Getting Video from Hard Drive to CD

September 17, 2005 12:38 PM

I have a hard drive full of video and no DVD burner. How do I put the video onto CD? These are in bin/cue and avi format and hover around the magic 700MB mark (some a little higher some a little lower).

I know this is just the sort of thing one should be able to google for, but all I can find are "forum" type postings from people with relatively specific questions and answers directed at people are already geeks at this sort of stuff. I'm a geek with other sorts of stuff, not this.

So I have some television shows that I would like to save. I do not have the room to keep them stored on my HD, and it's my understanding that I can't view them until they're on CD anyway. I also have a movie or two. The computer is a laptop with a 40G HD and WindowsXP. I have a CD burner, but no DVD burner. I don't have much money to blow right now and I don't see this being a long-term need, so even though I know they're getting cheap, I do not want to buy a DVD burner.

My attempts at googling this have revealed that I can download programs that will take movies bin/cue files and put them on a CD. Nothing I've seen implies that there's any problem at all fitting a movie on a CD.

Before I run off and try to do this, it seems to me that this is impossible..There really aren't movies below say 600MB and anything that approaches 700 shouldn't fit on a CD, right? Is there something that this software will do that will make the files smaller? Am I missing something?

Assuming I can put them onto CD, how exactly do I do this for the bin/cue files? Will they still be bin/cue files on the CD or are they going to turn into something else? Will I need special software to view them? I assume for the avi files I can just stick them onto the CD the same way I would transfer any other file to a CD. Is there something I can do to slightly shrink those that are over 700MB?

Also, will these CDs play on most DVD players (doesn't matter really, but I'm curious). Also, will the video quality suck on a normal-sized TV usually?

How do I do this? What software do you reccomend? How hard will this be for a non-computer/video geek?

If this question seems very confused, it's because I'm very confused.

posted by duck to computers & internet (15 comments total)

it's my understanding that I can't view them until they're on CD anyway.

What do you mean by this? If they are in AVI format you should be able to watch them right away. If you want you can burn them directly onto Data CDs rather then making a true VCD. The data CD won't play in a DVD player, but you should be able to watch the movie on any PC/Mac.

The ones in Bin/Cue format are ready to be burnt on CD IIRC Nero Burning ROM will burn from bin/cue files. Here's a page I found about burning bin/cue files. (also with nero burning rom, hmm).

Anyway, gl.
posted by delmoi at 12:55 PM on September 17, 2005

Before I run off and try to do this, it seems to me that this is impossible..There really aren't movies below say 600MB and anything that approaches 700 shouldn't fit on a CD, right? Is there something that this software will do that will make the files smaller? Am I missing something?

80-minute CDs will hold 700 megs
posted by delmoi at 12:56 PM on September 17, 2005

Ok, there are a couple of formats called VCD and SVCD that allow you to put MPEG files on a CD. You should get... 45 minutes or an hour of reasonable-quality video (better than VCR, worse than DVD, IMO) on a single CD.

What you have are AVIs, which are more highly compressed. Converting (transcoding) an AVI to an MPEG results in a larger file, so your 700Mb AVI won't fit on a CD once it's been transcoded.

My recommendation: get a DVD player that can play AVIs directly. There was a thread a few days ago by a guy who wanted to get video into a format his parents could watch on TV - that should have specific makes and models. Then just burn your AVIs to CD.

Also, when you say "it's my understanding that I can't view them until they're on CD anyway"... that shouldn't be the case - more likely you're missing codecs. Try downloading a media player called VLC which has a whole bunch of common codecs built in, and see if that plays your unplayable files.

If you still want to transcode and burn as an S/VCD, there are tutorials at http://www.videohelp.com/. But it's a lot of messing about, and those AVI players are pretty cheap.
posted by Leon at 1:02 PM on September 17, 2005

Thanks, I should clarify first that for the same reasons I don't want to invest in a DVD burner, I'd like to use freeware software. I can (and have) viewed the avi files, but no the cue/bin.

I know there are 700MB CDs, but several files (and since files larger than 700MB are common and the stuff I've read makes no mention of dividing up files or anything of the sort even though they're expliciting talking about CDs not DVDs, it occurred to me that the files might get smaller in whatever process the software puts it through). Also, I've found that in practice 700 MB CDs hold less than 700MB of files, which is why I said even those files just approaching 700 wouldn't fit. I presume some of the space is taken up with system files or tables of contents or I don't know what.
posted by duck at 1:05 PM on September 17, 2005

duck, what CD burning software are you using? You should look for options related to overburning in the cases where you're having trouble fitting 700MBs of data onto 700MB discs. Most CDs actually hold more than they say they can, but the burning software might not always cooperate unles you explicitly ask it to.
posted by odinsdream at 1:39 PM on September 17, 2005

