Camcorder AVI to DVD woes

[ShaunBrewer]

Okay I need an expert or at least someone who understands more than me - should not be hard.

I have been trying to put some DV fottage I have taken onto DVD - I achieved this but the quality was poor.

I used Windows Movie Maker to download the video from the camera - I chose DV-AVI - if I understand correctly no conversion has taken place so nothing should have gone wrong here, and the video looks fine.

The video I am trying to burn is 1 hour 53

My first sucessful conversion to DVD was performed with NeroVision Express - trial version. Used NeroVison to open the raw avi and convert to DVD. However the quality is not good - you notice the difference between the camera connected to the TV and the DVD imediatly without out even looking hard. I could see no way to improve the quality. In Nero I set the encoding mode to High Quality (2 Pass VBR).

When I set the Quality setting nto High Quality rather than automatic it would not fit on a single DVD.

I then tried Sonic I get the message:

The Project will not fit on the media. Please reduce the project size. _ Agian this is a trial version with no help only a tutorial - could not find any reference to the error on the Web or their Web site.

I then tried TMPGenc and TMPGEnc DVD Author

My first attempt I used TMPGEnc to produce the .m2v and .wav file - I used the Wizard and left most of the settings alone - Set 2 pass Vbr and that is pretty much it.

The result burnt onto DVD again with the TMPGEnc DVD Author was worse than the Nero versio!?!

I then found a link on this site to http://dvd-hq.info/compression.html

I tried some of the suggestions there and encoded only the video however

TMPGEnc DVD Author does not like the .m2v created by TMPGEnc !?! and it took 40+ hours.

I get this message:

The video sequence header is incorrect.

If you are still reading thank you.

If you can point me at some help thank you even more!

All I want to do is convert my camcorder footage to DVD so the family can watch it - however I do need decent quality - I don't care if it take 40 hour as long as the results are good. (I have a decent PC - the nero conversion took 4 hours)

I am looking to test out the software to prove it does the job and then buy - oh I do have a limit of about £100 (UK) / $150 (US)

Thanks yet again

Shaun

[madwok]

Hi there !

Here are what I use and I spent about $ 150 total for my software:

Ulead VideoStudio 7 to capture tape to PC , edit , author etc

If VIDEO_TS folder is too big , I use Nero or DVDshrink ( free ) to transcode it

To preview it , I use imgclassic ( free ) to create iso to be mounted by deamon tool ( free ) and watch it on my PC

If I like the result , I then use Nero or DVDdecrypter ( free ) to actually burn it

If you want fancy DVD menu , you can also trial DVDLAB

VideoStudio , Nero do have trial out and they are quite good for my home use

Good luck,

[bugster]

TMPGEnc DVD Author does not like the .m2v created by TMPGEnc !?! and it took 40+ hours.

I get this message:

The video sequence header is incorrect.

Shaun

In TmpGenc, in the settings dialog, GOP structur Tab, you must have 'output interval of sequence header' set to 1 for DVD.

When using TmpGenc for DVD, the simplest way is to use one of the DVD templates (PAL or NTSC) and then adjust the settings on the Video and Audio tabs to suit. Do not touch any other settings unless you REALLY know what you are doing as you risk breaking the DVD specs.

1h 53mins is quite a long video for DVDr esp if using PCM audio as you appear to be doing. I suggest you investigate mp2 or Ac3 audio as these are compressed and leave more room for the video than using uncompressed PCM.

To determine the correct bitrate to encode at you need to use a bitrate calculator such as the one here .