DIVX TV collection to DVD: how would you do it?

[midwich]

I'm a n00b to video, and have been thrashing about really, nothing seems to quite work properly in my hands.

So - I humbly beseech you wise ones to suggest the sequence of apps you'd use to do the following, I'll then show some initiative and try to deal with the apps themselves without asking any more annoying questions:

1. I have a collection of 20 minute mpeg4 (DIVX .avi?) television programmes. Each is around 200Mb. There are 22 episodes per series.

2. I want to put these onto a DVD, so that a friend can play them on their DVD player. I'd like to pack as many episodes per DVD as possible, consistent with reasonable visual quality. A simple menu at the start for the episode would be icing.

I've had a quick go recently, and it looked like one of these 200Mb .avi (mpeg4?) files ended up as around 1.2Gb when converted to a 3-file DVD format. Is it the just the way it is, or is there some way of keeping the DVD filesizes down? I'm not going to get many episodes on a DVD at that rate. On the other hand, is SVCD format more compact - how big might an SVCD version end up as?

Questions, questions - any pointers would be great !

[live4ever]

Easiest way is to buy a Divx DVD player http://www.divx.com/hardware/. You'll save time and frustration - each DVD will cost ~$1, you'll degrade the video by converting to mpg, and the amount of time you spend encoding and authoring will be high.

I've seen the Phillips 642 model as cheap as $50 US, I got mine for about $90 CDN.

[midwich]

Easiest way is to buy a Divx DVD player http://www.divx.com/hardware/. You'll save time and frustration - each DVD will cost ~$1, you'll degrade the video by converting to mpg, and the amount of time you spend encoding and authoring will be high.

I've seen the Phillips 642 model as cheap as $50 US, I got mine for about $90 CDN.

Very interesting, I'd never heard of such a thing - but then I live in the UK and we barely have electric light 8) . I'll check it out, though quality is not really a major issue, and I've already realised the time taken to convert can be huge.

[tgpo]

I've been converting MPEG-4 to DVD for a while now. Here is how I do it.

I export the AVI file to MOV (Motion JPEG A) using Quicktime Pro
I convert the audio to MP2 using ffmpegX
I convert the MP2 to a WAV using MPEG2Works
I open the MOV file and the WAV file in Quicktime
Select all the WAV and add it to the MOV file
Save As a stand alond file
In DVD Studio Pro I make my DVD menu
I add my MOV file
I click BUILD
It converts it to MPEG-2 and authors the dvd
I compress (If Needed) the DVD with DVD2OneX to 4.4Gb

I can get 8 22min episodes on a DVD. They look fine.

[midwich]

I've been converting MPEG-4 to DVD for a while now. Here is how I do it.

I export the AVI file to MOV (Motion JPEG A) using Quicktime Pro
I convert the audio to MP2 using ffmpegX
I convert the MP2 to a WAV using MPEG2Works
I open the MOV file and the WAV file in Quicktime
Select all the WAV and add it to the MOV file
Save As a stand alond file
In DVD Studio Pro I make my DVD menu
I add my MOV file
I click BUILD
It converts it to MPEG-2 and authors the dvd
I compress (If Needed) the DVD with DVD2OneX to 4.4Gb

I can get 8 22min episodes on a DVD. They look fine.

That is fantastic information, thanks a million for going to the trouble of typing it out! It is exactly what I had in mind, and I shall give it a go. The info that you can get 8 22min episidoes on a DVD is particularly helpful, as I now know what I can aim for, and suprisingly this is the kind of firsthand knowledge that's hardest to find.

Thanks very much indeed again, I really appreciate it

[WiseWeasel]

If you have DVDSP (and the latest Divx codec for QT installed), you can use Compressor to convert the AVI directly to MPEG2 video, and Sound to AIFF. Then, use A.pack to convert the AIFF to AC3, import the ac3 and m2v into DVDSP, and master away. This will yield better quality and can be done in much fewer steps.

