Getting Video from Hard Drive to CD

If they're bin/cue, you can see what they contain with a program like http://www.boilsoft.com/videosplitter/. 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 http://www.boilsoft.com/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 http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0000U5GMM/104-2549009-9761560?v=glance&n=172282&n=541966&s=electronics&v=glance 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?)

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 http://www.afterdawn.com/guides/archive/bin_cue_with_nero.cfm files. (also with nero burning rom, hmm). Anyway, gl.

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

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.

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.

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.

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, http://www.burnatonce.com/index.htm?news is free and supports it.

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.

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.