DVD???

[crossing23]

I just finally learned after 6 wks, how to finally burn a downloaded movie onto a DVD Disc.

Now I am so excited about finally accomplishing this, that now I have no choice but to run out and buy me a DVD Player, so I can watch the movies on my Big Screen TV.

What I would like to know is, I am authoring and burning these in the DVD Format, not vcd or svcd etc...am I doing the right thing, will they play on my DVD Player when I get one.

The Burner I have is the SONYDRU-500A.

Marilyn

[Sefy]

Regarding if they will play, that depends on the DVD you buy, if it can handle
DVD-R/+R media, check before you buy would be a good advice

Regarding if it's the right thing, personaly, I think it's a waste of a DVD media
to spend on a movie you downloaded from the net, the quality is hurrible

[rhegedus]

Yes, you are definately doing the right thing. The quality jump is huge: think of a picture in 255 colours compared to 32K colours. You get my drift.

As Sefy says, an important consideration is the media that the new player will play. Go to:

https://www.videohelp.com/dvdplayers

an click on all the things you want it to be able to play. There are loads of players that can play VCD, SVCD, DVD-R, DVD-RW, DVD+R, DVD+RW etc, so it will probably come down to personal preference between brands and what you can buy locally.

A quick bit of advice that you probably already know. ALWAYS make your first burn on RW, then test it on the DVD player and big screen etc. If you like it, burn it to R. If not, you haven't wasted your money on a coaster!

Good luck,

Rob

[Sefy]

@Rob, I'd like to know why you think burning a DivX movie which was d/l
from the net and burned into a DVD-R media will give it high quality ?

[crossing23]

Thanks to both of you for getting back to me so quickly!

Rob I really want to thank you for that great piece of advice about first burning on a RW...never gave it a thought...I wish I had asked this question before I ended up throwing out 6 dvd's in basket.

I know I must be a slow learner,(6wks) and I have alot more to learn, but you cannot even imagine how happy I am to have guys like you around to help us!

Keep up the good work

Marilyn

[Sefy]

Keep the input coming, and we'll do our best to help you out

[rhegedus]

Sorry - didn't read the post fully, bleary eyes and all. Was explaining the jump from dl movie to a DVD rip.

However, from my own experience, most dl movies are 700-800Mb avi files (or multiples thereof). In order to put these on a reasonable number (say 2) of VCDs or even SVCDs, there will be a drop in quality of the end product. However, the 4.3G of space that a DVDR affords will ensure that when the avi file(s) is encoded to DVD format there will be no loss of quality.

At least, this is what I'm assuming the question is about: dl avi to VCD/SVCD vs DVD.

Regards,

Rob

[crossing23]

I would like to ask just one more question regarding this. I am converting the movie from avi format to mpeg.
Is this a good thing to do?

I really just want to buy a dvd player and watch them on tv.

thanks again,
Marilyn

[Sefy]

This depends on the quality of your AVI, personaly, as i've mentioned earlier
I don't think DivX is good source to waste a DVD media, you can however do
some good quality VCD's or SVCD's.

Or if you insist on doing DVDR's, I suggest you put several movies on single
media, atleast, this is my personal opinion.

[rhegedus]

Well, if you want to watch it on a stand alone DVD player then you're going to have to change it to mpeg1 or 2. How you watch it is up to you, but it will depend on how much you can buy your DVD media for. If you can get it for 1$/1£ a piece then I think putting it onto DVD is the best option, since I don't think it's worth the time to split it over x number of VCDs/SVCDs. Just set the bitrate high enough so that the film fills the DVD or if the increased bitrate yields no further increase in quality, then put 2 films on the DVD (you still should get SVCD quality, at least).

Regards,

Rob

[Craig Tucker]

Some divx films are superb quality, particularly the 2 disc ones. 1.4GB of compressed divx for a 90 min film can yield excellent results. If the source is good enough then I think it is worth putting onto DVD, there is a minority report rip going about that is 3x700MB files (2.1GB in total). I have encoded some at 5mb/s and put them on 1 DVD and they look superb, far better than VCD or SVCD and on 1 disc, rather than 2 or 3. Admittedly there are some poor divx rips out there and it is not worth putting these on DVD, but there are also some excellent ones which imho are worth putting on DVD. It is also as cheap (near enough) to put a film on 1 DVD, than it is to split it over 3 SVCD's. I pay £0.59 for DVD-R and £0.19 for CDR.

[ackovski]

sorry to interrupt the theme... Craig, i have Pionner A05, but had troubles with several brands od DVDs so far, only few work good but are too expensive ... what kind of media are you using and where do you buy it from
ackovski@yahoo.com
thanks in front![/i]

[Craig Tucker]

I use zero defex from here

http://www.cd-rmedia.co.uk/cgi-bin2/cdrmedia/listproducts.pl?type=specific&catid=8&manufacturer=9

I have had a few coasters but not too many, some of my friends have reported that the discs I have made do not play correctly in their players, they skip and pixellate towards the end of the disc, but they play in my DVD players ok. My burner is a Pioneer A04

[ackovski]

thanks

[Sefy]

@Rob, I agree with you and Craig that some DivX/XviD do have superb
play back quality, however, encoding, weather it is to VCD/SVCD or DVD
always will reduce quality!

Why do I say that ? cause you have a highly compressed source, and it
will be further compressed, even if the compression is minimal, it is still
encoded and encoding reduces quality.

I Recall the very first DVD's that came out, god they had hurrible artifacts
on them, quality was revolting! you could see the pixels and everything!
which is why i'll never understand why people get so hyper/excited when
they hear a word called: Digital (Phones/TV/Cables/Movies...)

