Converting AVI to VCD and onto a DVD

[999life]

Hi, I'm hoping someone can help me out here. I have 12 episodes of a series on my hard drive in AVI format, I want to convert them to VCD format and then put them onto a DVD if possible so I will only need 2 discs instead of 12 and can play them on my DVD player. I can convert them to VCD but nero won't let me burn them to DVD, is there any other or better way of doing this. Any help is much apperciated.

[guns1inger]

You don't have to convert them to VCD to start with. You can use VCD resolution, but mpeg2 with a higher bitrate than VCD so they are at least watchable.

That said, to author VCD to DVD you have to a) Demux the video and audio from the VCD structures, b) increase the sample rate of the audio from 44.1khz to 48khz, and c) author a DVD with the video and audio.

If you use TDA for authoring you can just demux the mpeg streams, load them into TDA and let TDA convert the audio for you. While there you can set up the menus and create a DVD ready for burning. TDA has a 30 day fully working demo version for download.

[SingSing]

A VCD can take about 60 minutes of video. So 12 avi does not means 12 VCD, or 2 DVD. It depends on the length of the video.

You need to use TMPGenc to re-encode the AVI to VCD mpeg1, then use TMPGenc DVDauthor to compile them into a DVD, then use Nero to burn them into a DVD.

[yoda313]

It depends on the length of the video.

Well sort of. You can fit 80 minutes of vcd video on a 80 minute cdr. You can fit a lot more on a dvd even if you reencode to mepg2 if you use the right bitrate and maybe use halfd1 resolution.

Try using the videohelp bitrate calculator and you can choose the proper bitrate to encode the avi's to dvd mpeg2 quality and skip the conversion to vcd. You'll probably get a better picture and you won't end up using as many dvds as you might think. However single layer discs are so cheap these days it really shouldn't be a problem to use a few.

[SingSing]

mpeg-2 with low bit rate, normally break up pretty bad.

[guns1inger]

Not so bad if you lower the resolution. Lower resolution = less video data required = lower bitrate. Picture quality still suffers because the resolution is low, but you might get better than VCD quality, which is a good thing.

[SingSing]

Did a quick calculation. You can put about 7 hours of VCD quality Video on a DVDR. You can also put about 3 hours of glitch-free DVD video on the same DVDR. With DVDR at $0.20 a piece. I will do DVD, instead of VCD video on DVD.

The only time I do VCD video on DVD, is I can't find the source material, so I wouldn't want another re-encoding, to further degrade the VCD quality video I am stucked with.

[jimmalenko]

http://members.dodo.net.au/~jimmalenko/AVI2DVD.htm might assist. A lot depends on the running time of each AVI, but that's where a bitrate calculator and a suitable frame size come in invaluable.