Re: How can I play avi, wmv, mov videos on a standalone DVD player?

[Robert Glueck <rglk1@web.de>]

Ron Johnson wrote:

> On Wed, 2005-12-28 at 22:01 -0500, Robert Glueck wrote:
>> I'd like to play video clips in .avi, .wmv and .mov
>> format on a standalone DVD player that's hooked up to a
>> standard
>> TV set.  The particular unit is a Magnavox MDV456/17. 
>> It's able to play commercial movie DVD's, audio CD's,
>> finalized DVD+R's and DVD+RW's, and VCD's but it doesn't
>> support
>> DivX/XviD.  It also doesn't play CD's and DVD's which
>> contain avi, wmv and mov videos that I downloaded from
>> the web and burned on the Samsung CD/DVDW TS-H552U
>> burner/player in my computer.
>> 
>> Is there a way to convert these avi, wmv and mov files to
>> a format and on media that this dedicated DVD player can
>> handle?  I'm running Debian Sarge.
> 
> You need to convert them to MPEG2, then create special
> table-of- content files, and put them all in a defined
> directory structure.
> 
> mplayer and transcode (which comes in the mplayer package,
> I think)
> can do the conversion.  Don't remember, though, what
> package will do the rest.
> 
> kino (which is a non-linear video editor) *might* be able
> to do it, as onw of it's side functions.
> 

The manual for my dedicated DVD player does not state that
it supports the MPEG-2 format.
  
What is the native format of commercial movie DVD's that
play on all standalone DVD players?  Would I be set if I
could convert my avi, wmv etc. files to that format and
then burn them to CD-R or DVD+R?  Is there any software
running under Linux that does this conversion?  I have VLC,
MPlayer, Xine and Noatun installed as media players - would
any of them do it?  Or would ffmpeg do it?

I also run Windows XP on this machine.  Would it make more
sense to use a Windows utility to perform this conversion? 
If so which one would be suitable?  Would "Cucusoft
Mpeg/Mov/RMVB/DivX/AVI to DVD/VCD/SVCD/MPEG converter Lite"
do it?  Is it any good?

Robert