Edit wmv without reconverting

[drivesnap]

I apologize if I'm asking in the wrong area but here goes. I have a wmv file that I want to add various text to (its a concert - I want to show the song titles overlaying at the start of each song) and burn it to dvd.

I tried it using vista movie maker but after adding the text it made a 14gig avi file (the original was only 148mb and a wmv). So movie marker is obviously reconverting and compressing which is what I want to avoid doing if possible.

Is there any way to do this without changing the aspect,audio,video quality?

Thanks

ric (newbie here)

[Baldrick]

If are you adding burned in text you must reconvert and you are also reconverting when making a dvd. So output to highest possible quality(big file size) in wmm and then convert/author to dvd.

[drivesnap]

i dont want to add burned in text i want to author the wmv by adding overlaying text to it but don't want to change anything else about the file.
i authored it using wmm but it changes it to avi and is much bigger than the original.

[poisondeathray]

Your initial post was unclear: Did you mean burning to DVD as in data file? or playable in a DVD player as in DVD Video files?

You will lose picture and audio quality regardless by any conversion using a lossy format.

Assuming you want a DVD video , unless your wmv is already 4:3 apect ratio, the aspect ratio will change too, because that's what NTSC DVD specs are (720x480). You might have to put black borders to preserve the aspect ratio.

If you authored straight to MPEG2 compliant streams, you would skip the intermediate step and 1 extra quality loss step. You might do this with avisynth, using overlay and encode with HCenc for video and somthing like aften for AC3 audio. You could then author to DVD using your favorite DVD authoring application

If you wanted to keep it as a data file, and wmv format, but only playable on PC, you could create a .srt subtitle that would just overlay "subtitles" whenver the song came on (or whenever you choose in the timing). This would keep identical quality for audio & video, and the original file untouched. You would be left with original .wmv and a separate .srt file.

Another option is to permanently burn in the "subs" into the wmv file using avisynth, textsub(), and WMNicEnc , but this needs re-encoding (thus quality loss)

[drivesnap]

thanks for your followup.

i think i've made this more complicated.
i guess what i'm saying is how come wmm makes a avi from a wmv?

isn't there anything that will just leave a wmv a wmv after editing it (adding text)?

avsynth is not the same as those pricey programs like pinnacle, sony, or adobe. is one of those what i need to accomplish this?

[poisondeathray]

The last 2 options in my previous post leave you with a .wmv

All the programs I suggested above are freeware