I'm attempting to find the best way to burn a DVD with a WMV file that will autorun when put into various computers and DVD players. The only data that needs to be on the disc is a WMV file, but in the autorun.inf file I want to try and make the most compatible setup, ie it will play regardless of what media player software the person has installed on the computer, what their default program for playing WMV files is, etc. Should I actually include a media player on the disc that I can link to or whats the best way to do this?

7/16/2008 12:15:14 PM

you shouldn't have to...the computer should handle the file associations by default, so all you need to do is have it launch the video upon insertion

7/16/2008 12:27:41 PM

I understand your logic about letting Windows handle file associations, but I would also like this to play in standalone DVD players. Is it possible to burn the video as a DVD with the VIDEO_TS and AUDIO_TS directories, so that it will play in standalone DVD players, but to also have the video in the root of the disc, a copy of mplayer2.exe or another media player on the root, and then an autorun.inf file that specifies with command line tags to use mplayer2.exe to open the video in full screen mode?

The overall goal is to make this marketing disc compatible with the most possible systems/players and dumb down the interface for people who might be running an older version of Windows and not be too computer savvy.

I'm not going to have to put this together for another week or two but I want to go ahead and get my ducks in a row.

7/16/2008 4:40:49 PM

Yes it's possible.

If you are plopping it on a dvd, you should actually use mpg for the PC format, now WMV. That allows it to be completely platform and version independent.

It'll also be a lot easier to transcode from MPEG2 for the dvd video, to MPEG1 for the PC video.

This is pretty easy and works just about exactly as you've theorized ^ there. You just need an authoring application to master the DVD and add the mixed mode content. Nero Ultimate can do it, but you'll want something like TMPGEnc for processing the video.

7/16/2008 5:09:16 PM