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  1. Member
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    I downloaded a bunch of (non-copyrighted) videos from Google (video.google.com). They can only be viewed using the Google Video Player, and I wanted to make them into DVDs that I can watch on a television DVD player. I used Naevius to convert the .gvi files into .avi files. Once I have .avi files, I add them to a "project" in Nero, design a menu, and burn to DVD for television. But I have a bunch of problems I don't understand, and would like some help.

    One project I just tried is a 705 MB .avi file, and when I add it to the Nero project, it says this will not fit on a regular DVD and do I want the quality reduced automatically to fit in the available space? If I choose No, it shows the size of the project is 4.44 GB (0.06 more than available). If I choose Yes, it reduces to around 3 GB.

    Why can't Nero fit a 705 MB .avi file onto one DVD? Why does under 1 GB of data become almost 4.5 GB, and, how much of a quality reduction will there be in the resulting movie if I let Nero reduce it to fit? I don't want to reduce the quality because it's not very good quality to start with.

    Also, sometimes Nero refuses to accept an .avi file into a project at all, and makes an error message "Unable to add video file" with no explanation of why. In this kind of case, I have found that converting the .avi file to .mpg format first will cause Nero to accept it. For this I was using MediaCoder, which is very difficult, I had to fiddle with dozens of settings that I don't understand, but at least the conversion process was quick - about 10-15 minutes for a file in the 600-700 MB range.

    But occasionally MediaCoder wouldn't work; I would add a file to process, then click Start, and immediately see a popup window saying [sic] "No file is outputted". This happened with the file I am trying to get burned onto a DVD right now. Then I found out there is a newer version of MediaCoder, and installed that, hoping it would solve the problem. The file I was trying to process with the older version did not produce the same error anymore, but now the conversion process was way slow - instead of 5-10 minutes to convert a file, it would take two hours or more. Which is a pain because although in previous experiments the resulting .mpg files were usually slightly smaller than the original .avi files, and I needed this file to be slightly smaller for Nero to put it on one DVD.

    I had no idea if the .mpg file would be smaller in this case, but I let it complete anyway, and the file size was irrelevant because the video quality was horrible.

    My next experiment with this file was done with "Easy Video Converter" which gives the option of converting to MPEG-1 or MPEG-2. I tried both. The process took over two hours each time. The MPEG-1 file was way bigger than the original .avi, and the MPEG-2 file was even bigger, so I guess I cannot use either of these files for my DVD.

    I tried using VirtualDub to cut the original video down, to just clip a bit off the opening credits and final credits to reduce it enough to fit in that Nero project, but it wasn't enough.

    Meanhile as I was jumping through all these hoops I thought there must be an easier way. I'd really like to understand why Nero makes an AVI file grow so much larger when you add it to a project, and is there another way to accomplish what I want to do?

    Any help at all will be greatly appreciated. I have already invested too much in software....
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  2. Always Watching guns1inger's Avatar
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    ConvertXtoDVD sees them as variations on Divx, and happily converts them to DVD structures.
    Read my blog here.
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    I guess what has me confused is previous experience capturing video off of a camcorder using a Dazzle device and VideoWave. It came with VideoWave 4 then I got an upgrade to VideoWave 5, which had an option to capture as .avi or as .mpg, and sometimes I'd capture the same video in both formats, and the .avi file was always way bigger than the .mpg.

    Gunslinger, is ConvertXtoDVD your program?
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  4. Always Watching guns1inger's Avatar
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    Nope. It's a commercial program from an outfit called VSO. It just happens to be simple to use, and in my experience the most reliable of the one-click-wonders.

    The issues with your current process come from a number of points, including the dubious choice of software, and your level of experience. Encoding from format to format always comes at a quality cost. Given the generally low quality of google video to begin with, you want to avoid needlessly re-encoding if possible. This means going from the google video source to DVD compliant mpeg in one go. Converting to a lossy compression like Xvid or Divx along the way only reduces the quality even further.

    As for the variation in size - it comes down to bitrate. Size = Running Time X Bitrate. It's one of the few universal truths when working with digital video.

    If you encode the same video using Divx for compression and using mpeg-2 for compression, and use the same bitrate, both files will be the same size (give or take some minor allowances).

    However different codecs produce different quality at the same bitrates. Divx/Xvid/mpeg-4 in general produces better quality at lower bitrates than mpeg-2. You can usually get approximately the same quality as mpeg-2 at around half the bitrate if you use mpeg-4.

    However, basing your view of mpeg-4 quality on the typical 700 MB download is not accurate. These files are low resolution and compared to the source, low quality. To maintain the same quality as the 700 MB source you should expect to expand it to between 3 - 4 GB when encoding to mpeg-2.

    There are also lossless formats, from completely uncompressed files to lossless compression codecs. These can produce very large files - up to 10 times the size of the mpeg-2 compressed version.

    Bottom line - when encoding you need to start from scratch every time. Look at your running time, look at the space you have to play with, and work out a bitrate. Then encode. Don't look at the file you have and think you will get a DVD into the same space as a hyper crushed Xvid - it won't happen.
    Read my blog here.
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    I understand about 20% of what you wrote. Are you saying that I should convert the .gvi files directly to .mpg? I didn't think that was possible. As I understood it, .gvi is just .avi in disguise, and all Naevius does is strip out the disguise. It works so quickly that almost has to be what it's doing. But if it's a step I can skip somehow, so much the better. Does ConvertXtoDVD do it?
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  6. Always Watching guns1inger's Avatar
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    ConvertXtoDVD will convert you .gvi files directly to a DVD structure, ready to burn. It can also create a basic (and I mean basic) text menu for the DVD.
    Read my blog here.
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  7. Mod Neophyte Super Moderator redwudz's Avatar
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    Suzuko, in the future please use a more descriptive subject title in your posts to allow others to search for similar topics. I will change yours this time. From our rules:
    Try to choose a subject that describes your topic.
    Please do not use topic subjects like Help me!!! or Problems.
    Thanks,
    Moderator redwudz
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  8. Member
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    OK redwudz. However I really wasn't asking how to convert google video to DVD, and I won't believe it can be done in one step until I see it with my own eyes. Every source I read before starting to use Naevius said that .gvi has to be converted to .avi before you can do anything else with it. Even the description of the conversions that ConvertXtoDVD does not claim this is possible with that program. Nevertheless I will try it sometime and post the result here.
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