[thoughton]

Without trying to sound like I'm recommending some other method (tgpo has been doing this a lot longer than I have) it may be easier for you just to use ffmpegX and not stress too much about the absolute best possible quality.

You should be able to just drop your .avi onto ffmpegX's icon, choose the Fast DVD preset, and click encode. It is probably selected by default, but make sure 'keep elementary streams' is checked under the Tools tab. You can save some time and disk space by unchecking the 'author as DVD' option. For each episode this should take between 30 mins and several hours depending on how fast your Mac is.

Once ffmpegX has finished use the m2v and ac3 files it will produce in Sizzle or DVD Studio Pro to author the disc. This part is relatively quick compared to the encoding.

As tgpo said you should be able to fit about 3 hours onto a DVD-R. If you use the DVD low-bitrate preset instead of Fast DVD you can fit around 5 hours. Obviously the quality will be lower with low-bitrate, but for downloaded TV episodes this may be acceptable (I use this setting if the original avi is not such hot quality iin the first place).

[tgpo]

The problem I have with ffmpegX is that it loves to unsync videos. The avi files that I had were encoded at 29.971 fps. ffmpegX refused to encodes them at that frame rate. Instead it said that 29.97 must be used. When the video was done it was completely out of sync.

[thoughton]

Hmm it must depend on the source video codec or something. My last batch of avis (xvid+ac3) also included several ones that were not quite NTSC framerate (similar to yours, 29.7 or something - where do these things come from?!). I just changed the framerate in ffmpegX and it all came out in sync.

[midwich]

Amazing - so there is a predominantly Quicktime-based method, an ffmpegX method AND a DVDSP method for taking an mpeg4 file through to DVD format. This all increases my chances of getting at least one method to work - I'm really impressed by the level of support from you guys and really appreciate it, given that my question must be very basic.


This might take a little while as I still have to see about DVDSP, but I'll get back here once I'm done to report on a n00b's-eye view of authoring a DVD. You can count on it being the simplest method!

[TugBoat]

Yeah, I've been going crazy trying to come up with good looking low bitrate DVDs. I'm using DVDSP2 to build the DVD and for some reason it simply hates every MPEG1 I throw it's way. The only thing I've found so far is Toast and Compressor. Unfortunately, Toast doesn't look good enough and Compressor takes almost 10, yes TEN, times longer to encode a MPEG1. I was a little off the last time when I mentioned Compressor was 5 times slower...

I thought I had found something that worked, MMT-EZ, until I went to build and got the dreaded 'internal mux error'. I really don't want to spend another $300 to simply encode MPEG1s. I'm ready to give up on MPEG1s.

So, I tried something new. Apple's MPEG2s look terrible at very low bitrates and they don't do half D1s (unless I'm missing something). But ffmpegX does. I'd never tried it before. I just encoded a 352x480 1600 bps ffmpeg MPEG2 and it looks great. Quicktime apparently isn't very happy with it and it sometimes stutters on the Mac. I built a DVD with DVDSP2, no problems, burnt it to DVD-RW with Toast, and it plays/looks great on my set-tops. This is interesting. I'm going to knock it down to 1500 bps and try some more. I may have found something

[midwich]

So, I tried something new. Apple's MPEG2s look terrible at very low bitrates and they don't do half D1s (unless I'm missing something). But ffmpegX does. I'd never tried it before. I just encoded a 352x480 1600 bps ffmpeg MPEG2 and it looks great. Quicktime apparently isn't very happy with it and it sometimes stutters on the Mac. I built a DVD with DVDSP2, no problems, burnt it to DVD-RW with Toast, and it plays/looks great on my set-tops. This is interesting. I'm going to knock it down to 1500 bps and try some more. I may have found something

Good grief, there's enough great advice in this thread to keep me going for the next six months evaluating the various methods, I'm amazed. I've produced a .mov file from Quicktime Pro so far, on Medium setting, and ffmpegX is 21% of the way through producing a Half DVD at 1600 kbit/sec, so I'll be able to compare these two soonish. Compared with the original mpeg4 file, the Quicktime .mov file is bigger (in Mb: about 50% bigger) and at very noticeably lower quality - but maybe a higher setting would fix this, and I don't know how DVDSP would tackle the filesize in any case. Video Bitrate in ffmpegX is red (baad apparently), but I'm really curious to see the result. Going to be quite a while yet though!

