Mac to PC Video Problem

[Andrew Yoole]

In the corporate PC world there’s no guarantee a machine will contain a DVD drive OR the software to play a DVD. DVD playback software is not a standard component of Windows XP. VCD offers you no benefit over DVD if there’s no software installed to play it back.

Your best bet might be to build a little CD-ROM that auto-plays a video file using the PCs default media player (probably Windows Media Player), or plays it in a web browser.

Can you determine the age of the lowest-common-denominator machines that will be used? You can put an MPEG-1 file on a CD and it’ll play on virtually anything (but will look similar to VCD quality). A better alternative would be an MPEG-4 file or a wmv, but very old machines may not cope with these formats.

A tidier way to do it might be to have a one-page HTML document on the CD which automatically opens the web browser when inserted and plays an embedded Flash video. But again, very old machines not cope – this method requires the machines to have Flash player installed.

Here’s a how-to site that explains how to make a CD autorun:

https://www.ezau.com/latest/articles/autorun.shtml

[Brendan Coots]

It sounds like you need a CDROM, not a DVD. If that’s the case, you can output your video to a WMV file using Windows Media 8 as the codec, which should work on both older and newer PCs. If the video must play on both Macs and PCs, MPEG-4 is universal to Windows Media Player and Quicktime.

The autorun.ini method for automatically opening your video on disc insertion is fairly straight forward. You create a text document (in notepad, NOT MS Word) with the text below, save it as a .txt document, then rename it autorun.ini and include it at the root level of the CD along with your video file. The text in the file is usually something like this:

[Autorun]
open=myvideo.wmv

It should open your video with whatever program the user has set as their default app for WMVs/MPG files, but ONLY if the user hasn’t changed the default behavior of their CD drive (it can be changed to never auto open on insertion). You should test this thoroughly, as Vista may have changed how it responds to autorun files – I haven’t done them since XP. In addition, Macs don’t read autorun documents so playback of this disc on a Mac will require the user to manually open the disc and click the video file. Most mac users are accustomed to this so it shouldn’t be a problem, but you should warn your client.

It should also be mentioned that you will need to experiment with the quality settings of your video to get smooth playback without stuttering. Even with today’s faster CD drives they still tend to choke on high quality video so test, test, test before releasing it to your client for use.

Brendan Coots
Splitvision Digital
http://www.splitvisiondigital.com

[Dan Cooper]

That’s great, thanks for all of the advice.

The autorun.ini method for automatically opening your video on disc insertion is fairly straight forward. You create a text document (in notepad, NOT MS Word) with the text below, save it as a .txt document, then rename it autorun.ini and include it at the root level of the CD along with your video file.

I work off a Mac, so can either burn from the finder or using Toast. Is this method for PC only or can i do this on Mac aswell?

Dan

[Brendan Coots]

I would definitely use Toast and make sure it is creating a mac AND pc compatible disc.

Either way, you’re going to need access to a PC to test it properly.

Brendan Coots
Splitvision Digital
http://www.splitvisiondigital.com