Seeking elegant h.264 -> Mpeg2/DVD conversion process

[bigass]

What I have: 720p capture from Hauppauge HD-PVR of a SD broadcast. That means, at the very least, I have a h.264 TS file with a 480i show captured as a 720p frame. I'm not sure from memory if the SD show was letterbox or full-frame. Probably won't matter to me either way, as they'll be viewed on a plain old TV.

What I want: DVD-compliant MPEG2.

Why: I taped the shows with BeyondTV and want to watch them at the cottage on a DVD player.

I'm content to get advice that skips the DVD authoring & burning step. I can handle that.

I have [access to] a variety of software tools [tmpgenc, handbrake, ATI's quick-transcode thingy], but I'm not really up for avisynth -- yes, I respect the power and versatility of the software, but I haven't learned it yet, and I'm not keen on cutting my teeth this weekend.

So, to sum up: What'd be the most elegant way for me to trim and convert the 720p TS captures of SD TV to DVD-authoring-ready mpeg2 files?

Many thanks for your always-helpful advice.

[usually_quiet]

Since nobody else answered yet, I'll give my best guess. While I have only used these programs for MPEG-2 they also support H.264: TS Sniper to trim the .TS files and either AVStoDVD or FAVC to convert to DVD-compliant format and author.

[fritzi93]

I also have a Hauppauge HD-PVR and capture at 720p. About the editing, in case you don't know already, h.264 is a bastard to edit. The only free tool that does reasonably well is tsSniper, not frame-accurate but plenty good enough to cut out adverts.

A bit of advice: set default splitter in preferences to HaaliAR, and have a little patience. Push the program too hard and it will crash. The more powerful your computer the less that will apply, but when looking for mark in/out points give the prog a chance to seek the file before jumping to another spot.

As to the conversion to DVD-Video, haven't done any for quite a while now, but the suggestions by usually_quiet ought to do the job nicely. Good luck.

[lordsmurf]

I use VirtualDub for retooling the video, then frameserve it to MainConcept Reference.
About as elegant as it gets.

[fritzi93]

Oh yeah, there's one more:

I presume you got TME bundled with the HD-PVR. Its editing capability is rather clumsy, but it will work, and you can output directly to DVD-Video. I've done this a number of times for my wife's Flip videos (usually school science project videos she takes for grading purposes).

[bigass]

Thanks, gang.

What I ended up doing was tweaking the options in ConvertXtoDVD to auto-crop the 720p shows down to DVD. I think that, in itself, saved me some steps.

All the best!