Nowadays Way to create a DVD that can be played in an older DVD player?

[Agemi]

I have a couple of films. AVI-Files and .mkv. The player it should be shown in is an i-Roc 2992B. And i found it can play DVD, VCD, CD, MP3, WMA, HDCD, CD-R/RW, DVD+/-R/RW, Kodak picture CD, MPEG4 only. So i guess i have to transform the videos to AVCHD first. I want to put them on DVD's. As much of them as possible and then the next one. Each movie is around 300MB big. So a couple of them can be put on a DVD. So now i have the problem that i have to transform all of the videos. It would be good if i dont have to manually do it for each file. And then i have to create a DVD that can be played, maybe the files can be chosen to be played manually on the TV.

The tutorials i found are dead links and a software i found, Avi2DVD i would have to do each file manually it seems.

Can someone lead me to the right direction?

Thanks!

[hech54]

So i guess i have to transform the videos to AVCHD first. I want to put them on DVD's.

DVD is MPEG2 and cannot be anything else.

[Baldrick]

No. You should not convert anything to avchd.

You can try convert to avi divx/xvid with divx converter or xmedia recode(dvd player preset). Burn the files on a dvdr(w) and test.

Or convert to standard dvd-video with Avstodvd. Burn with imgburn.

[DB83]

No. You have suggested a format - AVCHD - which is guaranteed NOT to play on that player since it is a HD format whereas you want a SD format.

The program you want is avstodvd (avi2dvd could work but that is AFAIK a commercial program and will not work beyond its free trial until you pay). In fact avstodvd is a far better program.

Now for your other mis-conception. Just because you have 300 meg files, they can only fit more than one on to a dvd if their converted size is under 4 gig (single-side DVD) or 8.5 gig (double-side DVD). The run time of these 300 meg files is the critical thing not their current size.

Your player could handle avi files but only as xVID or, possibly, DivX. Conversion to standard dvd with avstodvd should give you a better product.

[Agemi]

Oh, i only have read that converting z,to AVCHD is a prerequisit to create a DVD that can be played in each DVD-player. Ok, ill will check out avstodvd first and see hoew it goes.

[LMotlow]

Oh, i only have read that converting z,to AVCHD is a prerequisit to create a DVD that can be played in each DVD-player.

I have no idea where you read that. AVCHD is an entirely different format than DVD.

It's possible to create AVCHD video and burn it to a DVD disc, but you need a BluRay player for AVCHD.

[Agemi]

You might be right about that. I maybe have read at the wrong kind of place. I now sat up a DVD with 5 of those videos because 5 of those avi's match 4,7GB minus 1MB. I hope it can be burned on a normal DVD. I sat up a DVD Menu too and i wonder how it will look once i wrote it on the DVD. Im only surprise how long Avstodvd needs to transform the files. It takes 11 minutes twice per file and i believe it did this twice for the first file too. Now it works on file three only. Looks like the transformation will need around 2,2 hours only to create the image? Maybe i have wrong settings somewhere though my notebook is not as old as it may be the reason. Maybe its only normal on the other hand. Might take some time that way to get to create DVDs for all files since i have 22 x 5 videos and 11 more. So i have to do this at least 25 times... oO At least it has a job feature so it might work over night. Im only surprised about it since the videos dont look so big.

[LMotlow]

I maybe have read at the wrong kind of place. I now sat up a DVD with 5 of those videos because 5 of those avi's match 4,7GB minus 1MB. I hope it can be burned on a normal DVD.

Probably not, depending on what your system and software think a "gigabyte" is. In binary terms 1 MB = 1024 bytes, not 1000 bytes. That means that the actual capacity of a DVD disc including file indexing, etc., is really 4.38 GB.

Not surprising that an encoder should take quite a while to convert your videos. The software is decoding your originals and then encoding to the proper format for DVD. It is not copying. If you told your software to encode in such a way that the entire video will fit on a DVD, then it does what it has to do.

[Agemi]

I believe AVStoDVD claimed a DVD has 4450MB and 5 of those videos had 4449MB. Though i wonder if the menu is big at the end since i made it show some frames as a clickable button. Maybe the DVD can be overburned a bit in case a couple more MB come together.

Edit: No AVStoDVD is done. It claims it took 2 hours and 6 minutes for one DVD.

[LMotlow]

IMaybe the DVD can be overburned a bit in case a couple more MB come together.

