo at another location yesterday. I tried exactly what you are asking with a 5 cent CD-R.

I chose the "Prepare DVD" option, which generated a Video_TS folder. I then copied the Video_TS folder to a CD-R and tested it in several devices. It would play on a computer using Intervideo's WinDVD player software, but it would not play on a consumer DVD hooked to a regular TV.

This is not unlike ripping a DVD and playing it back from your hard drive in a Video_TS folder.

Given this, I've concluded that CD-Rs will be a cheap way to archive short DVD files until DVD media costs drop further. You can watch them on a computer at least, and you can always burn the Video_TS info to an actual DVD later if you ever need it in that format.

As already mentioned, what you want to make is miniDVD, and you can use DVDA to prepare/optimize your project and then burn it using, for example, NERO software package. Your project shouldn't be more than 700 MB, or about 840 MB (if you are using 99 min. CD-R media and your CD writer supports overburning option). To burn your VIDEO_TS folder created by DVDA use CD-ROM (UDF - 1.02 partition) CD fromat offered in NERO. For full comatibility, also copy AUDIO_TS folder created by DVDA and burn it with VIDEO_TS.

As to standalone playback, you stand a greate chance if you have a lesser known brand DVD player (preferably made in China), since the brands such as Pioneer, or Sony, usually cannot read miniDVD. The two players that read miniDVD's flawlessly are Technosonic DVD-202 and Himage HJ-2205 (personally tested and used). Both of them are price-tagged at about $80 USD.

Brian,

"I believe the last number I heard (from www.vcdhelp.com) was that about 5% of the home player market can play them."

A lot of people seem to believe that for some reason. It's almost like an urban myth. Actually the real number is about six times that 5% figure. Of the current 757 players that were tested for miniDVD capability, 219 could play miniDVD. That is 29% of those tested. That's nearly one in three that can play miniDVD. Click on the following link to see a list of the current players than can play miniDVD (cDVD). Since they list 50 players per page, you will have to look at 5 pages to see all of the available models of players that play miniDVD. Anyone in the market for a DVD player who is at all interested in miniDVD should have no trouble finding a player, and they can be quite inexpensive.

Standalone DVD Players that play miniDVDs (cDVDs)

-- Burton --

David,

"I chose the "Prepare DVD" option, which generated a Video_TS folder. I then copied the Video_TS folder to a CD-R and tested it in several devices. It would play on a computer using Intervideo's WinDVD player software, but it would not play on a consumer DVD hooked to a regular TV."

The very first DVD Architect VIDEO_TS video title set that I burned with Nero to a CD-R played just fine as a miniDVD in our standalone DVD player on our TV. There are several reasons why your attempts could have been unsuccessful.

First of all, some DVD players require the Video_TS folder name to be in all caps, so that just putting it on as a Video_TS folder could be sufficient to cause it to fail to play. Also, you should include the AUDIO_TS folder, even though it is empty. I think that may be for future compatibility with "Universal" players that can play both DVD-Video and DVD-Audio discs. In any case, I included the AUDIO_TS folder.

Second, a recent test of 757 standalone DVD player models found that only 219 of them would play miniDVDs, so it could be that none of the DVD players that you tried were in the 29% of players that can play miniDVDs.

Third, when you burn the CD-R, you should use the latest or the second to latest version of Nero. You can't use the Nero Wizard, because you need to choose UDF/ISO. Actually, there are a lot of ways you can screw up the burn, and the actual procedure I went through would be kind of lengthy to describe. But I think it is quite feasible to use DVD Architect to author miniDVDs.

-- Burton --

Seeker,

Nearly 30%! That's great. I love the miniDVD format, and may take another look at using it more. It's a great way to distribute those 5 - 10 minute home movies (that would get really boring if they were any longer...) Thanks for the info, and the tips.

Burton,

Thanks for the info. I will try what you've suggested. I'm actually using a WAY outdated program for burning CD-Rs, Easy CD Creator 3.5, so it may be that I would need to upgrade to Nero to get it to work. It burns in Joliet format by default, but I can force it to do ISO9660. The all caps info will give me something else to try. In addition to my computer's DVD and CD-R drives, I have access to a Bose DVD unit and an X-Box. If I get it to work with either or both of those, I'll post my results here.

