I have made a couple of cd's to use on my dvd player - one using cd-r the other a dvd disc - neither of them will play - the message comes up - no play - any ideas??

did you burn the

VCD format or convert them to a DVD format

not sure what format I used - just put the disc in and did the drag and drop - then copies to disc. I really dont understand this formatting thing - will need any explanations to be really simple!!!!like me!!!!

'Windows movie maker' files (wmv file) wont play on a stand alone DVD player. You can read my recent posts ... Here (http://www.sheffieldforum.co.uk/showthread.php?t=290284), but i'm thinking that it may be to complicated for you.

http://www.videohelp.com/

'Windows movie maker' files (wmv file) wont play on a stand alone DVD player.

Don't know about the wmv bit, as I didn't think that was what it created when burning a disk, but the VCD's (Video CD) that Movie Maker generates can play on SOME standalone DVD players - they just need to support the Microsoft specific disk format, that's all.
Microsoft use the HMAT format.

For example, my mate has a cheap Tevion player (from Aldi) that plays pretty much anything, while my expensive (relative term) Samsung and Toshibas just give up on MM generated disks.

I understand that MM does not allow use of DVD disks, just CD-R/CD-RW, but could be wrong there.

I understand that MM does not allow use of DVD disks, just CD-R/CD-RW, but could be wrong there.

You're right, MM will only create .avi files which can be burned to CD for playback on a PC. To create a disk which can be played on all conventional DVD players you will need an additional DVD authoring application.

AVI2DVD should still be free then best burn with nero
will need dvd player as stated maybe codecs