How to Convert AVIs to DVD? And Avoiding buying AVI DVDs

[VideoFanatic]

Conversion Question

I can only assume if someone has low file size AVIs that they are 25fps progressive which loses half the motion if the TV series was NOT shot on film. So how do people actually convert those AVIs to DVD if DVDs have to be interlaced? Or do they just sell the DVDs as data DVDs by copying and pasting the AVIs onto them?

I'd like to know so I can avoid buying DVDs like that.

I use Avisynth when re-encoding.

[Gregg]

It's not a problem to convert progressive AVI source to DVD. It will still look OK especially on a CRT TV but since you mentioned that the source could be of questionable quality maybe you shouldn't expect full DVD quality after conversion.

[VideoFanatic]

Can you please elaborate on how you convert progressive AVI to DVD? I assume the AVIs are 25fps progressive so how are you able to get the full motion back when converting to 576i DVD?

[manono]

So how do people actually convert those AVIs to DVD if DVDs have to be interlaced?

They don't have to be interlaced. Movies on PAL DVD are almost always progressive in nature. They are almost always encoded as interlaced. There's a big difference there. So, if the best you have is an AVI source, you can easily make a PAL DVD from it. And, since you know AviSynth and 'restoration' techniques, you can probably do a better job than he can. If it were I, I would have asked him for a sample of his work. Maybe it's too late for that.

Or do they just sell the DVDs as data DVDs by copying and pasting the AVIs onto them?

Didn't you say he was offering 2 different choices, AVI on (data) DVD and regular DVD video?

I can only assume the AVIs are 576p 25fps...

Without evidence, I wouldn't assume that at all. After all, most PAL DVDs when converted to XviD(?) AVI are cropped and then resized to something like 640x480.

If I were you and wanted to reassure myself about the quality I'd ask for a sample and if he refused I'd move on and look for it somewhere else. If he's on the level and proud of his work, he should be happy to provide a sample. Unless you pissed him off too much already.

I assume the AVIs are 25fps progressive so how are you able to get the full motion back when converting to 576i DVD?

If they were shot as interlaced video originally, then, of course you don't get back full motion. Not without frame interpolation. However, didn't you also say the video was fairly static? So it might not matter very much.

[VideoFanatic]

I'm aware PAL movie DVDs are progressive but encoded as interlaced. That's fine as they're shot on film. However TV series NOT shot on film that are AVIs, I can only assume are 25fps progressive and so half the motion is lost? They could be encoded to interlaced DVDs but obviously that's not going to restore the lost motion as half the motion was already lost by having the source in 25fps progressive. Your thoughts?

I was wondering, is it just a flag to set as interlaced or would they actually be re-interlaced? Would the re-interlaced framerate look as smooth as 25fps progressive or would it look worse?

If you read his home page he actually claims to do restoration himself. From speaking with him I tend to believe him but this AVI revelation has given me doubts about the quality.

I didn't say he converted the DVD to AVIs, his AVIs are the source which he converts to DVDs. But yes you're right they are probably something like 640 x 480.

Don't think I'll be asking him further questions. Seems like he just expects people to be grateful and accept whatever he's selling. Asking questions about the quality just seems to annoy him.

[manono]

However TV series NOT shot on film that are AVIs, I can only assume are 25fps progressive and so half the motion is lost?

It's This animated television series, right? I've never heard of an interlaced animation. My guess is it's natively progressive 25fps. Nothing is lost and you're worrying over nothing.

I didn't say he converted the DVD to AVIs, his AVIs are the source which he converts to DVDs.

I know you didn't say his source was a DVD. I was speaking of films on PAL DVD in general. Probably someone captured them, maybe on VHS tape originally, and he either made the caps himself or acquired the caps from somewhere, probably as the AVIs he used for the DVDs he made.

If he has a money-back guarantee, you could take a chance and buy them, but I doubt he'd make such an offer.

[VideoFanatic]

Yes that's the correct series but I don't know if I would class it as an animation. See for yourself: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BBQL4zsyKLk&list=PL0178DEAC92A634A5&index=1

Ignore the animated intro at the start. It has real life studio sections and other sections have a real person on an animated screen.

[jagabo]

No TV cartoon from 1987 would have been animated at 50 frames per second. Most of the animation will be at 12.5 fps, panning shots at 25 fps.

LOL. I watched on the first few seconds and thought it was a cartoon! I see it's live action mixed with animated effects now. The video at youtube has obviously been blend deinterlaced to 25p. My guess is the AVI files the guy has are the same. And hence the DVDs are the same.

On the other hand, there's not lots of motion so you won't be missing much.

[johnmeyer]

He has Series 3 - 8 on 12 single layer DVDs. Or he will sell his original sources which are AVIs on 2 DVDs.

I know nothing about this dealer. However, since the AVIs fit on only two DVDs whereas the MPEG-2 DVD version requires 12 DVDs, the AVIs must be compressed to within an inch of their life and I would agree that they are likely to be poor quality. The whole question of interlaced vs. progressive is minor compare to finding out about what compression and what pixel size is used.

I wonder if the "AVI" versions aren't something that was created from VCDs. VCDs were always progressive video, and had to be no more than 700 MB each. DVDs are a little more than 4,000 MB each. If one were to take the MPEG-1 video from a VCD and put that into an AVI wrapper, you could put almost six of them onto one DVD. and you'd end up with two DVDs containing "AVI" files.

Of course the single-layer DVDs may not be filled up all the way, and may actually be quite empty.

So, unless he can give you a sample of both the AVI and the DVD version so you can compare a few seconds from the same scene in each format, it will be difficult to answer any other questions.

