IT Help, Please

[a_person]

thats funny a_person, I'm sure your's will be fine. Saying that I have a new laptop so you would think it should work. Maybe theres an update i need...

I b*ght a really expensive laptop from Dell. It has been nothing but a problem for me. Wouldn't say it's so much the laptop but the cheap products that they used to create it. Within six months of b*ying, my web cam crashed, my internet works intermittently because there wireless card is so bad, my webcam works intermittently, i often get the blue screen of death, my AC adapter doesn't get recognised.... I could go on! To top that up, they won't extend my warranty which is annoying me because if they hadn't given me a shoddy laptop in the first instance I wouldn't have wanted to extend it!

[alpa]

Evening all,
I have found the solution to every IT problem ever. Yes, that's right, ever!!
I can say from experience it is 100% accurate:
http://xkcd.com/627/

Genius... should say give up and watch a movie

[alpa]

There is no update, its the red book standard that's giving you the problems.

I don't know what this means

[steve9872]

Its the original cd standard which all cd's and players had to conform to so that any cd could play in any player. Other standards were added over the years but any cdrom burned on a pc that is required to play as an ordinary music cd must follow that standard. The only changes to the red book of any note are required to allow cdr's and cdrw's to play in your machines. The data standard hasn't changed which is why any disc you create which is outside the standard will not play.

[destresserai]

You all lost me at "IT HELP"!

[a_person]

Does anyone know what's the maximum file or maximum minutes I can burn onto a DVD to make it DVD playable? I want to burn as many as possible but so it plays on Beates DVD player. Each file is about 350MB and has 40 minutes on it. Normal DVDs hold about four episodes of a TV show but I can only seem to do two. Does anyone know of any compression ways and any good freeware/open source software for burning?

[steve9872]

I have managed to get Kill Bill 1 and 2 on the same disc with the help of a program called dvdshrink. Its a very useful piece of freeware.
http://www.videohelp.com/tools/DVD_Shrink
Use it in reauthor mode and it will create a new compilation from as many sources as you can throw at it. It will even tell you how much each file is being compressed by.
Tip: Always let it analyse. The results are much superior if you do - the extra time really is worth it.

[a_person]

Thanks Steve!

I can use this to put AVI files straight on to it right? It just doesn't have to be a normal DVD that I'm backing up?

[steve9872]

I wish you mentioned avi files before as dvdshrink cannot handle them until you convert them back to dvd format. You will have to do that if you want the files playable on any dvd player. You should find a suitable, free, tool on the same site I mentioned above.

edit: I suggest http://www.videohelp.com/tools/Avi2Dvd but I haven't tried it myself.

[AYBG]

Why not just upload the files to megaupload/rapidshare/etc?