[deadsierra]

I just noticed that DVDSP3 is like $200 CDN at my University. Thats a nice discount from the thousand or so it normally is.

[tgpo]

I just noticed that DVDSP3 is like $200 CDN at my University. Thats a nice discount from the thousand or so it normally is.

The retail is only $499 on it.

[TugBoat]

...Video Bitrate in ffmpegX is red (baad apparently)...Going to be quite a while yet though!

Yep, it's red but still looks much better than MPEG-1s and Low bitrate QT MPEG-2s. I'm using the ffmpeg engine, you have to change to that manually after selecting DVD-lo. The ffmpeg engine flies, I'm getting better than real time AVI/MPG->MPEG-2 encoding. One 114 min, 23.98 fps MPG1 converted to 29.97 MPEG-2 in 65 mins. The AVIs are averaging real time. That's about twice as fast as Apple's MPEG-2 encoder for me.

I did notice the audio sync problem when changing frame rates. So far, it appears that the audio is about 0.5 secs slow. That's about 1 click on the 'Video Clip' 'Clip Start Trim' setting in DVDSP. After that, everything's in sync.

And, the ffmpeg engine doesn't do auto letterboxing, you have to 'do the math' and set the letterboxing manually. I've also been unable to get 16:9 output in half D1, everything less than 4:3 has to be letterboxed. That means on a widescreen display you end up with letterboxing on all four sides. Not good.

So far, I've converted 5 CD sized AVI/MPG1/SVCDs, they all look fine at 1500 bps MPEG-2 half D1 using the ffmpeg engine. There is a problem with the QT Player, VLC, and DVDSP2. They all hesitate and stutter on playback. mPlayer doesn't have any problems, and then after converting to DVD, they all work fine in Apple's DVD Player (two different Macs) and my 2 different Set-Top DVD Players.

The experiment continues...

[midwich]

...Video Bitrate in ffmpegX is red (baad apparently)...Going to be quite a while yet though!

Yep, it's red but still looks much better than MPEG-1s and Low bitrate QT MPEG-2s. I'm using the ffmpeg engine, you have to change to that manually after selecting DVD-lo. The ffmpeg engine flies, I'm getting better than real time AVI/MPG->MPEG-2 encoding. One 114 min, 23.98 fps MPG1 converted to 29.97 MPEG-2 in 65 mins. The AVIs are averaging real time. That's about twice as fast as Apple's MPEG-2 encoder for me.

I did notice the audio sync problem when changing frame rates. So far, it appears that the audio is about 0.5 secs slow. That's about 1 click on the 'Video Clip' 'Clip Start Trim' setting in DVDSP. After that, everything's in sync.

And, the ffmpeg engine doesn't do auto letterboxing, you have to 'do the math' and set the letterboxing manually. I've also been unable to get 16:9 output in half D1, everything less than 4:3 has to be letterboxed. That means on a widescreen display you end up with letterboxing on all four sides. Not good.

So far, I've converted 5 CD sized AVI/MPG1/SVCDs, they all look fine at 1500 bps MPEG-2 half D1 using the ffmpeg engine. There is a problem with the QT Player, VLC, and DVDSP2. They all hesitate and stutter on playback. mPlayer doesn't have any problems, and then after converting to DVD, they all work fine in Apple's DVD Player (two different Macs) and my 2 different Set-Top DVD Players.

The experiment continues...

