Dnld/Converting From Usenet On A Mac

[dennyhayes]

I have a Mac question, or rather some questions concerning files conversions of movies from newsgroups, which come in various formats. Since I have a DVD player (Philips DVP642) that plays almost anything, my goal is to put as many as I can on one DVD without loosing much quality.

From the DivX groups, after using MACPar Deluxe to join the parts, you typically end up with two or three 700M .avi files. Sometimes, this process results with only one 700M .avi file. If there are two or more files, you can use D-Vision to then join the multiple .avi files into one 1.5G .avi file. In this form, you can burn 3 movies to each DVD, or if there is only one 700M file per movie, you can burn 6 movies to one DVD.

From the SVCD groups, after using MACPar Deluxe to join the parts, you typically end up with 2 o 3 .bin files and 2 or 3 .cue files. After trashing the .cue files, you can use SVCD Jelly to convert the .bin files to .mpg files, and then use JigSaw to join the resultant .mpg files into one 1.5G .mpg file.

I read that an ap called ffmpegX can do most of this, but after playing with it, I found that many of the features, such as joining .mpg files doesn't even work.

The way I am doing it now works, but I am curious if there is a better way. Most of the aps will only allow you to do one conversion at a time, where aps like MacPar and D-Vision will allow you to start many and go to bed. ffmpegX appears to allow you to start many also, if it worked

My second question is about the difference between the single 700M .avi movie files, and the multiple 700M .avi movie files. Why is one shorter than the other, is it less quality, and if not, can the multiple files be converted into a single 700M .avi file, without loosing much quality?

For my third question, can .mpg files be converted into .avi files, and are there any advantages or disadvantages?

[Krispy Kritter]

For ease of explanation, lets assume we are talking about an average 90 minute movie.

Quality is proportional to file size. You should be able to tell a difference between the video quality in the single 700M file and the 2 700M files, especially in dark or action sequences.

You can combine the files and then reencode to a single 700M file, but you will lose quality.

You can also convert the mpg files. All things being equal, you would end up with a smaller file, but you will also lose quality in the process.

[terryj]

I'm curious as to why the mpg joing feature in ffmpegx didn't work for you...Did you recieve any errors from ffmpegx
as to video type or audio type? problems with the muxing
said files ( not enough HD space, etc?)? and last, which
version of ffmpegx did you use?