convert x to dvd

[DeanM]

Hi. I have always used a program "Convert X to DVD" to convert mp4 files to DVD's with success. Tried it with my latest laptop using windows 7 and the resultant DVD plays on my blue ray player but the quality is very poor. Very "blocky" to the extent where its unwatchable. Any ideas would be very much appreciated.

[hech54]

A poor quality MP4 file is the first place to look.

[DeanM]

ok maybe but the mp4 does play fine on my laptop

[sum_guy]

Sounds like the source mp4 is at a very low bitrate and resolution. Generally, garbage in = garbage out. You could try AVStoDVD to compare to convertx. I've used convertx for a long time and it really does depend on a good source file to get a good dvd.

[turk690]

There are two issues here: hardware and software.
Software: convert x 2 dvd is one of those pay or trialware programs that attempt to cram a number of quite unpredictable and unforgiving functions into one, give it a nice GUI, then attempt to sell it as a panacea for converting anything to a playable DVD. Not. I can see that the author hit upon the idea that, since we are swimming in rafts of *.flv, *.mkv, *.avi, *.divx files (most likely sourced from Youtube or some ripping warez site), someone must at one time or another would like to put it all on DVD and watch on a DVD player. Thing is, these little files have characteristics that range and vary with an extreme degree; resolutions could be anywhere from 120x160 to well over 1920x1080HD; framerates from 10fps to 120, etc. Same unpredictability for audio. Nearly all of them will also be some flavor of MPEG-4, with a mishmash of implementations. convert x can't possibly cover all of the bases, and often makes a worse-looking DVD compared to the *.mp4 it came from. If I will do it regularly and care for the quality of the DVD, I will ditch crapware like convert x and do it manually. That is, I will install codecs that can read these files. Then I will use mediainfo as guide to what the specs of the file are; in turn this will best guide what optimized scripts I can create in avisynth with, for eventually feeding them to HCenc. I will take files created to author the DVD myself with any of the free DVD authoring programs in videohelp tools. avisynth and HCenc ultimately determine how good (or crappy) the DVD will look like; if they are already horrible to begin with, of course we don't want to worsen them any further.
Hardware: Avoid using a laughtop with its one single hard drive to do any of this. Laughtops are only good for checking email, wretching and puking fezbuk, playing candy crush, tweeting. Hardly anything else. Asking a laughtop to convert video and author DVDs is a very very tall order. It's remotely possible, but after following the required optimization steps, you'd wish you bought and used a desktop to begin with.

[hello_hello]

Hi. I have always used a program "Convert X to DVD" to convert mp4 files to DVD's with success. Tried it with my latest laptop using windows 7 and the resultant DVD plays on my blue ray player but the quality is very poor. Very "blocky" to the extent where its unwatchable. Any ideas would be very much appreciated.

Do you still have you old laptop? If you know ConvertXtoDVD has always been fine when running on the old laptop and you convert the video and the end result is the same, then chances are it's not the program's fault.
How long is the video in question? Obviously if you convert a 2 hour movie to DVD format and a 3 hour movie to DVD format and they're both single layer DVD size, there's a fair chance the 2 hour movie will be better quality.

A free alternative to ConvertXtoDVD is AVStoDVD. I almost never convert to DVD format but I've played around with AVStoDVD a bit and it seems pretty good.