Swattum,

"I'm not aware of many home players that will accept a "mini-DVD" format - it's not a standard format."

A lot of people seem to believe that for some reason. It's almost like an urban myth. Of the current 806 players that were tested for miniDVD capability, 239 could play miniDVD. That is 30% 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 --

PeggyBell,

"I have tried to create a home video into DVD-format with DVDA and it works fine in Power DVD on the computer but it says invalid disc on my new DVD-player."

If you created a miniDVD on a CD (and not a short DVD on a DVD-R or DVD+R) then your player may not be one of the models that are capable of playing miniDVDs. Is your player on the list of miniDVD-capable players listed at this website?

Standalone DVD Players that play miniDVDs (cDVDs)

Since 239 players are listed and 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. If your player is on the list, you should be able to make and "Prepare" a15-minute DVD in DVDa, and burn the resulting empty AUDIO_TS folder and the VIDEO_TS folder to a CD-R or CD-RW using Nero. On Nero's New Compilation dialog, click on the "CD-ROM (UDF/ISO)" icon for maximum player compatibility, and use a current version of Nero. To be on the safe side, avoid using high bitrate video in your miniDVD, at least to start with.


"The film is about 15 minutes and 650 mb."

That should fit on a miniDVD.

-- Seeker --

"If you created a miniDVD on a CD (and not a short DVD on a DVD-R or DVD+R)..."
Now, what is the difference between these?
I created the DVD files on DVDA and saved them on the hd. Then I burned the files on a CD R-disc.
I have an Orion HCinema 100xx if anyone heard of it.

PeggyBell,

>""If you created a miniDVD on a CD (and not a short DVD on a DVD-R or DVD+R)...""

A DVD-R or a DVD+R both require a DVD writer to burn DVD discs. Some DVD writers can burn only DVD-R, some can burn only DVD+R, and some can burn either. Whereas, burning a CD is done on a CDRW drive, using a CD-R or CD-RW disc. If you don't have a DVD burner, you can't burn DVDs.

"I created the DVD files on DVDA and saved them on the hd. Then I burned the files on a CD R-disc."

You may or may not have created a MiniDVD when you did that, depending on how you "burned the files" on a CD-R disc. A MiniDVD requires the file structure on the CD-R to be the same as the file structure on a DVD. That means the TS_AUDIO folder and the TS_VIDEO folder that were created by DVD Architect should appear on the Root directory of the CD. But there are other requirements as well.

"I have an Orion HCinema 100xx if anyone heard of it. "

It doesn't appear that the DVDRHelp site has that model listed. Several Orion players do appear there, but none of them can play MiniDVDs. The listed players are the Orion DV-KT, Orion DVC 5000, Orion DVCR 2002, Orion DVD 2000, Orion DVD 337S, and the Orion DVD 352. So, at this point, things appear very uncertain for you. We have no evidence to support that you actually created a MiniDVD and we also have no evidence to support that your standalone DVD player can play a MiniDVD.

Until we get evidence that your player can play the MiniDVD format, if you want to put video on a CD that will play in your "Orion HCinema 100xx", you are probably going to have to use the VCD video format. Your player might be able to play the SVCD format. DVD Architect can't author either VCD or SVCD. But until we know more about your DVD player, we can't even be sure that it can play anything from a CD. Does it play Audio CDs? Do you have a website URL for Orion? How old is your player? What does your player's manual say about what your player can play?

-- Seeker --

Thank you Seeker for your good reply. My Orion DVD-player is new. It says in the manual that it plays DVD, CD, CD-R and CD-RW. It also plays MP3 on any of the discs mentioned. It does not play VCD though which I tried and I can't find anything about it in the manual. I suppose it is a non-common DVD-player. You see, I bought it because it has cot a reciever and 6 speakers with it so I thought it was a bargin (hhmm). I did burn the cd with the two folders TS_AUDIO and TS_VIDEO which is the outcome of the DVDA. Do you have a good tip of which DVD-burner to buy since this seems to be the option for me?

PeggyBell,

"Do you have a good tip of which DVD-burner to buy since this seems to be the option for me? "

Well, I don't have a DVD burner yet either, which is probably a good thing, because people tend to recommend the burner that they picked. I do suggest that you explore at the following website. They have over 90 DVD burners listed, ten per page, so you will have 10 pages to explore. You can click on a burner model name to open a user forum devoted exclusively to that DVD Writer. You can learn a lot about a burner by reading comments posted by people who purchased and used the burner. You can sort the list several ways and you can also search the DVD Writer List with various search criteria.

DVD Writer List

"I did burn the cd with the two folders TS_AUDIO and TS_VIDEO which is the outcome of the DVDA."

That could have produced a valid MiniDVD or not, depending on the details of how you did the burn and possibly on the character of the video that was put on the disc. Since the individual pits of a CD are much larger and consequently spaced farther apart than the pits on a DVD, a CD can actually be harder for your DVD player to play than a regular DVD because it has to spin the CD disc faster for a given bitrate. Consequently when you compress video that you intend to put on a MiniDVD it is a good idea to choose a lower bitrate, at least to start with. DVD players differ considerably in the bitrates they can handle for non DVD-Video discs.

Before we give up on your Orion DVD player for MiniDVDs, you probably should experiment with creating a few experimental MiniDVDs with the goal of achieving maximum compatibility properties. Even the choice of CD-R blank can be important. It is important that the burning speed you choose be comfortably less than the maximum speed rating of the CD blank. It can also make a difference whether the blank is a CD-R or a CD-RW. The type of disc data structure you choose to burn is also important. The software you use to do the burning can be important.

I won't go into a lot of tedious detail just yet, but to give you some idea of the precautions you might want to take I will briefly describe the process I use for making a MiniDVD using Nero Burning Rom. Nothing can already be on the CD blank, or the miniDVD session will fail, so the blank needs to be "blank." When I used a cheap TDK 8x blank, I burned at the slowest available writing speed in Nero, namely 4x. Nero's default came up as 16x, so you can't always rely on defaults. I guess Nero can't "sense" the speed of the blank you have inserted. There isn't any pressing need for trying to "push your luck" with higher burning speeds. In order to have a "clean" working environment, I did a system restart and then closed down my anti-virus program.

As you stated, you will simply put the VIDEO_TS folder and the AUDIO_TS folder on the CD-R to make the miniDVD. (I think we both may have erroneously referred to them as TS_VIDEO and TS_AUDIO.) Some, but not all, DVD players require that those folder names be in all-caps, so if your authoring software did create 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.

When I started Nero, the "Wizard" appeared, but I closed it, and just used Nero's standard interface. (I kind of doubt that you can make a good MiniDVD with the current Wizard. Nero should make the Wizard more versatile.) On the New Compilation dialog I clicked the "CD-ROM (UDF/ISO)" icon, to be compatible with both UDF and ISO. That gives increased player compatibility.

Under the Multisession tab, click "No Multisession". I accepted Nero's defaults on the ISO tab, the UDF tab, the Label tab, the Dates tab, and the Misc tab. As discussed above, on the Burn tab I changed the Write Speed to the slowest available choice, 4x, and I also changed the default Track-At-Once to Disc-At-Once. It is important to use the latest version of Nero because earlier versions have caused problems. For one thing, some earlier versions have had inappropriate defaults. Ahead Software updates Nero about every month. Did you happen to use Nero to burn the CD that you made?

If you choose to make some more MiniDVDs and you are using Nero, I can supply more detailed step-by-step instructions.

-- Seeker --