Copying A Film On A Ipad, Mobile Etc

[kia cat]

A group of us did a charity flashmob at work. Several people filmed on mobiles etc. They've downloaded it onto PC's and burnt it onto DVD discs.

We can play them back OK on a computer, but not on a conventional DVD player. Any solutions, please. We want to copy the final footage and resell among friends and family for charity. Some have been posted on facebook and youtube. Can you download films off there and should we buy blank DVD-R or DVD+R or is there a DVD+/-R. Thanks

[Buenchico]

>>>They've downloaded it onto PC's and burnt it onto DVD discs

Are you sure that they've selected the option to burn a video disc, rather than a data disc? If you burn several video files to a data disc you'll end up with a disc holding lots of separate files [probably in mp4 format], plus some spare space, in the same way that copying them onto a USB stick (for example) would do. Such a disc can only be used in a computer. If a disc is to be suitable for playing in a standard DVD player it needs to contain just one file [in VCD format - but see below] that fills the whole disc.

Using decent disc burning software, such as Ashampoo Burning Studio Free, should enable you to create a VCD disc
https://www.ashampoo.com/en/usd/pde/7110/burning-software/Ashampoo-Burning-Studio-FREE

I've stated above that you should be aiming for a single VCD file which will, indeed, achieve your basic aim of creating a player-compatible DVD. However the user will only be able to play the whole video, rather than selecting particular parts of it (although, of course, he/she could use the 'fast forward' control on his/her DVD player to find something). If you want to create the type of disc that you buy with several episodes of your favourite TV show on it [with the ability to select individual episodes] you need to create a DVD-Video disc, which requires 'DVD authoring' software, such as this freebie:
http://www.dvdstyler.org/en/

[Buenchico]

>>>Can you download films off there

Officially, no. Unofficially, yes. One way to do it is to use Firefox as your browser
http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/all/
together with this extension:
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/easy-youtube-video-download/

>>>should we buy blank DVD-R or DVD+R

The best chance of ending up with a disc which can be used in any DVD player is to use DVD-R format discs. I've always found Tesco's own-brand discs to be extremely reliable.

[kia cat]

Thanks Buenchico, great stuff as ever ;)