David,

"I'm actually using a WAY outdated program for burning CD-Rs, Easy CD Creator 3.5, so it may be that I would need to upgrade to Nero to get it to work."

Be sure to completely uninstall the Easy CD Creator 3.5 before you install the latest Nero. The Windows Add/Remove Programs uninstall should be adequate, although I usually run a Registry checker (I use the one in Ontrack's System Suite) after an uninstall to make sure there aren't any leftover orphan Registry entries. Nero and Adaptec/Roxio don't coexist well for some reason.

You can download the latest Nero from the Ahead Software site and it will act as a 30-day demo until you purchase it. The same download files act as demos or product upgrades, depending on whether you already have Nero on your system. Also download the Nero User's Manual and the Nero Quickstart Manual. The documentation is good to have. As they say, it doesn't hurt to "read the friggin' manual." (grin) The manuals are reasonably thorough. The Nero Burning Rom manual has 138 pages and the Nero QuickStart (Nero Burning Rom Brief Instructions) manual has 34 pages. Since the QuickStart focuses mostly on the Nero Wizard, which I don't think is appropriate (yet) for burning miniDVDs, you should download the full 138-page manual as well, because you will need it.

I think the Nero purchase is well worth it, because you can download free updates on a frequent nearly monthly basis. Ahead Software is being very conscientous in trying to perfect this product. Incidentally, Nero has a checkbox for Xbox compatibility, so you should be able to experiment with that. You can download the latest Nero Burning Rom software at:

http://www.nero.com/en/index.html#download

After you get Nero on your system, if you want, I can post the detailed procedure that worked for me to burn a miniDVD with Nero.

-- Burton --

Seeker -
Let me butt in here, if I may, and ask to take you up on your offer to provide some steps on creating the miniDVDs. As it is right now, I am getting very proficient at creating rear-view mirror hangy-flashy-things, and would like to branch out into 'reliably' creating something else. I have the latest Nero, and tried to emulate (as best as I could envision) the steps y'all have used to get to creating these elusive creatures, but to no avail.
I would respectfully appreciate your guidance.
TIA,
Ronbo

Ronbo,

If you're making coasters, I can understand your need for details. Since I didn't have DVD Architect at the time I made my first miniDVD, I downloaded the DVD Architect sample project to verify that DVD Architect could indeed be used to make a miniDVD using a VIDEO_TS video title set folder that is produced by DVD Architect and Nero Burning Rom to do the actual burn to a CD-R or CD-RW.

I will tell you step-by-step how I did that burn. This is not necessarily the "best" way to do it. It is just the way that I used on my first attempt, which happened to be successful. I tried to pick options in Nero that would produce maximum player compatibility for the miniDVD because miniDVDs tend to have more compatibility problems than any of the commonly used video disc formats. I wasn't extremely amazed at my first-time success, because my Daewoo DVG 5000N DVD player is listed as miniDVD/cDVD capable, and because I did do some online research before attempting the miniDVD burn. However, I wouldn't be at all surprised if some other, perhaps simpler, procedures also worked, so I plan to do a lot of experimentation.

The sample project download file is named dvdarch_sampleburnproject.exe with a file size of 67,849,174 bytes. You wouldn't want to put the "dvdarch_sampleburnproject.exe" file directly on your miniDVD. First of all, "decompress" the "dvdarch_sampleburnproject.exe" file by double-clicking on it. When you double-click on it, it decompresses to a folder named "Sample Project" that itself contains a folder named "Sample Project for Burning". I am not quite sure why there is a folder in a folder. The "Sample Project for Burning" folder contains what you need to put on the CD-R to make it be a miniDVD. It has an empty AUDIO_TS folder and a VIDEO_TS folder, which contains the video title set of the sample project. The VIDEO_TS folder has a file size of 75,399,168 bytes, and contains 15 files.

You will simply put the VIDEO_TS folder and the AUDIO_TS folder from DVD Architect onto the CD-R or CD-RW to make the miniDVD. Some, but not all, DVD players require that those folder names be in all-caps, so if your authoring software creates an Audio_TS and a Video_TS folder, it would be a good idea to rename them using all capitals to satisfy a wider range of DVD players. I am not sure the empty AUDIO_TS folder is necessary, but DVD Architect made it, so I used it.