My Dad has a cellular phone which was Analog and it had better quality
and reception then the Digital model which came later, and with Digital,
every bit of interuption/interference in playback you can immediatly see
hurrible glips in picture.

[rhegedus]

@Sefy,

I'm not so sure about loss of quality. I've downloaded numerous films as 7-800Mb avi's and encoded to mpeg2 for DVD. I've always set the bitrate to fill the DVD, and have not noticed any loss in quality over the original avi - and that's viewed in a 28" widescreen compared to a 19" monitor.

I know that some avis use some pretty good codecs to get the best quality, but I don't understand how going from a 800Mb avi to a 4.3Gb mpeg will result in less quality.

Best wishes,

Rob

p.s. before someone mentions piracy, I've subsequently bought or rented the DVDs of all the films I've downloaded to re-pay what I've used.

[Sefy]

@Rob, no matter how much bitrate you give, you are still encoding, which is
a compression, even if the bitrate you give is higher then the source, it only
tries to cover for the loss of quality you will have.

Even if it's not noticeable to you, the loss is still there, i'll try giving a rather
drastic example to clarify what I mean:

You have a 32x32 resolution image, you compressed it to JPG, to your eyes
there is barely to no loss in quality (just like WAV to MP3) but when you take
that JPG and Encode it again to something else, even higher quality, you are
simply enhancing the defects that already exist in the JPG itself.

Uncompressed AVI to DivX to DVD = Uncompressed AVI ?
What you are saying would be like, because you encoded the DivX into DVD
then Quality has increased, which is incorrect, since DVD is MPEG2 Encoding
and that means there will always be loss, even if you can't see it yourself.

[rhegedus]

Uncompressed AVI to DivX to DVD = Uncompressed AVI ?
What you are saying would be like, because you encoded the DivX into DVD
then Quality has increased, which is incorrect, since DVD is MPEG2 Encoding
and that means there will always be loss, even if you can't see it yourself.

If I can't see the loss then I won't worry about it.

The question was whether encoding to DVD would be preferable to vcd/svcd (and if it would work etc). We all have our opinions about the quality obtained, but the size of DVD media gives you more room to explore the possibilities.

Regards,

Rob

[Sefy]

@Rob, just cause you can't see it, you can't say it isn't there

I Was simply stating that even if you are encoding to DVD, there is still some
lose of quality because of the extra compression.

Saying that there is no loss in quality would simply be inaccurate and I think
a bit misleading

[rhegedus]

Sefy,

You seem quite insistant on forcing a mute point here.

All I'm saying is that it would be preferable to watch an avi encoded to DVD rather than as a VCD/SVCD or to sit infront of a PC monitor to watch an avi.

As for the 'loss of quality', I had not noticed any. If I were to press pause and count the pixels/blocks instead of watching and enjoying the film then maybe I'd find some problems with the quality. But I won't.

Regards,

Rob

[Sefy]

My Apologies Rob,

I Didn't mean for it to sound that way, I agree with you that it would be more
preferable, I just wanted to make sure that others who may read this, won't
think that because you burned the DivX as a DVD it has increased it's quality

I Ment no harm or to press an issue, just wanted to make it clear for others.
My Sincere Apologies if you misunderstood my intention.

[SaSi]

May I add my humble view and experience on the topic?

A DivX movie, as already stated, is not neccecarily a bad quality one. It can be very high quality if enough bitrate is allocated, just like MPEG-2. Low bitrate (or Quality Index) results in low quality, whatever encoding scheme one chooses.

I have encoded DVD MPEG-2 streams into DivX with max. quality (Q=2) and the result was sometimes a 1.9Gb file and in other cases (more commonly) a 6Gb file. It depends on the content of the movie and the quality settings selected in the original encoding. (Just as one pointed out that quality will not increase).

I have also found (by experiment) that similar (carefully chose this word) quality in MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 (DivX) means almost 2:1 file size (and bitrate). MPEG-2 requires more bitrate to have "similar" quality.

Therefore, if the DivX AVI file is 300Mb in size (a TV episode of 45min can be perfectly acceptable there), to have the same quality in MPEG-2 one needs ~600Mb. Since this can be stored on a CD, why waste a DVD for it? For only one reason and that is compatibility. If the original AVI file has a 2kbps bitrate, you need 4kbps in MPEG-2 and not many DVD players will be able to play that in SVCD format (forget VCD).

So, there are cases where to preserve the quality, you need to go to DVD standard MPEG-2 (which can mean 4kbps VBR) and the only media to recod will either be a DVD or a cDVD (which is a CD). If a player cannot play the cDVD, then you must make a DVD. I would collect a bunch of such movies and record them all together on a DVD with a selection menu (to avoid wasting over 3.6Gb of DVDr space.

To the other extreme, episode versions in DivX or WMV or ASF with a file size of 30Mb are a waste for a DVD. Best thing to do with them is make a VCD. Apparently, because TV screen phosphor has a slow response (compared with the High Quality computer screens), the low quality and pixelation of the movie is somewhat smoothened on TV. Having said that, an episode on 30Mb is unviewable.

[rhegedus]

@Sefy

No problems

Thanks for clearing up a few points for me.

Best wishes,

Rob

[cmsurfer]

crossing23 - I have the Sony DRU-500AX. I bought the Mintek DVD-1600 standalone player. It plays absolutely anything and everything I throw at it from my burner. DVD's, Picture CD's, VCD, SVCD, Music CD, and even raw format mpegs... The player is only around $50. Worth every penny!!

Hope this helps...