Select Formats

Video DVDs

This is the standard format for DVD player. If you buy a movie DVD it will have the same format. It is by far the most compatible format and it allows allows you to add a very cool menu to your DVD. On the down side this format does not compress the movies as much as the DivX format does. So you will not be able to fit as much video on one DVD as with DivX.

DivX

This format is based on MPEG-4 technology and offers very good compression, so you can fit pretty long movies on a single CD. To play this kind of CD you need a DVD-Player that supports the "DivX" or "Xvid" format.

SVCD

Super Video CDs contain video data in a special MPEG-2 format. It is more limited that the MPEG-4 format for DivX DVD players above, so the program can not do as much of its "magic" tweaking of encoding parameters. As a result the amount of video data that can fit on one CD is usually much less than with the MPEG-4 format.

Many DVD players can play Super Video CDs, but not quite as many as can play Video CDs. They can also be played on PCs with DVD player software.

VCD

This is a pretty old format that is based on a subset of the MPEG-1 technology. It is even more limited than the Super Video CD format and does not allow the program to change any encoding parameters. In other words, there is only one quality setting that can be used, so the amount of video that fits on one CD is fixed.

Video CDs are supported by the majority of DVD players and they can also be played on PCs with DVD player software.