Avi Dvd

I have an AVI (microsoft avi) file that I want to burn to a DVD so that I can watch it on TV rather than a little monitor.
I've been searching the internet for hours now looking for instructions (or even just tips) but I'm not having much luck.

Any help would be much appreciated.

I have an AVI (microsoft avi) file that I want to burn to a DVD so that I can watch it on TV rather than a little monitor. I've been searching the internet for hours now looking for instructions (or even just tips) but I'm not having much luck.[/b]

Searching for hours? Once you know how to do this, it doesn't take long. But I guess thats the same with many things in life.

To narrow down your search, go DIRECT to Packman:
http://packman.links2linux.de/

Type "DVD" in the "quick search box" in the upper left, and you will get hits like:
- DVDstyler
- dvdwizard
- gdvdcreator
- kdvdauthor
- mandvd
- qdvdauthor
Plus if you surf that site some more, you will see tovid and kmediafactory.

Probably for newbies, mandvd, tovid, and kmediafactory are the easiest to use.

Needless to say, there are many other apps that do this.

I tend to use tovid to convert the avi to a DVD compatible mpeg. Then I manually create with a text editor an xml file (listing my mpeg files that I want to use in the video DVD). The program "dvdauthor" uses that XML file to create the VIDEO_TS directory structure. I then run dvdauthor to create the VIDEO_TS (with vobs) structure, and then drag and drop into k3b the VIDEO_TS (with the video DVD creation option selected in k3b), and I burn the DVD.

Of course not everyone is up to manually creating their own XML file with a text editor, but tovid, mandvd, kmediafactory, and many other apps can automate this.

What is useful to know is all these programs take the avi file, convert it to an mpeg file, create an XML text file, run dvdauthor (using the XML file as the instructions) to create a VIDEO_TS directory. Most of this is transparent to the user. Some programs will also burn the VIDEO_TS to a DVD, ... others require one do the burn themself with k3b.

Thanks a lot Oldcpu. I try some of those apps now.

Wow like you said, "Once you know how to do this, it doesn't take long."