[hech54]

First and foremost there is no such thing as an "AVI DVD". Think of it like you are buying video files that someone had to Drag And Drop to a USB stick....but he ran out of USB sticks to be put them on another kind of storage media....blank DVD media this time.

[PuzZLeR]

First and foremost there is no such thing as an "AVI DVD". Think of it like you are buying video files that someone had to Drag And Drop to a USB stick....but he ran out of USB sticks to be put them on another kind of storage media....blank DVD media this time.

As per "AVI DvD", it is, of course, not standard with DvD. Yes, likely all this is is just files on a storage medium, which just so happens to be a blank DvD disc.

But actually, years ago, DivX attempted something like this - an actual effort to create a somewhat standard new video disc format - with their *.divx file format, or enhanced AVI container. There was even software makers that signed on (such as from TMPGEnc) that would create menus, author, burn, etc, and such discs would be playable on DivX Certified players that had the "DivX Ultra" seal.

But I talk in past tense because I don't hear/read about it anymore. I think it was a great idea actually, and one that could have been extended to AVC, or even BD, but it was poorly executed, and much of it wasn't the fault of DivX. The software for it, at least at that time, was buggy, slow, or would insist on re-encoding, or would crash constantly. I don't think TMPGEnc, or others, took this project too seriously to be honest, which is likely what hurt consumer interest as a result IMO.

However, this was the closest thing to a genuine "AVI DvD" AFAIK.

AVCHD, or even blu-ray content burned on a DvD, can be something of an "AVC DvD", but again, this too is not standard. It was only relevant for an older era, when software/hardware choices were fewer, and/or empty blu-ray discs and burners were very expensive, etc. I don't see this developing either.

So, boys and girls, this endeth today's history lesson.

[DB83]

I might be mistaken, and I do not have the program to check this, but doesn't Nero do something in this regard ie put avi files on to a blank disk with a menu to play in a PC ?

Despite their claims, the people who run these trading sites neither have the skill or inclination to do any work on their material. Time is money. So they tend to use 'off the peg' tools and the fewer mouse-clicks the better. Nero certainly fits that category.

[hech54]

My point is....the OP is talking progressive, interlaced BLAH BLAH as if the USB stick (oops, I mean blank DVD) the files were placed on had any effect on said progressive, interlaced BLAH BLAH.
WRONG.

[PuzZLeR]

I might be mistaken, and I do not have the program to check this, but doesn't Nero do something in this regard ie put avi files on to a blank disk with a menu to play in a PC ?

Despite their claims, the people who run these trading sites neither have the skill or inclination to do any work on their material. Time is money. So they tend to use 'off the peg' tools and the fewer mouse-clicks the better. Nero certainly fits that category.

Maybe I missed this one, but I wouldn't be surprised. There was a time IIRC when Nero tried to be some sort of Sony, introducing propriety formats (of which many likely didn't catch on).

Then again, there still is NRG, but I still use ISO.

[PuzZLeR]

My point is....the OP is talking progressive, interlaced BLAH BLAH as if the USB stick (oops, I mean blank DVD) the files were placed on had any effect on said progressive, interlaced BLAH BLAH.
WRONG.

Oh, you didn't know? Burning things to blank discs or media sticks automatically deinterlaces them.

Kidding aside, this is partially true in that authoring MPEG-2 to a standard DvD has no need to de-interlace really, unless of course you're looking to save space. Of course, I too DOUBT that this would apply to the "AVI DvD" mentioned here, or any other "AVI DvD" formats discussed here.

[lordsmurf]

You bought a bootleg from an idiot.

That's all that this is.

[johnmeyer]

A lot of speculation, but not a lot of help for the OP.

OK, so you have 25 fps progressive AVIs burned as data files on a DVD. Nothing unusual about that. You believe that the original program was interlaced PAL video, not 24p progressive film that was re-timed to play at 25 fps progressive, which is how most films are transferred to DVD in "PAL land."

There are many scripts that will do what you want, but the following is a typical one that you will find posted in many places. It is more or less the same as the example code in the MVTools2 documentation. I'm doing a render, as I write this, using a variation of this script. In my case I needed it because I used the "low light" setting on my camcorder which caused the camcorder to record in 29.97 progressive instead of 29.97 interlaced. I want the footage to match the three other cameras I was using in the shoot, so I want to change from progressive to interlaced while keeping the fps the same.

Here is the script. Feel free to experiment with different settings. I generally find that the larger block size of 16 works better than 8 or 4 when doing MFlow work. For denoising, the smaller block sizes often produce better results.

# Convert 25p progressive camera movies to 50i (i.e., 25 fps interlaced)
loadplugin("C:\Program Files\AviSynth 2.5\plugins\MVTools\mvtools2.dll") 

blocksize=16
over=4

source=AVISource("E:\myvideo.avi")
superfps= MSuper(source,pel=2)
backward_vec2 = MAnalyse(superfps, isb = true,blksize=blocksize,overlap=over)
forward_vec2  = MAnalyse(superfps, isb = false,blksize=blocksize,overlap=over)
MFlowFps(source,superfps, backward_vec2, forward_vec2, num=50, den=1, ml=200)
SeparateFields()
SelectEvery(4,0,3)
output=Weave()
return output

[PuzZLeR]

Assuming they're 640x480, personally, I would just encode to MPEG-2/DvD by slowing the video to 24fps with 3:2 pulldown flag, changing the size to 720 with Lanczos4Resize, and slowing the audio to 0.96 (or 1/0.96 depending on software) for NTSC DvD, or would just re-encode straight to 25fps (with disregard to the interlacing options) and Lanczos4Resize to 720x576 for PAL, and be done with it.

There are several methods for doing the above, and PAR adjustments should be built in to the encoder.