[James (Jim) Hillier]

Thank you Chris for taking the time (and making the effort) to offer your kind words.

So glad the post has helped you!

Cheers....Jim

[mrkevin]

hey jim, could u give me a step by step of this for windows 7 because ur windows vista options seem different from the windows 7. thanks in advance

[James (Jim) Hillier]

Hey Kevin - Happy to!!

The process is very similar and there really aren't any major differences:

1) Open 'Windows Live Movie Maker' and click on the Project tab [from the top menu]. Now under "Aspect Ratio", make sure the Widescreen (16:9) option is selected [highlighted].

2) Click on the "Click here to browse for videos and and photos" text in the center of the main panel. Browse to the location of the required video file, highlight it and then click Open.

3) Click on the Home tab [from the top menu]. Now in the ribbon menu you will see an option to Save Movie (it's the second last menu item on the far right of the ribbon).

4) Click on "Save Movie" and from the drop down menu select "Burn a DVD".

That's it, you are good to go.

Cheers....Jim

P.S. Post back if anything needs clarifying [I can post screenshots if need be]

[mrkevin]

thanks jim! i will try this out tonight after i get out of class and ill let you know my results.

[mrkevin]

ok so after that i just save the movie, which takes forever >.<, then i open it up with the dvd maker and burn it?

[James (Jim) Hillier]

Yep, that's right. It takes ages because it is encoding the video for DVD format. DVD Maker should open up automatically once the encoding process is finished.

Oh, and make sure you have a blank DVD inserted in the ROM drive first.

[mrkevin]

thanks jim for all your help, i only wasted 2 dvds in the process before your method :]

[James (Jim) Hillier]

You are most welcome Kevin.

[mrkevin]

hey jim, i was wanting to burn a tv series, how do i go about doing that since the series is longer than the memory on a blank dvd? thanks in advance

[James (Jim) Hillier]

Hey Kevin - TV series involving multiple episodes are tricky, but it can be done. I assume the TV series is split into individual episodes? It will depend on how long each episode goes for.

I will also need to know: Is this a TV series you have on DVD? What program did you use (or will you be using) to rip the DVD to the hard drive? (I assume it would be DVD Shrink)

Or have you downloaded the series from somewhere?

Cheers....Jim

[mrkevin]

hey, i dled it and i extract it with bit tornado. yeah its in individual episodes

[James (Jim) Hillier]

Kevin - Sorry for the tardy reply, I was away overnight.

Sorry, got two more questions then:

I am assuming the video files would be in either Xvid or DivX format then (may have the file extension .avi)...is that correct?

If not, then what format are they?

Do you own a DivX/Xvid compliant DVD player (one that will play those sorts of video files)?

Cheers....Jim

[mrkevin]

yeah they are in xvid and some are in divx. and yes my dvd player should play it because some of the movies i burned are xvid and divx. and thanks again marko for cleaning up my stupidity. haha

[James (Jim) Hillier]

Kevin, because your DVD player plays them okay after burning to DVD doesn't mean your player supports Xvid/DivX. The movies are most likely being re-encoded to DVD format (or .vob files) during the burning process.

Try this and let me know how you get on:

Use your burning software to burn a data disc. Just add the DivX/Xvid video files as you would any ordinary data and burn to DVD. Put as many on there as the DVD will hold, when you are finished put the DVD in the player you have connected to the TV. If the player supports those formats you should see a list of all the episodes on the TV screen, in the same way as you would when working with music (MP3) files.

If you don't see the list and you get some sort of 'Read' error, then the player does not support those formats and we will need to go back to our original plan.

The beauty of a player that supports DivX/Xvid formats is, because the video does not require re-encoding, you can fit many more movies/TV episodes on one DVD.

Let me know.