PAL 1080i HD -> 576i for DVD authoring

[halsboss]

PAL 1080i HD doesn't go directly onto an ordinary DVD to, say, play in an ordinary DVD player in another room with a telly if I want to watch it later... SD does as it can be authored almost directly onto DVD... so, this may be of some use to people looking to ask the conversion question -

convert a 16:9 HD 1080i clip into 576i DVD format, ready for authoring ... at least here's a starting point for gaining some AVIsynth and HC and FFMPEG knowledge http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?p=1046975#post1046975

In summary, after editing the capture say with VideoRedo to remove "uninteresting bits" and outputting elementary streams (the output audio stream can be used when DVD authoring) - an example FFMPEG interlaced conversion (this version http://ffdshow.faireal.net/mirror/ffmpeg/ffmpeg.rev10464.7z) using this .BAT command file

set fINPUT=D:\HDTV\1080i-to-576i.mpv
set fOUTPUT=D:\HDTV\1080i-to-576i-OUTPUT-ffmpeg.mpv
set fSIZE=720x576
set fASPECT=16:9
set fMAXBITRATE=9200k
"C:\SOFTWARE\ffmpeg\ffmpeg.exe" -y -i "%fINPUT%" -target pal-dvd -ilme -ildct -flags +ildct+ilme -top 1 -sameq -maxrate %fMAXBITRATE% -dc 10 -s %fSIZE% -aspect %fASPECT% -an "%fOUTPUT%"
PAUSE

following which poke the resulting .mpv, and your audio stream out of say VideoReDo, into your favourite DVD authoring program.

More knowledgeable people may boohoo it, feel free :P Be good to see someone post "higher quality" ffmpeg settings, too.

Got interested following an [australian TV channel] announcement of HD only content (ie no SD to record directly), upon which I bought a DigitalNow TinyTwin USB for use with Webscheduler.

[halsboss]

Yikes. The ffmpeg user mailing list confirms what I subsequently found out by testing and examining the bitrate in a btrate viewer... ffmpeg produces s bitrate spikes in the resulting output file which go outside the DVD spec.

Back to the ever-trusty HC !