avi to which format for DVD?

[jimbop14]

Hi all, Just wondering what is the best format to convert avi files into (VCD/SVCD or DVD) for playing on a dvd player, via dvd media?

Which one retains the best quality? I'd also like to put multiple films on the one DVD - does this rule vob format out?

Thanks folks

[Nelson37]

From what kind of source?

For what kind of player?

Are you aware that there is a section, to the left, entitled WHAT IS which will tell you the answer, in great detail?

Unless you have a Divx player, ALL DVD MUST be arranged in VOB files, it is mandatory.

There are too many variables to answer your question, it is like asking which is the best truck?

Try doing some reading, the purpose of this is to answer the questions which you haven't learned enough to ask yet, instead of laborously re-inventing the wheel.

[Alan Li]

WinAVI spam

[jimmalenko]

If playing on a settop DVD player, on DVD media, the first thing to check is if your player is capable of decoding DivX/XviD on DVD or CD media. If so, it's happy daze as you'll find quite a few AVIs using either DivX or Xvid if you're looking where I think you're looking ...

If not, then you need to convert to DVD-Compliant MPEG (see What is DVD? - top left for specs). There's a trillion guides on how to do this in the Guides section to your left. You can do it one of two ways - use an all-in-one tool that will encode and author for you in one step, taking your AVI as input and dumping out ready-to-burn IFO, BUP and VOB files, or you can do the two processes of encoding and authoring manually. The problem with all-in-ones is that they tend to do a number of tasks, but do them poorly IMO, whereas the dedicated tools are designed specifically to do what they claim to do, and generally do it better.

http://members.dodo.net.au/~jimmalenko/AVI2DVD.htm is probably a good guide to start with, to learn the process of exactly what you're doing. Unfortunately we can only recommend what we use - you really need to pick some guides, get the software you need, and give some of them a workout to see what suits your needs.

That's all pretty general though, since AVI can come in many flavours, and it really depends on what you have as to the best way to approach it. I understand that you're probably pretty new to this, but you need to be a bit more specific in exactly what you have (hint: GSpot or AVICodec can tell you and us a lot about what you have).

Feel free to ask questions in the forum, but please make sure you've done plenty of research and had a crack at solving the problem yourself, as no-one really wants to do all the hard yards for you and give the answers to you on a silver platter. You'll only get back what you put in

[spectroelectro]

In my experience encoding into Divx in any flavor (Divx 3, lo-motion Divx, Divx 5, XVid, etc.) is problematic if your intent is to play the disc back on a standalone DVD player. The simple fact is that MPEG-4 video compression is still relatively new and there are a lot of different partly incompatible flavors of Divx floating around out there. XVid typically works and plays back well ona computer but has spotty standalone player support. Lo-motion divx and Divx 3 files often play back poorly, with lots of jerkiness, if they play back at all on a standalone player.

Your best bet is to burn the most plain vanilla generic DVD format discs you can. That's what I do and nobody has ever failed to play back my DVDs, ever. There are 4 support generic plain-vanille video resolutions, all MPEG-2: 720 x 480 (Full D1), 704 x 480 (CCIR 601, used by many DVD recorders), 352 x 480 (Half D1, used in the LP and FR modes of many of the better DVD recorders), and 352 x 240 VCD MPEG-1. Most DVD recorders support playback of VCD, but not all. Bear in mind that the audio track in VCD is 44.1 khz sample rate whereas it's 48 khz on all the others.

SVCD is a non-standard format that's not part of the official DVD spec. Many DVD players support SVCD but some don't, so if you encode to SVCD format your discs might or might not play back on a standalone DVD player. Also, your computer has to have a spedcial MPEG-2 DirectShow filter installed to correctly play back SVCD files using WIndows Media Player, though they'll play back fine using WinDVD or PowerDVD or Ravisent Cinemaster. I'd stay away from SVCD because the files are about the same size as Half D1 but not fully compatible with the official DVD spec and they don't play back correclty in most computers, whereas half D1 files will play back on any computer and are officially supported in the DVD spec. To get a DVD full of SVCD files to play on a standalone player you have to play games with rewriting the header info using TMPGenc. This creates a non-standard VOB which might or might not work, depending on the DVD player, though most DVD players have gotten better about this in the last couple of years.

The only real question is what bitrate limits to use. You should always use VBR. The bitrate limits are a matter of personal choice. If your file winds up ebing too big, use ReJig to squish it down without losing any video resolution. ReJig is free and a great tool.

Experiment and see what results you get from various encoders with various btirates. There are only 5 really good MPEG-2 encoders out there: Canopus ProCoder, TMPGenc, CCE, Quenc, and MainConcept. Whichone you use is a matter of personal taste. They all produce about equally good encoded MPEG-2. The main difference is price. THere's a $2000 price difference between CCE and Quenc.