Also, you're not actually just dragging the BIN/CUE files on to the CD to create a data cd, are you? You have to explicitly open the BIN file with the burning program and burn it as a BIN file.
posted by odinsdream at 1:40 PM on September 17, 2005

If they're bin/cue, they're definitely made to be burned directly to a CD. The .cue file format applies specifically to the CD format. If they appear to be larger than 736,966,656 bytes, that's because .bin files are a direct bit-for-bit copy of the contents of the CD, including things like volume attributes, etc. If your CD burning program doesn't support bin/cue files, Burnatonce is free and supports it.
posted by zsazsa at 2:04 PM on September 17, 2005

Awesome...I just burned one of each. A 790MB file one 700MB disc. Who knew? And it was easier than making microwave pizza.

Two more questions, though:

First, the disc created with bin/cue made a bunch of folders with files in each, none of which are the obvious pick-this-one-to-play-the-movie. How do I know which one to click to play the movie?

Second, are the bin/cue discs going to be watchable/worth watching on a normal TV and DVD player? I don't have a normal DVD player, so it's not much of an issue, but I'm just curious to know in case I ever wanted to lend them to somebody or something.
posted by duck at 3:32 PM on September 17, 2005

If they're bin/cue, you can see what they contain with a program like Isobuster. As others have said 80 min CDs will hold more (but not much more) than 700 MB. If your file is larger, split it. I use Videosplitter. It costs money but is the best I have found. There are free video splitters out there as well. If it's for home use watching a film in two parts is no big deal. You do need a DVD player that plays VCDs. However, you can get the Norcent DP315 from Amazon for $29.99 if you are in the US, as well as at Walmart and similar stores. There are other VCD-playing cheap brands available both on-line and in bricks-and-mortar stores both in North America and Western Europe and probably elsewhere.
You really need Nero though, again, there are loads of cheap/free programs out there which can do some of the stuff. Nero will burn image files (bin/cue) of 700 MB onto a CD in a few minutes (depending on the speed of your burner).

And why don't you want a DVD burner? You can get pretty good ones both on-line and at places like Walmart/Costco for under $50 in the US and, presumably, not much more elsewhere.

As for your final questions, quality is fine (though not great), subject, of course, to the original being OK. And, while it seems a bit geeky, you'll soon find it as easy as making a cheese sandwich. (You can make a cheese sandwich, can't you?)
posted by TheRaven at 3:34 PM on September 17, 2005 [1 favorite]

If the folders have names like "VIDEO_TS", then you may have burned a VCD format disc. This is not the same as a DVD - some players will play them, some won't. Try opening the disc up in Windows Media Player and see what happens.
posted by blag at 4:53 PM on September 17, 2005

I haven't read the whole thread so someone may have mentioned this, but you can play bin files in daemon tools.
posted by meta87 at 5:08 PM on September 17, 2005

First, the disc created with bin/cue made a bunch of folders with files in each, none of which are the obvious pick-this-one-to-play-the-movie. How do I know which one to click to play the movie?

Sounds like a standard VCD/SVCD format. Basically, you should be able to pop it into a DVD player that plays VCDs and it'll play it. If you're playing it on your computer I recommend using VLC which is freeware (Use the Open Disc option).

The actual media data is contained in a file within the MPEG directory with an normally unassociated extension (so you can't just "click" it to watch). Windows Media Player can open this if you point it there, but VLC is much better, IMHO.

Second, are the bin/cue discs going to be watchable/worth watching on a normal TV and DVD player? I don't have a normal DVD player, so it's not much of an issue, but I'm just curious to know in case I ever wanted to lend them to somebody or something.

If they play VCDs/SVCDs, which *most* dvd players do. however, just because a DVD player claims to be able to play VCDs does not always mean that the one you've written will be watchable.
posted by fishfucker at 5:13 PM on September 17, 2005

you can also get dvd players now that can play .avi files and .mpg files even if you just put them all in the base directory as data.
I just got one for 80 dollars from superstore.
posted by Iax at 1:58 AM on September 18, 2005

You can also get 90min 800MB discs. I still have one or two that are branded "DigiMedia". I bought them to see if I could use my Prexwriter Premium's 1.4x "overburn" trick (packs the data tighter on the CD) to burn 1.26Gig to a CD, but unfortunately the techniques are incompatible. However, almost everything will read an 800MB disc these days, even if they are a bit of a hack.
posted by krisjohn at 3:59 PM on September 18, 2005

Just to expand on what others have said, you don't need to burn BIN/CUE files to extract the videos (which you'll then watch on your PC).

The easiest thing to do is install Deamon Tools and "mount" the CD - once you do this it will show up as a virtual CD-ROM drive under My Computer.
posted by exhilaration at 10:55 AM on September 19, 2005