AVi to SVCD/DVD questions

[cjstylee]

I was tinkering around with ways I could lighten the load for my hard drive, and I figured I could burn a bunch of my .avi files onto a couple of DVD's(and make them playable in DVD players). DVD Lab came bundled with my DVD Writer so I have the means to make a nice organized menu and even have chapter points, etc.

The problem however is converting those AVI's to MPEG form so they 1) have no loss of quality and 2) will be streams that will be recognized by a DVD player. I have used AVI2DVD and CuCuSoft Video Converter and they have done the job, but not well. There is a MAJOR loss of quality from the original( blocky picture and sometimes the screen jiggles), but that was because I converted them to SVCD and I read that you will have lots of degredation in quality if you convert an AVI to MPEG. I read the proper tutorials on how to use those programs and select the right options so that the end product should match the original but have had no luck.

My question is, in order to get the full quality of the movie do I have to convert the AVI file to DVD format? If so does that mean I can only burn one movie to a DVD5 and what is the BEST program for AVI to DVD conversion?

[redwudz]

If you want to play them on a settop DVD player, yes, you have to convert them to MPEG-2.

For the best quality, it's all in the encoder settings. I use TMPGEnc encoder and author. Both have a trial version.

The files, if they are, say DIVX or XVID, will become much larger. Typically a 700MB file will be 1.5G or larger, depending on the encoder settings.

If you have XVIDs or DIVX files, try VSO DivXToDVD. It works well and is freeware.

For other AVI files, TMPGEnc or similar stand alone encoders are generally the way to go for the best quality.

[cjstylee]

If the finished file is 1.5G, is there any way to put atleast two files on one DVD?

[ZippyP.]

If the finished file is 1.5G, is there any way to put atleast two files on one DVD?

Yes, when you author your DVD you can create a menu to select the title.

[cjstylee]

Used TMPGEnc to convert avi into mpeg2, worked beautifully. Only one problem, no audio came along with it! Did it not include the audio into the converted mpeg because I only have the trial software?

[cjstylee]

Used TMPGEnc to convert avi into mpeg2, worked beautifully. Only one problem, no audio came along with it! Did it not include the audio into the converted mpeg because I only have the trial software?

FYI: For Stream type I selected "System(Video+Audio)"

[mats.hogberg]

Did it not include the audio into the converted mpeg because I only have the trial software?

No, the audio in the AVI is probably in a format TMPGEnc can't understand.
Extract audio and decode to wav. Encode audio to DVD specs audio (MP2 with toolame, AC3 with ffmpeggui)
Encode video only to DVD specs m2v
Author.

/Mats

[cjstylee]

Thanks for all the help and advice, conversion problems are no more.