Please recommend a video tool tha does all this

[perfection]

Can members recommend a video tool that does all the following
It i usual for me to convert xvid films to dvd and what i require is

01. A 2 pass VBR encoding choice
02. Smart rendering of compliant mpeg
03. DVD authoring (all aspects)

Nero Vision, a part of the Nero suite can do all this but i do want to install Nero due to recent disappointments

If one tool cannot do this please feel fre to recommend two tools and they need NOT be freeware.

I do not mind complex tools as i love learning stuff!

[steptoe]

For 110% freeware, have a look at AVI2ISO, for commercial have a look at ConvertXtoDVD

Both will do exactly what you want in one package. AVI2ISO produces better quality but is much slower due to the software it uses and the fact it takes the video apart and rebuild it to match the best bitrate it can

I use ConvertXtoDVD myself for AVI's back to DVD


AVI2ISO uses avisynth so has a lot of power to be able to fine tune the source to get the best out of it, but isn't to easy to use as its got a lot more power than ConvertXtoDVD


With ConvertXtoDVD I can convert basically any 700MB AVI back to DVD within 10 minutes, then 8 minutes to burn it to DVD, it can handle virtually any video file, including AVI, MKV, MPG and so on. But that is with an Intel Q6600 running at 3.2ghz

The bigger the video file the more work it has to do, so it will be slower. A full resolution 1920x1080 MKV vmovi etakes about an hour to convert, but the final quality is very high

Its very simple to use, but could do with the option of using external encoders like HCEnc ... but they are not interested in adding this option to add true 2-pass encoding

ConvertXtoDVD has basic menu options but thats about it


Just reading your post again, also have a look at TMPgenc Authoring Works v4.xx. Its a full package and can author blu-rays as well as DVD's and now supports CUDA. So if you have an nvidia GFX card that is the 8 series and above will be much much faster in some of the things it does as it can use the power of your GFX card to do the hard work