Convert TV Series XVID to DVD

[Crucial]

Yes I have used the search tool, and yes I've read the guides.

I have entire series of TV shows, mostly in XVID, and want to put them on DVDs. The video quality looks fine the way it is and some use ac3 and some use mp3 for audio. I just need an easy and fast method to convert the files to mpg or VOB so I can author and burn them.

I have tried a few different avi to dvd programs and am a bit confused by the results. I have used "Cucusoft AVI to DVD MPEG Converter Pro" which takes hours and leaves me with a single mpg file for each avi file converted. I have also used WinAVI which takes a fraction of the time to do the job and it leaves me with an empty AUDIO_TS folder and a VIDEO_TS folder containing a VOB file and a NAV file for each avi file I throw at it.

The question I have is, when I'm using WinAVI the progress screen shows that it's incoding the video at an average of 70FPS, and I have been reading on here and NTSC is supposed to be like 25FPS. So why does WinAVI show that it's encoding at such a high rate?

Also, is this a good program to use, or the best to use for what I'm trying to accomplish? All I want to do is put these episodes on to DVD's to play in a standalone DVD player. I don't want to loose any quality in the process and basically want the video/audio to be the best it can be for playback on a TV.

Also, what is the simplest DVD authoring program to just add each individual episode as a chapter on a main menu?

Please help me here, I seriously have read and learned loads from this this site and forum, but I'm looking for some input on my specific needs.

[guns1inger]

You really need to sit down and read the basics, although from the tone of your post you don't really have the patience to do that.

Given you want immediate gratification, winavi is probably a good bet. You don't need to really know very much. AVI goes in, DVD comes out. If you are happy with the quality, go for it.

Some basics. When an encoder says it is encoding 75 fps, it is doing just that ENCODING 75 fps. This is how fast it is processing the data, not how fast it will play back. BTW, NTSC is either 23.976 or 29.976 fps, PAL is 25 fps.

What winavi is giving you is a finished DVD structure. If you burned that to a DVD, you would have a playable DVD with a single episode on it. You want to put more episodes on it though. So in comes tmpgenc DVD author. Run all you episodes through winavi and get a collection of video_ts folders. Load up DVD author and select Add Movie (or similar - I don't use it, but I know it's there somewhere) and one by one add your episodes. Eventually you will fill the disk. Burn, then create the next disk.

There is no way to automate this, get all your episodes on one disk, and have them at a watchable quality. Unless you live in magical fairy land.

[Crucial]

Thanks for the help.

Here's a few more questions:

Why does WinAVI take half the time to convert than other AVI to DVD encoders? And why is there no files in the AUDIO_TS folder, should I be worried about this? The quality seems to be very close to the origional.

[reboot]

AUDIO_TS is normall empty, no worries.
WinAVI is no faster, nor slower than most others, depending on which "others" you're talking about.
It's much faster than tmpgenc, for example, but slower than CCE.
If you're talking about all-in-one apps, then it tends to be faster.

[Crucial]

Well it only takes me about 10min to convert a 40min XVID file to DVD VOB with WinAVI, but with Cucusoft AVI to DVD it took about an hour and the quality was crap.

[Crucial]

Okay here's another cool problem. I used WinAVI to convert from XVID to DVD (VIDEO_TS VOB's), but they turned out to be around 2.2GB per 40min episode. The quality is slightly worse than the origional XVID file , but at this rate I can only put 1-2 files per DVD.

What exactly am I doing wrong here? I want to put 15 tv episodes onto like at most 4-5 dvd's!!! At this rate I'll end up using one episode per DVD because two would be over the limit.

What am I don't wrong here?

[Crucial]

Ugh. I'm so upset. At the size of the files, and the costs of that many disks or if I were to use DL disks, it will end up costing me about the same amount to burn them to DVD as it would to just wait and buy the damn retail dvd's.

I give up! YOU WIN BILL GATES!!!

[reboot]

You're not doing anything wrong. Mpeg-2 files, made into .vob's are going to be quite a bit larger than a compressed xvid.
This has nothing to do with Bill Gates.
If you want to try getting multiple episodes onto one dvdr, I would suggest you get a good encoder, learn about bitrates, and aspect ratios, Half D1 and 1/4 D1, compression schemes/codecs, maybe even KDVD, etc.
Otherwise, live with 1 or 2 episodes per disk, at about 20 cents per disk

[guns1inger]

Look at commercial disk sets. eg. Seinfeld. 6 22 minutes episodes per DL disk. Equates to 3 episodes per layer or single layer disk equivalent. Admittedly this includes extras, but that still pretty much meets your 2 x 40 minute episodes.

This is why I said you should start reading up on the basics and understand what you are doing in my first post.