make a blank DVD play in DVD player??

noob here with MacOSX!! Would like to know how to put .AVI movies that I have onto blank DVD that will play on my DVD player to the TV???

would very much prefer to use freeware software....but suggest paid software too im sure I can get it working

 

I think iDVD is the software you are looking for; and that comes for free with every newly bought Mac. You can author a DVD using the video files you already have, and add (pretty nifty) menus, etc. for navigation on a dvd player.

I'm not sure whether iDVD accepts AVI files, though. If not, you'd have to use format conversion software. iSquint and FFMpegX are the best examples that come to mind; and both are free.

You can't expect to dump avi files, etc. on a blank dvd and have a dvd player play those; all those video files have to be *re-encoded* in dvd format so that a dvd player may recognize them at all. That's what iDVD does; but in addition, it gives you options for pretty menus, the ability to include picture galleries, etc.

 

Buy a DVD player that supports DivX/XviD (about US$40). Then you can just burn your movies straight to the disc with Toast (without re-encoding them). And that way you can fit several movies onto a single DVDR.