You should use the very latest verson 5.5.10.7b (or later) of Nero. People have reported problems with earlier versions. If you need to download the latest version, the Nero file that you will download will be named "nero55107b.exe" with a file size of 13,712,184 bytes. Yet a newer version will be released in a few days at the end of this month. If you are using a dial-up phone modem, you might want to use a download manager in order to get a resumable download, as protection against getting nearly all of your download, losing your connection, and having to start all over again. A resumable download is also recommended for the sample project if you plan to use it. If you have a wideband connection, resumability is not such an issue, because your downloads take only minutes instead of hours. These are the steps I used:

(1) Before you start your burn, you should close down any applications that might compete for system resources during the burn. In order to have maximum system resources available, I did a Restart, and closed down my AntiVirus program, but left my FireWall running (which is set to start in the boot cycle).

(2) A miniDVD must be written to a blank CD-R or CD-RW. Before you insert a blank CD-R or CD-RW, make a note of its maximum write speed or rewrite speed. On my first attempt, I inserted a blank TDK 8x CD-R in my 24x10x40 CDRW drive. I later repeated the experiment with a Verbatim CD-RW rated at 2X/4X to see how my DVD player would handle a CD-RW. Hopefully your CDRW burner supports the buffer underrun feature. I started Nero. At that time Nero's Wizard appeared. Nero's Wizard is not sufficiently versatile in this Nero release for this task, so I closed the Wizard and changed my Nero Preferences so the Wizard would not automatically open again. I worked in Nero's standard interface, starting with the New Compilation dialog.

(3) If the New Compilation dialog has not already appeared, invoke it with File> New. On the New Compilation dialog, click the "CD-ROM (UDF/ISO)" icon in the icon field at the lefthand side of the dialog. You may have to scroll down to find it. We make this choice in order to put the miniDVD on a UDF/ISO Bridge CD. The big advantage of a UDF/ISO Bridge CD is that it complies with both the UDF standard and the ISO standard. The data appears on the disc only once, but Nero puts both a UDF table of contents and an ISO table of contents on the disc. Those two TOCs allow the disc to act as a Bridge CD, hopefully for increased player compatibility.

(4) Under the Multisession tab, click "No Multisession". Since Nero does not yet support Multisession UDF/ISO Bridge CDs, UDF Bridge sessions must therefore be written to blank CDs. However, even if a future version of Nero does support multisession Bridge CDs, I plan not to use it for miniDVDs. I think a multisession miniDVD would just be asking for DVD player compatibility problems.

(5) Under the ISO tab: File Directory name length = ISO Level 1 (Max of 11 = 8 + 3 chars), Format = Mode 1, Character Set = ISO 9660, Joliet = unchecked (the new default in this Nero release), Relax ISO Restrictions = all unchecked. Once again, the motivation for all of these selections is maximum DVD player compatibility.

(6) Under the UDF tab: Force DVD-Video compatibility mode (required for Xbox™) = unchecked [but I wondered about this], UDF partition type = Physical partition (the default), File system version = UDF 1.02 (default). [There are also available choices for UDF 1.50 and UDF 2.01 but I went with UDF 1.02 as a kind of "least common denominator" for hopefully increased DVD player compatibility.] Incidentally, there are some differences in this UDF tab in previous Nero releases.

(7) Under the Label tab, I accepted all the current defaults for this ISO9660 label: Volume Label = NEW, Application = NERO___BURNING_ROM. The rest of the fields were left blank by default: System Identifier, Volume Set, Publisher, Data Preparer, Copyright File, Abstract File, Bibliographic File. I will experiment with these at a later time, particularly the Volume Label as something other than NEW. But for now, not making waves or rocking the boat. Incidentally, this tab is also somewhat different in previous Nero releases.

(8) Under the Dates tab: accept all defaults.

(9) The Info tab shows I have no User data selected to be written yet.

(10) Under the Misc tab I accepted all defaults.

