Looking for a decent conversion/authoring/burning program!

[alterqueen]

Hopefully I am posting in a relative forum.

I was wondering if someone could help me out...I will start by saying I am not computer illiterate, so I should have no problem understanding what to do when someone explains it to me.

Here's the thing...I want a program that I can use to convert, author, and burn my downloaded avi movies to dvd. I have tried several converters and while some of them have worked, I have had a lot of trouble with most of them or I have had to download several tools to do all of the above. I don't know why I am finding it so difficult to be able to burn these movies, so I just gave up and I am crying out for help because this is driving me crazy. The program I was originally using is Sonic (it came with my comp) and it was working fine, except that it was out of date and it couldn't make the files small enough so I was only fitting like two episodes of The O.C on a 4.7 gig disk. I have searched around this site and I have downloaded many of the programs mentioned, but I find a lot of them to be confusing...So if someone could tell me a simple way of converting the files and then burning them, I would greatly appreciate it. I am willing to pay for a program if I can find a decent one that is not too much trouble and is not too expensive. Thanks guys!

[pchan]

First and formost... avoid the word "downloaded" at all cost.
This save some headache for the moderators. Just say "I have some AVI files".

1. For conversion - TMPGEnc
2. Authoring - Sonic, TDA, DVD Lab
3. DVD burning - Nero, or any burning packages

If your VIDEO_TS folder is larger than 4.5gig, use DVD Shrink to resize it.

[redwudz]

There is no simple 'does it all perfectly' video conversion program. Video has many variations and needs more than one simple tool to 'make it right'.

If you found the all-in-ones aren't doing what you want, learn the individual tools, like some that pchan mentioned.

There are freeware tools that do similar, so you don't have to spend a fortune. But you do have to spend some time learning. That's what this site is for.

[allbouthepot]

DIVXtoDVD is pretty simple (the old version 0.5.2)
Havent played with the new one yet
Also it doesnt get much easier than DVDsanta

[guns1inger]

If you must go down the one-click wonder route, DivxtoDVD seems to have the least amount of problems with troublesome sources, such as avis with VBR MP3 audio. All the others have generated hundreds of posts because of their problems, especially DVD Santa and WinAVI.

The best solution comes from using the best tools for each stage, as pointed out by pchan. I differ in my coice of software, but mostly that is personal preferance.

I would go

Conversion : avisynth into CCE
Audio : Sound Forge (or ffmpeggui for straight AC3 encoding)
Authoring : TDA or DVD Lab Pro (my preference)
Burning : Prassi ONES or ImgBurn

Have a read of this guide to get you started.

http://members.dodo.com.au/~jimmalenko/AVI2DVD.htm