Great news - the encoding finished, and I can report that the results were superb! I encoded using ffmpegX's Half DVD option at 1600kbits/sec, but not for this first go selecting the ffmpeg engine. It took around 5 hours for a 20min mpeg4 file, although the computer was also running Azureus and Audio Hijack during that time, so that's a fast time really. You say that using the ffmpeg engine it's even faster, so I will definitely try that next time.

Anyway, ffmpegX took the process all the way through to producing a 'DVD folder', with the Video and Audio folders inside. The basic three files used to make the DVD format were left behind too, which will be handy for making a multiple track DVD later on. I opened the DVD Video folder with DVD Player, and on one side opened the original mpge4 file with VLC, dragging it to the same size. Staggeringly, I could detect no degradation at all - in fact, the colours were slightly 'stronger' and less washed out in the DVD version - an improvement! The filesize is just 50% larger than the 250Mb mpeg4 original - remarkably small then considering my first attempt some while back was 1.2Gb!

You are absolutely right then - this is a fantastic method for cramming as many TV episodes onto a DVD as possible. I shall also go down to 1500kbits/sec next time, and try the ffmpeg engine. It's particularly gratifying that you've tested the results on actual DVDPlayer hardware too.

One thing - I don't follow fully your comments on the letterbox issue, could you give a specific example of the maths you mentioned?

[Manny C]

Rather than go through all those complicated steps...

What I would do, is run the included audio/video cable out of my iBook and into a standalone DVD recorder. Then I'd play the videos in full screen and just record them in real time.

...But that's just me.

[TugBoat]

One of these days, maybe I'll get a standalone DVD recorder and give that a shot. But can you make a decent menu with one of those?

My biggest problem was finding a program that made decent low bitrate MPGs that worked with DVDSP2. I think I found it. I just authored a Four movie DVD, total run time is 6.5 hours, VIDEO_TS folder is 4.24 GBs, and it looks as good as the original movies. A simple 4 button, 4 drop zone menu with the DVD covers from Amazon.com above the buttons. My next project is the three '24' seasons whose AVIs are taking up 25 GBs on my work disk.

But, I wouldn't even try it if it took my machine 5 hours to encode a 22 minute movie That's kinda long... my last conversion;
Encoding started on Fri Sep 17 14:23:55 EDT 2004
Input #0, avi, from '/Volumes/Video/Lost in Space/Wing Commander.avi':
Duration: 01:37:48.0, bitrate: 996 kb/s
Stream #0.0: Video: msmpeg4, 640x480, 25.00 fps
Stream #0.1: Audio: mp3, 44100 Hz, stereo, 127 kb/s
Output #0, vob, to '/Volumes/Video/Lost in Space/Wing Commander.avi.ff.mpg':
Stream #0.0: Video: mpeg2video (hq), 720x480, 29.97 fps, q=2-6, 3000 kb/s
Stream #0.1: Audio: ac3, 48000 Hz, stereo, 128 kb/s
Stream mapping:
Stream #0.0 -> #0.0
Stream #0.1 -> #0.1
[mpeg2video @ 0x331210]rc buffer underflow
bench: utime=7090.710s
video:1340871kB audio:91694kB global headers:0kB muxing overhead 22.805277%
Encoding completed on Fri Sep 17 15:58:57 EDT 2004
A 1':38" movie in 1':35", that's better than real time. They have all been better than Real Time using the ffmpeg encoder


I'm not sure about the letterbox thing with 1/2 D1 ffmpeg MPGs yet. It appears that if you check the 'decode with Quicktime' box, it does automatically add the letterboxing. I'll have to try it somemore. For the two movies I did, that needed letterboxing, I followed the following steps;
1)Open movie in QT, enlarge movie till the horizontal resolution is 720.
2)Note the vertical resolution. Compute the closest multiple of 16 going in the direction that will look the best. Minus that number from 480. Divide the result by 2.
3)Set the vertical resolution in the ffmpegX Video parameters tab to the adjusted vertical resolution.
4)In the Filters window (#3), set the first two 'Letterbox' boxes to the last two numbers you got.
Example; Movie- 640x352 -> 720x396; Set resolution (Video parameters) to 352x404 (half D1). 480-404=76/2=38, set letterboxing to Top=38 Bottom=38. (404+38+38=480).