Nope. Not according to the laws of physics. How the software calculates a "GB" I don't know, but if you set it up to fit on 1 disc, it might have done the trick.

2 hours 6 minutes to re-encode a full-to-the-brim DVD? Not bad.

[Keyser]

Im only surprised about it since the videos dont look so big.

As you already have been told, the critical issue is the running time of the videos, not their size. They may be 1 hour long or just 10 minutes, or whatever. If you put 5 of them on one disc, you can have 50 minutes or 5 hours total. It all depends on the quality you want to achieve. If your source videos are already crappy anyway, maybe putting 5 hours on one DVD will not make all that difference.

[Agemi]

Each video has around 350MB and 40Minutes runtime.

The overburning was something i used some years ago when i used other buring softwares. It was possible to change the maximum amount of MB to be burnt. I think it worked when the CD/DVD had some spare place where more data could be saved. It was something like a safe area, produced but not used normally or so.

But i burnt the first DVD. The DVD worked great on my notebook. I like it. Next step is to test it on the DVD-Player directly.

Thanks so far for the tips!

[DB83]

A little tip.

5 videos @ 40 minutes each is 200 minutes. However good avstodvd is, that is TOO much for a single 4.7 gb dvd Sure they fit, as you found out but you have compromised them with too low a bit rate.

Whilst there is no 'golden rule' limit yourself to a MAXIMUM of 120 minutes of video. Then you have a reasonable bitrate.

[Keyser]

Each video has around 350MB and 40Minutes runtime.

Do I smell illegally downloaded TV shows? Maybe not.

5 files on a DVD-R will result on a bitrate of about 2700-2800 kbps. That's not much, but maybe with 2-pass HCenc it will be watchable.

[DB83]

BTW you can forget about 'overburn' since no respectable dvd-authoring program will actually create files that exceed the burnable limit for a disk.

[Agemi]

Hm... i didnt notice yet that it trims down the bitrate when putting too many files on the DVD. I only wondered, because i put only 3 files on the last DVD, why it still is maxing out the DVD-Size. I thought its a calculation error. Though i watched it now on my notebook and the quality is good enough for a standard PAL TV. I think the one watching it wont miss something. Or do you think differently?

I noticed that AVStoDVD only is using around 50% of my CPU-cores power while working. And the Harddisc isnt used much too. Ill try to run two instances of AVStoDVD, maybe i can put the time needed in half if it can run multiple instances. At least it opens a second instance. Im only not sure yet if the other programs that it starts, can run together.

[loster]

Post the log file of avsto dvd some of the encoders are better at multicoare usage.

[DB83]

Well you can alter the bitrate settings if you do not want the dvd to 'max' out. But you really want the highest available quality so that is a no-brainer.

Have you tried playing these dvds on the tv , especially the 5 episode one, yet ? What looks 'good' on a small screen notebook may look 'crap' on a large screen tv.

[Agemi]

I now put 3 episodes on one DVD only. It comes to around 120 Minutes in total.

The videos were tested on the DVD-Player and they work fine. Its for a child and she was happy about the cute little preview thumbnails too. I think this program is a really nice piece of software. I only dont know what the quality is like on the TV. Though the following episodes will be better when i only put 3 of them on a DVD.

Encoding multithreaded worked fine. According to the logs its possible to cut the converting time in half with this. Im not sure why one process cant max out the CPU alone but this way its possible to be faster. Of course thats only valid when 3 movies into 1 DVD would take less time than 5 videos in the same size DVD. But the time in logs is 2 hours (+ up to 5 minutes) per DVD. I think letting my notebook work on some job batches over night will transform everything relatively fast.

[Agemi]

I now made a test. 3 350mb movies xvid on one 7G DVD, each DVD for 2 hours movie in total. If i let run AVStoDVD in a single thread then it takes 55 minutes. If doing it with 2 threads (3 films per DVD) then its 1:45h. So im not sure anymore if there is a difference. Though the movies are so different somehow anyway. Previously it took 2 hours for one dvd and one thread, no one hour only? Always .avi.

Anyway... its a nice software. Ill let it run now in a single thread but i wonder where the bottleneck is. Since this *genc-part only takes around 40 to 50% of the cores of my Cpu, disc isnt used much too. Its not the RAM-Usage either. Can the videos be so different or where might the bottleneck be?