Vlc Player Media On A Cd?

[sammy_jo]

Hiya,

I have some videos that need VLC player to play them on my laptop. A friend has asked me to burn the videos onto CD's he's given me. If I transfer them straight onto the CD, will they be able to play?

If not (im presuming they wont), please could someone share their knowledge on how I may go about converting/burning/recording them as to make them viewable on a CD?

Many thanks, Sammy

[Buenchico]

Your videos are simply in a format (such as MP4, MOV, FLV or whatever) that, together with the codecs used to create them, (presumably) won't play in Windows Media Player, which is why you need VLC (although GOM would almost certainly work as well).

If you simply burn the videos to CD then, unless your friend also has VLC (or GOM), he won't be able to view them.

You could try converting the files to a format which is compatible with Windows Media Player (which your friend will almost certainly have on his computer ) but doing so successfully can be extremely difficult. It would make far more sense to download the installation file for VLC (or GOM) and to burn that to disk alongside the video files. Then you can simply invite your friend to install VLC/GOM onto his computer before trying to view your video files.

[Buenchico]

Alternatively you could burn the portable version of VLC (which doesn't require installation onto a computer) alongside the video files and invite your friend to use that:
http://download.cnet.com/VLC-Media-Player-Portable/3000-13632_4-10526524.html

[sammy_jo]

thank you for such a quick reply! I think my friend may be planning on trying to watch them on a DVD player on a telly. Does this make any difference in how you would advise me?

Ah I see! The portable VLC player is seeming like that best option to me so far, what do you think?

[murraymints]

What's vlc ?

[Buenchico]

If your friend has provided you with CDs (rather than with DVD-R disks, or similar) they won't play on a DVD player anyway. If he's provided you with DVDs then there could still be lots of compatibility problems. Stick with playing them on a computer and using VLc Portable. (Note that your friend shouldn't double-click on a video file to view it; that would call on his default video player, which is likely to be Window Media Player. Instead he should double-click on VLC Portable and then open the required file from its menu).

For Murraymints:
Windows Media Player is rubbish. VLC is a free media player that is far, far better at playing video files:
http://www.videolan.org/vlc/index.html
It's widely recommended by computing magazines and on BBC technology programmes. However I prefer GOM, which I think is even better:
http://player.gomlab.com/eng/download/
Winamp is also highly recommended by many people but I'd use it mainly for audio files, rather than for video:
http://www.winamp.com/

[murraymints]

Thanks Chris x