conversions freezing very frustrating

[cbrien]

I have tried about as much as this little brain can think of but I can't achieve my lowly goal of
converting my analog VHS-c cassettes to DVD compliant structure. Firstly, I have used
VEGAS 7 to capture the info through an external A/D converter (ADS Pyro/AV link). It works
seamlessly perfect. So now I have it on my computer as a single .AVI file. It's size in the
hard drive file is 4.38 Gb about 21minutes of video. I can watch on the computer no problem.
As a side note I can copy DVDs without any problem. When I try to burn the file to DVD
using Vegas or Nero it will always freeze during transcoding and lock up my computer
(AVI to mpeg-2)I then have to restart my computer and start all over. It will convert about 10 minutes of video before this happens. I tried the free version of Winavi and it did burn onto a disc. It wouldn't play at all. I burned the hard drive VOB files using another piece of software and
it would play on the computer but not on the standalone Pioneer player. Even though I can see
that the disc burned, windows doesn't show any used disc space under properties
Computer specs are 2x 2.8Mhz intel Xeons, 2x 36Gb SCSI drives, 1.75Gb of ECC Ram
I am missing something in the equation I just don't know what.

AAArrrggghhh!!! Please Help, Thanks, Cam

[redwudz]

You might check your CPU temps during encoding. A overheated CPU can cause what your describe.

And you might try ConvertXToDVD, if you want one of the better All-in-One converters, and see how it does. If all encoding programs behave the same, it may be a hardware problem with the computer or your source files have some sort of problem. Having WinAVI output a bad file is normal. There are many better programs out there. Nero is good for burning, but not so good for encoding, authoring.

The better way is to use a standalone encoder. There are some freeware ones available in our 'Tools' section to the left. Or for easy to use, TMPGEnc encoder is a good choice. For authoring, TMPGEnc DVD Author or the freeware GUI for dvdauthor or DVDAuthorgui.

And welcome to our forums.