VCD to AVI .. best compression?

[tikigod19]

Hi I have recently found that it is possible to take a .bin file and extract thvideo data from it, rename to .avi and voila. Saves burning it to a CD. However I have about 500 VCD and SVCD's that I have burned over the years and I now want to go back and convert these to AVI's and put 4 or 5 on each DVD, to save space.
What is the best way of doing this?
At the moment I would simply insert the VCD, copy accross the file (the name of which escapes me) and rename to .avi. However I'm not sure if this will cause synch problems or create an uncompressed avi that could be reduced somehow to save disc space?
Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

[steveryan]

You can't simply change the extension from .mpeg to .avi. If you must use AVI then you have to encode to AVI, there's no other way. I wouldn't bother converting at all, have a read of some of these guides - https://www.videohelp.com/guides?tools=&madeby=&formatconversionselect=VCD%20to%20DVD&o...BList%2BGuides

BTW, you can get approx' 7 1/2 hours of MPEG1 (VCD) on a single layer DVD. As the video resolution is already DVD compliant all that you need to do is re-sample the audio, TDA is ideal for this.

[mats.hogberg]

...but if you have a player that plays "raw" data files like AVI, it may as well play raw mpg. Just burn the mpg to DVD as data, and that's it. My player won't play raw mpg, but plays a raw VOB(!) so if I want to play mpg video, I have to rename it to VOB.

/Mats

[jagabo]

Why rename to AVI? The video on VCD and SVCD is MPG. If your DVD player can play MPG files on ISO DVDs just rename them with the MPG extension and burn as many as will fit on each DVD. Of course this will not be a standard movie DVD. Most players will not play it.

If you have a Divx/DVD player and want to use even fewer DVDs, you can recompress the video to AVI with Divx or Xvid. But it will take time and reduce the video quality a bit (or a lot depending on how much you compress).

[tikigod19]

yeah I never thought of using MPEG. I suppose its because its a divx DVD player (a philips dvp630) and i'm soon getting a DVP5960. Would these players support mpegs as well as avis? Obviously I know they wont play on standard DVD players, these are only to be played on these DVD players I have detailed above.
Will the file size will be slightly less as an mpeg as they will have been as an avi if all I do is rename the AVSEQ01.DAT to AVSQ01.mpg?

[steveryan]

You will have no quality loss, follow this guide - http://www.digitalfaq.com/dvdguides/convert/vcdtodvd/vcdtodvd.htm

[tikigod19]

excellent. thanks a lot. i will begin the marathon mission now!

[mats.hogberg]

If I read you right, you "convert" to AVI by renaming to AVI

copy accross the file (the name of which escapes me) and rename to .avi.

Since it's still in mpg format, your player obviously plays mpg. And of course the size wil be the same ragrdless of what extension you choose.

/Mats

[tikigod19]

And of course the size wil be the same ragrdless of what extension you choose.

/Mats

Yeah this is what I wasnt 100% sure about.
Ok next issue is I'm left with about 300 films that are in 2 mpeg parts. I have read about tmpgenc to join to one mpeg but seems to take forever, and with this many files I'm not sure it is worth it. Anybody have any decent suggestions on how to join two mpegs to one quite quickly?

[mats.hogberg]

Joining mpg is always tricky - tmpgenc and the mpeg tools, claim to do it reasonably fast, but sync problems are very common in my experience. I've found no reliable way. Better keep them as separate files, maybe "bundle them" together in a separate folder on your data disc, or name them cleverly? (MyMovie_Part1.mpg, MyMovie_Part2.mpg)

/Mats

[tikigod19]

yeah i've named them similarly to that without the underscore. any advantage of that? The philips short filname thing sucks.

[mats.hogberg]

without the underscore. any advantage of that?

No, absolutely not - that's just how I do it. I'm old enough to have habits from those days when spaces in file names caused troubles

/Mats

[tikigod19]

without the underscore. any advantage of that?

No, absolutely not - that's just how I do it. I'm old enough to have habits from those days when spaces in file names caused troubles

/Mats

haha yeah I know what you mean, I do the same when doing web design.
Thanks for your help all.