(11) Under the Burn tab, choose the Action as Write. The default Write Speed for me was 16x (2,400 KB/s) but since the old TDK CD-R I inserted was only 1x,2x,4x,6x,8x compatible, with 8x being its maximum capability, I reduced the Write Speed to the slowest setting available, namely 4x (600 KB/s). [For the Verbatim 2X/4X CD-RW the choices were 4x (600 KB/s) and 2x (300KB/s) and I chose 2X.] I think it is "safer" to write at a lower speed. The Write Method defaults to Track-At-Once, but I changed this to Disk-At-Once for the miniDVD.

(12) Click the New button on the right of the New Compilation dialog to begin assembling the files for the miniDVD. This won't take long because you will just drag folders. You will see the empty UDFISO1 Compilation Window for the NEW CD disc. [Remember that Volume Label = NEW in the Label tab?] If the File Browser window is not already open, open it by selecting View> New File Browser. In the File Browser window, I browsed to where I had the VIDEO_TS folder, which was C:\DOWNLOAD\Vegas 4\Sample Project\Sample Project for Burning\VIDEO_TS\ and I dragged the VIDEO_TS folder from the File Browser window to under the NEW icon in the UDFISO1 window. I also dragged the empty AUDIO_TS folder underneath the VIDEO_TS folder. That's all there is to it, because when you drag a folder in Nero you also get all the contents of the folder.

(13) Click the Write CD button or select Write CD from the File menu. Either will open the Write CD dialog box. (The compilation window needs to be selected before you can open the Write CD dialog.) The Write CD dialog will open with the CD-ROM (UDF/ISO) icon highlighted on the left and the Burn tab selected. The Write CD dialog will have remembered all the settings you chose on the New Compilation dialog. In the Action area, Write is checked and Finalize CD is grayed out (because this is a UDF/ISO Bridge CD.) The Write Speed will be as you chose it and the Write Method should still be Disc-At-Once. Number of Copies should be 1 (let's not get over confident just yet.) You can review the other tabs if you wish. They should still reflect the choices you made on the New Compilation dialog. If you wish, you can click on the Medium Info button to verify that the inserted disc is empty. If all seems well, click on the Write button at the upper righthand corner of the Write CD dialog. The Write CD dialog changes its configuration to show you the progress of the burn process. For this sample project, even at this slowest write speed the burn took only about 3 minutes [3:25 for the 2X CD-RW], so there isn't any pressing need for trying to "push your luck" with higher burning speeds. I think even fully populated miniDVDs (which this sample project was not) should be feasible at slow write speeds.

Well, there you have it. All thirteen steps. Hopefully that is a lucky number for you.

I guess a "Root" directory exists on the CD-R by default. All I put on the CD-R was the VIDEO_TS folder with its contents and the AUDIO_TS folder with its non-contents, but my DVD player showed an onscreen Root directory, under which the AUDIO_TS folder and the VIDEO_TS folder existed. Actually, I was not too happy with this arrangement. In order to "play" the video, you had to use the DVD player controller to navigate to the VIDEO_TS folder and click on it. I was disappointed in the demo's main menu, or seeming lack thereof. I expected something fancier and less "spartan". But the video played nicely. Good picture, good sound. Full DVD quality, and from a lowly CD-R. The demo was just a demo, with five selections: Selection 1 had "Episode Dew" with Trailer, Scenes, and Extras thumbnails. This thing was a lighthearted takeoff on Star Wars Episode 2. Dew, Two, get it? Selection 2 was a "Twentieth Century Pat" intro as a takeoff on Twentieth Century Fox. Selection 3 was a lightsword fight with some darned good lightswords. Selection 4 was a "characters" segment with stills of the Director, the Soundman, Our Hero, Main Characters, and the Howling Warrior. They didn't waste much time making that selection. Selection 5 was mysteriously titled "Machine Language - Assembler - Sound". I was playing this miniDVD on a simple stereo system, so I suspect some surround sound happenings were going on here, but I don't really know what. (I plan to install an entry level surround system later this year.) After a long pause of several minutes, a different sort of "final" screen appeared. I really was a bit worried whether the "machine language" stuff was trying to rewrite the firmware on my DVD player. Hopefully it did not. I understand that DVD player firmwares can be rewritten.

After I learn DVD Architect I plan to do a lot more miniDVD/cDVD experiments, using my own footage. And I will also try creating a disc image and then burning the image. That might help later on when the miniDVDs are more fully "populated."

-- Seeker --