What do I dow with .rar files I've downloaded?

[Jim56]

Question 1
I'm new to ftp but I've been doing a lot of reading before posting. Can anyone point me in a simple direction of how I convert these .rar files that I've downloaded and make a fully compliant DVDR? I know you first have to extract them but which file would I start with and would I extract them all one by one or do they all unpack just by clicking one of them, if so which one.
I'd be grateful if anyone could point me in the right direction to some kind of tutorial.

Question 2
I always thought that a fully compliant DVDR took up over 3 gig but all the stuff I've been buying lately has been a lot smaller than this, are these smaller burns fully DVD compliant? If not how would I make them fully compliant? Again I'm not looking for someone to go into great detail to explain this but I would be grateful if someone could point me in the direction of some reading material that's not to technical.

Please have some patience, as I said I'm new to this but I really do want to learn.

Thanx in advance guys

jim

[Jesterrace]

Did you look in the tutorial forum listed above?

[Jim56]

I did m8 but I suppose I may have missed it as I've been reading all night and my eyes are starting to close. I always spend hours reading before I post but maybe I should do it during the day....

Apologies to all if it was there for me to find, I'll try a few hours kip and try again.



Thanx for the prompt reply m8.





jim

[Jesterrace]

I wasn't trying to give you a lecture on "Search before posting" I was just saying that what you are looking for might be posted in detail up there. Anyways the stuff you are picking up on DVD-R are undoubtedly I-net downloads and are probably SVCD that have been converted over to be a DVD Compliant format. Most original DVDs are well over 4GB.

[Jim56]

There was no offence taken Jesterrace. I did read all the tutorials and the one posted originally by Indiana Jones was most helpful even though I’ve not tried it yet. On that question I was really wondering why they were over 4gig a few months back but now they can be fully DVD compliant and only come out at 1.2gig.


My main problem is the .rar files, still not sure if I unpack them all or if by unpacking one it will automatically unpack the others. I can’t find the answer to that in any of the tutorials so I’m going to have a few hours’ kip and then just mess about myself. No doubt it will be easy when I get the hang of it (and I will).


Thanks for your input mate; I’m picking up little bits as I go along.


Take care,

jim

[Jesterrace]

Do you have Winrar? If so then just unpack the 01 file and it should unpack the whole thing for you.

[celtic_druid]

Yeah just right click on either whatever.rar or whatever.part01.rar and select extract. You will also find releases where the first file is .001.

[ishaq45]

What did you download, PS2 games are not all 4 gigs, infact many are under 3gig.

Anyway, double click the first file in the archive, if all files are right then you can extract the ISO image or if its a film you might get a audio_ts and a video_ts file.
Download dvddecrypter, and double click on the ISO image after you extrated it (may take 10 mins for a 4.7 gig image) and you should be able to burn it straight off. Or load the image file on a virtual drive to check it

[Jim56]

Thanks for the advice guys; I’m busy downloading now so I’ll give it a try. I was just a bit unsure what I had to do to unpack them all but with the help I’ve had I should manage.



Many thanks,



jim

[handyguy]

Dvds don't have to be 4 gigs, they can be any size at all & work.

[Jim56]

Sorted with the .rar files, thanks to everyone for their help.

Don’t really know how to explain what I mean in question 2 but I’ll try again.

It’s VCD or SVCD releases of films that have been converted to DVDR that I’m talking about.
Some traders used to say that their disks were fully encoded to give better compatibility with most DVD Players. They’d say that this added about 1gig to the disk and took a long time to do. Other traders were selling the same release and the burn was a lot smaller.

All I really want to know is how you would encode to give better compatibility, or is this not a problem now? The sellers who used to make a point of mentioning this in their posts no longer do so.


jim

[Jesterrace]

Most newer DVD Players support regular MPEG playback (ie VCD), SVCD is where it can get tricky. It isn't compatible with as many players. So some convert the VCD and SVCD files to DVD-Compliant MPEG2. By doing this conversion it requires more space. I have had to go through something similar when converting my VHS tapes to DVD. It is quite time consuming. I never bothered with the whole process for this reason. When you combine the fact that it takes you at least 2-3 hours to D/L a decent quality film and then another 2-3 hours to convert it over to DVD, it just doesn't make it worth it when you can backup an original disc in under an hour with DVD Shrink or DVD Decrypter and 99% of the time the quality is better with Shink or Decrypter anyways.

[Jim56]

So basically the smaller burn is MPEG and the larger burn is MPEG2 and there are no real compatibility problems anymore with modern players.
I've never ever had a compatibility problem but it was just one of those things that that I've wondered about for ages. Many thanks for your help.

jim

[Jesterrace]

Yup, that's about the size of it. SVCD is actually MPEG2 but it isn't DVD-Complaint (weird ,I know).