Creating DVD from .avi files.

[gillie_bhoy]

Hi, I have a tv series with 24 episodes on my HDD. Each episode is around 350MB, and I would like to burn the whole series to DVDs (preferably using around 4 standard 4.7GB DVD+Rs). The files are in .avi format and I understand that this has to be changed? I would also like to create a DVD menu which allows you to choose which episode on the disc you would like to watch (I know that this further limits the amount of episodes that I could get on one disc). Keeping the quality around what it is at the moment is also important to me. I was wondering if anyone could guide me in the right direction. Any help would be much appreciated. Thank You.

Individual file size: approx 350MB
File Format: .avi

[redwudz]

The size of the AVI file has little bearing on the converted MPEG file size. The running time is the most important. Say you have 24 files with a running time of 30 minutes each = 720 minutes total. Divided by four = 180 minutes per disc. Best quality is about 60 minutes, good quality 120, so it would probably work on 4 DVDs of 4.37GB each. If you plug in 180 minutes and 4.37GB to a bitrate calculator ( Videohelp Bitrate Calculator):



You can see the predicted bitrate is about 3160Kbps. A bit on the low side, but probably OK, depending on your original AVI quality. (I assume Xvid/Divx for AVI type format.) If you total running time is longer than I guessed, then that bitrate will drop rapidly. Below about 2000 quality drops off even more rapidly. You can try encoding a short representative clip of one of the episodes and see how it looks. If really bad, then you may need to use more discs. If the original format is Divx/Xvid, a set top Divx player would save you a lot of time, though you may not end up with menus.

But the simple answer is to try one of the All-in-one converters here: https://www.videohelp.com/tools/sections/all-in-one-dvd-converters ConvertX would be my first choice, but for freeware, AVStoDVD or DVD Flick or FAVC are popular around here.

And welcome to our forums.

[gillie_bhoy]

It is longer than you guessed, the total runtime is 1080 minutes. 6 discs with 180 minutes on each is fine. I will give it a try, thanks.

[lacywest]

Or ... you could get the Philips dvp5590 DVD player ... and just put about 12 of them AVI videos ... at a time ... on a DVD disk and watch them on a DVD Player that plays Divx videos.

When I do have avi videos to make into a real DVD Video disk ... I use the program ... ConvertXtoDVD 4.

I put about 4 episodes on ... one hour TV shows without commercials are about 41 minutes. So ... 4 x 41 = 164 minutes ... which is 2 Hours and 44 minutes.

Quality will not be that great. When I use ConvertXtoDVD 4 ... I have it use the DVD9 specification and then if it is bigger than a DVD5 ... I use DVDShrink or DVD Rebuilder ... to get it to fit on DVD 5.