fz20 movie mode - help

[Hykaz]

has anyone with a fz20 used the movie mode and managed to burn it to CD and play it back thru their DVD on the TV. i tried but it didn't work so not sure if i'm doing something wrong. i played a friend's CD ok and his were taken with a Sony which shoots in MPEG. the Panasonic shoots in quicktime which i believe is a JPEG format (?) so i thought it would work. I'm useless at this stuff - any ideas anyone ? by the way i'm really disappointed with the resolution on the FZ20 movie mode (320 x 240) in comparison with my friend's Sony W1 which is 640 x 480.

[PixChick]

has anyone with a fz20 used the movie mode and managed to burn it to CD and play it back thru their DVD on the TV. i tried but it didn't work so not sure if i'm doing something wrong. i played a friend's CD ok and his were taken with a Sony which shoots in MPEG. the Panasonic shoots in quicktime which i believe is a JPEG format (?) so i thought it would work. I'm useless at this stuff - any ideas anyone ? by the way i'm really disappointed with the resolution on the FZ20 movie mode (320 x 240) in comparison with my friend's Sony W1 which is 640 x 480.


Did you use a CD-R, or a CD-RW? If you used a CD-RW, then that is most likely the problem. You should really try to burn video to a DVD though. The software I use won't even allow me to burn video to a CD. I highly doubt that the problem you are having has anything to do with the fact that your video was shot with the FZ-20. I made a video and burned it to CD, then mailed it to some relatives who watched it on their TV with no problems. Maybe the software you are using to burn the CD is causing a problem?? I don't really know. Sometimes DVD players will only play CD/s or DVD's with certain "destination codes." That could also be a problem for you. You could have had a bad CD. Those are just a few ideas off the top of my head.

BTW, if you were interested in a higher quality movie mode, why didn't you get a different cam? There are other good cams on the market with 640x480 video. It is all listed in the specs for any cam you may want to purchase, and also discussed in the reviews here at DCResource. The Olympus C-770 and the Fuji S5100 are two long zooms (without image stabilization) that have high quality video.

[Hykaz]

Thanks so much for your advice, will try what you suggest. i did burn it to CD-RW so that could be the problem. i have set the DVD to all regions so that shouldn't be the prob. The fact that you have had success encourages me - no doubt it is me doing something wrong rather than the camera or the software. I chose the fz20 for it's resolution, zoom, stabilization and low light focus assist and consequently had to compromise on the video. i love my friend's Sony W1 though, may have to have 2 cameras ??????

[koti]

The movie you capture with your Panasonic FZ20 is 320x240 and is compressed with .mov format. Your DVD player cannot read this format. Here you can read a short description on the "DVD format" : http://codeccorner.com/af.html
In order to watch it on your DVD player you need to download the movie onto your hard drive and recompress it (translate it) onto a format thats readable to your DVD player. This is th ebest software to do this: http://www.cdrinfo.pl/download2kilgor.php?filename=software/vcd-recordery/VirtualDub-1.6.0.zip&id=1365073010&baza=soft

Now...your DVD player most probably can play a variety of different kinds of files, for example Video CD, mpeg1, and other. Some DVD players can even play Divx files. Some may even play .mov files but I doubt you have a player that can do that :)

Good luck with exploring the world of digital video :)

koti.

[Hykaz]

thanks for your advice - I will try that.

regards