DV AVI to DVD with WinAVI?

[sd_smoker]

After a lot of trial and error I finally got Avi2DVD to convert my DV AVI to DVD. It works but I had to download additional codecs and I have to use another program to convert every DV AVI file to standard AVI before conversion which adds another hour or more onto the total time. So my question is can WinAVI handle DV AVI files directly or would I still need to manually convert to AVI before converting to DVD? Thanks!

[steveryan]

I don't know what WinAVI can handle directly but the consensus here is that it's terrible at everything. Download a trial of a real encoder (Tmpgenc, Procoder, CCE) or use the free but excellent Hcenc.

[sd_smoker]

I use HCenc with Avi2DVD but, like I said, I have to convert from DV AVI to AVI first. I figured it was worth $30 (for WinAVI) to eliminate that extra step, but if it's really that bad I'll just stick with Avi2DVD for now. If there was an app for around $50 or less that would painlessly convert directly from DV AVI to DVD, including audio, I'd be interested, but I'm not willing to spend multiple hundreds for something like Procoder at this point. Do TMPGEnc Plus and CCE handle audio as well as video?

[thecoalman]

If you're looking for something along the lines of WinAVI get either Ulead Movie Factory or Ulead Video Studio. Both accept DV-AVI and many other formats, both also use Maincocept encoding engine so the results will be nearly indentical to your source. Both are a far superior product to WinAVI and the first one mentioned is about the same price, The second one Video Studio has a lot of editing features if you're interested and cost about $100. They both have a 30 day trial....