Now like I said, this is my first time using the 1/2 D1 manual letterboxing in ffmpegX. I did the above, and it worked. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong :P

BTW, you don't have to wait till the movie is finished to check it. You can usually open the output file with QT or VLC after the progress bar has reached 1%. I do this all the time to make sure I like the settings. It's nice to see it before you waste much time on something that won't fly.
8)

*******************
READ THIS!;
https://www.videohelp.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=1045311#1045311

[midwich]

Example; Movie- 640x352 -> 720x396; Set resolution (Video parameters) to 352x404 (half D1). 480-404=76/2=38, set letterboxing to Top=38 Bottom=38. (404+38+38=480).

Thanks very much for this, exactly what I needed. BTW you were absolutely right about ffmpeg codec rather than the default for Half D1 - much quicker, say around 50 minutes for a 23 minute .avi, rather than five hours! Still not as fast as you of course, but much better. I've gone down to 1000kbits/sec, and it still looks as good as the original, and the filesize isn't much larger than the 250Mb or so mpeg4 original.

Until I find an idiot's guide to producing a basic DVD in DVDSP I've been playing around with Sizzle, which is much more intuitive for a basic burn. The 0.5 version seemed to have a glitch with taking in the .mp2 or .ac3 audio, so I used the 0.1 version to take things as far as the VIDEO_TS folder, and found 0.5 is happy to bring in the .vob file properly. I can then add buttons fine.

I added two test files. One file was originally mpgeg1, and plays perfectly in DVD Player. The second file was originally mpeg4, and stutters in DVD Player, and the video and sound quickly desync. Having combed these forums I found that ffmpegX doesn't adjust the framerate when you select Half DVD, so it was staying at the mpgeg4's 23.xxfps, whereas I think DVDs need 29.97. I'll test this soon by manually ordering ffmpegX to convert using the right framerate.

Anyway, if anyone knows of an elementary guide to getting a v. basic DVD authored in DVDSP that would be great. Just a series of buttons for the TV episodes, that's it. Plain and simple.

[macuser25]

the easiest way to do this is to install divx 5.2 for mac os x and then just use toast. drag/drop your divx avi files into the toast video window and click record. toast will create your dvd.

[midwich]

the easiest way to do this is to install divx 5.2 for mac os x and then just use toast. drag/drop your divx avi files into the toast video window and click record. toast will create your dvd.

Hmm, thanks I'll take a look It looks like I've finally got Sizzle to do the job properly, and as long as I make sure that ffmpegX uses 29.97fps when encoding everything is fine. It's a bit of a hassle though having to use two versions of Sizzle so I'll check out Toast too.

Anyway, it looks like I should now get all 22 episodes of Scrubs, Season 1 onto a single DVD, and looking as good as the originals. Success!

[subversion]

I'm having some problems doing any of the methods...using compressor i get bouncy images - can someone run me through the exact settings for using compressor?

Thanks in advance!

[macbert]

Does this work using Idvd instead of Sizzle or the Studio one? I have IMovie and Idvd.

[cnelson87]

Easiest way is to buy a Divx DVD player...

dude, seriously.
do you have just 4 or 5 episodes to convert? or 40 or 50? or maybe more??? if just a few, then go ahead and convert to DVD mpeg2 format. the suggestions above will get you there.
but if you have tons, save yourself the time and trouble (and inevitable degradation of quality) and buy a divx DVD player.
maybe, just maybe, maybe it's just me, but it seems to me that conveting from divx to DVD is BACKWARDS.

[sjk]

Nope, it's not just you.