ConvertXtoDVD: How much of an improvement over DivxtoDVD ?

[Seeker47]

As a test, I tried out the older free version on a 5 minute .WMV clip, then burned the result to DVD with Nero Vision Express (from the 6.3 full suite). It played in a standalone player. This at least demonstrates the general feasibility of doing this. However, results left a lot to be desired. Different portions of the clip exhibited at least one of the following problems: image keeps disassembling into blocks and reforming (this was the worst problem, and is of course unacceptable); no sound; sync of the audio. Parts of the clip seemed o.k., played from the DVD, and the video problem seems to go away when played at just 2x normal speed. From reading some threads here, I understand that the quality of a given downloaded clip is unknown and a wildcard . . . so, I'm glad to run several more trials with other sample clips. But I'm wondering how much better of a job the current payware version is capable of doing, before possibly wasting any time or money on it ? Can you go into a little detail on how much better it is ?

I did try DivxtoDVD on one other clip so far, but did not bother burning the result. The program's log showed a huge number of access violations, each apparently skpped over, as the log continued on with its various other entries. The output results showed only a blank grey screen, when I tried to play it with PowerDVD.

I was going to ask jimmalenko to expound on his one sentence review of WinAVI, then I found a thread that might have been a good choice for that . . . but it had been locked. I can't tell you how annoying that is, when the moderators do this ! Please try to have a damn good reason for taking such action, and I hope it is a last resort.

[redwudz]

I've used both DivxToDVD and ConvertXToDVD and the newer program does a much better job. It is more suited for AVI conversions such as Xvids or DV. I've had nothing but problems converting WMV to other formats.

One of the problems with the more proprietary formats like WMV or Real is that there are not a lot of programs to convert them. I use SUPER for that sometimes, or just delete the WMV when it's messed up. For a all-in-one, ConvertXToDVD is one of the best. But if you want the highest quality and the most control over your conversions, the individual programs are still the best option.

I'm not sure which WinAVI thread you are referring to. WinAVI has paid spammers that join the forums and we ban them regularly and lock the threads. WinAVI doesn't have many friends here.

[jimmalenko]

I'm not sure which WinAVI thread you are referring to. WinAVI has paid spammers that join the forums and we ban them regularly and lock the threads. WinAVI doesn't have many friends here.

Probably the "biggest piece of monkey crap ... ever!" thread - I think it got locked yesterday.

I've used both convertxtodvd and divtodvd and I found that WMV support in the old freeware version was almost non-existant; however the payware version does a much better job and has a lot more options.

My "dismay" at WinAVI is twofold - the number of people who come here who have experienced problems with it and also their ridiculous business practice of spamming our wonderful forums here instead of providing the support that its users paid for when they purchased the product.

[guns1inger]

Improvements in ConvertXtoDVD over DivxtoDVD

1. Better utilisation of bitrate, including the ability to adjust the bitrate as well as speed vs quality settings.

2. Rudimentary menu (basically text menus based on the file names)

3. Better support for more codecs

4. Ability to apply pulldown. 23.976 material is now encoded as 23.976 with 2:3 pulldown. DivxtoDVD converts 23.976 to 29.970 by adding duplicate frames, resulting in jerky video. I haven't tried it for PAL to NTSC or NTSC to PAL conversion, so I don't know if it uses pulldown for this as well.

5. Better support for subtitles and multiple audio.

If you convert a lot of 23.976 ntsc material, then point 4 is worth the price of admission on it's own. If you mostly work with PAL material, or NTSC video (29.970) then you would have to trial it to see if the quality improvements are worth it.

[Seeker47]

Thanks for your comments. It sounds like the Payware version will be worth checking out.