AVI formats to DVD format

[killswitch77]

After hours of searching I've come across tons of programs and having trouble on deciding which one I should stick with. I have mostly AVI videos with DivX or Xvid encodings. I would like to convert these movie files into a DVD format so that I could play them on any DVD player that does NOT support DivX or Xvid playback. I know there are a lot of opinions out there and would like to hear what people have to say, tailored to my issue here.

Things I would like to keep in mind:
1. How long it takes to convert is not a big issue
-Willing to wait longer for better quality
2. Ease/Complexity of use
-Willing to spend more time getting the audio synced correctly
-Willing to spend more time getting the resolution converted correctly so nothing is cutoff (whether it's a widescreen or full screen movie/video)
3. What are the program's Pros and Cons?
4. Only concerned about converting AVI files in this post

Is there any other information anyone is looking for or need? Don't hesitate to ask .
I appreciate any help and the time given by the users at videohelp.com.

Thank you

[daamon]

Hi killswitch77,

Welcome to the forums.

I've never used it, but ConvertXToDVD is regularly recommended for Divx / Xvid AVI's to DVD format files.

[kschang]

You pretty much have two choices if you want a single button push:

Divx2DVD (or its payware cousin ConvertX2DVD) is decent but may not fully use your DVD, but then, I doubt you can tell the difference.

For tools that depends on VDubMod and free Encoders... It's usually AVI2DVD, or FAVC, which basically is the same tools with different GUI.

Or you can go full manual... Test the AVI in VDubMod, write a line to load the AVI in AVISYNTH script and resize and process, then feed the script to an MPEG2 encoder, then finally author with DVDAuthorGUI or similar programs and burn.

[mwkurt]

Hello,

This is a process that I do and have done many times. I have used two programs mainly to do this. The one that I use mostly is SVCD2DVD the other is ConvertX2DVD. Both of these programs will do what you want to do in a "One click mode". Neither are hard to learn. I believe that both have demos that are fully functional to try out.
Here are the pros and cons of both in my opinion:
SVCD2DVD
Pro - Ability to add DVD compliant mpeg files to your project and they will ot be re-encoded.
Pro - Abilty to add assets of different resolutions to your project. (Each in own VTS)
Pro - Drag and drop of assets, couldn't be easier.
Pro - Abilty to change the output resolution of your DVD files through registry settings.
Pro - Very helpful author (Chrissyboy)
Pro - Able to align your menu items where you want them on the menu.
Pro - Does two pass encoding.
Con - Can only have one menu per DVD. This can be somewhat confining sometimes.
ConvertX2DVD
Pro - Able to use more than one menu.
Con - Not able to place your menu items where you want them.
Con - Will only render DVD Mpeg to Full D1 specs
Pro - Has three different quality settings for output.
Con - Will re-encode mpeg assets.
Pro - Abiltity to specify how your DVD will play. (Looped, back to menu, etc)

Both of these programs will do PAL to NTSC, add pullup and basically whatever you need it to do if you are in NTSC land.
Both will convert your assets and put them on DVD with the audio and video in sync as long as you assets are in full sync before adding them to your project.
Along these lines, your should insure that your Divx/Xvid files are in sync before adding them to either application. I do and I never have sync issues any more. It is very simple to do and only takes a few seconds per file. I use AVIMuxGUI. You don't have to worry about any calculations or offsets or whatever. Please see the post in this link:
https://forum.videohelp.com/viewtopic.php?p=1338598#1338598

If you follow this procedure with all of your files you should not have any sync issues, ever! As a side, even if your Divx file does not appear to be out of sync when playing it, it still could be. So save yourself the time and trouble and use AVIMuxGUI first.
Hope this helps you out a little!
Mark

[killswitch77]

Thanks for the welcoming daamon and thanks to everyone recomending those programs! Lovin the list of pros and cons you gave mwkurt and AVIMuxGUI looks like a great tool!

I still had some questions though:
I'm really looking for a converter right now and not just a simple 'one click program'. I think that AVIMuxGUI tool will work great for keeping any audio, of the unconverted AVI, in sync.

What do you all think would be "the best" program to get the video and audio quality at its maximum potential?

Would I need to do any resizing or does this depend on my source file(s)?

Is it possible for an AVI converting program to make the audio out of sync even after if I synced the audio before converting?


To kschang:
---"Divx2DVD (or its payware cousin ConvertX2DVD) is decent but may not fully use your DVD, but then, I doubt you can tell the difference. "---

What exactly did you mean not fully using the DVD? Taking up space or quality?

Thanks again for the help!

[mistycat]

AviMux-Gui works great on files that show a constant sync issue but , for files that gradually lose sync after conversion, is there any way of fixing this? AviMux-Gui shows a delay of 0 ms on these files and doesn't seem to help them. Thanks BTW, another vote for ConvertXtoDVD (kschanq means space not quality) and another pro would be its support of AC3 audio but being unfamilar with SVCD2DVD, it may as well. Never used this but I understand CCE is very good but complicated. There are guides around for it though.

[mwkurt]

SVCD2DVD does support AC3 audio and will in fact convert mp3 audio to AC3 for compliancy.
As far as a Divx file that gradually goes off sync, I can honestly say that if AVImuxGUI says that the offset is 0, I have never had a sync issue. Guess I am just lucky. Have you tried converting this file that says "0 offset" to DVD and had it be out of sync?
Mark

[mistycat]

No, but I've had files that showed 0 delay in AviMux-Gui go out of sync but never with a constant sync loss. Unfortunately, I no longer have the file. From now on, I'll run all files regardless of what they show and see how that goes.

[killswitch77]

Having some problems over here with [u]DVD2SVCD[/u]:

I followed some guidelines I found, installed TMPGEnc (30 day trial), and the ASPI drivers needed for DVD2SVCD

Played with a few settings and preview looked perfect. Found that 'Motion search precision' set at Highest Quality was going to take over 10 hours. Cancled that and then changed it to 'Motion estimate search' after deciding that I'll just give it a lower quality test run just to see if this will actually work.

After a little over 3 hours of converting I get the following message in my Log window:

Executing DVDAuthor. Commandline:
"
C:\Programs\DVD2SVCD\DVDAuthor\dvdauthor.exe" -x "C:\Documents and Settings\ra1\Desktop\first run\DVDAuthor.xml"
DVDAuthor failed for unknown reasons!
For details open: "C:\Documents and Settings\ra1\Desktop\first run\DVDAuthor_log.txt"

Which says:
"DVDAuthor::dvdauthor, version 0.6.11.
Build options: gnugetopt iconv freetype
Send bugs to <dvdauthor-users@lists.sourceforge.net>

INFO: Locale=C
INFO: Converting filenames to US-ASCII
INFO: dvdauthor creating VTS
STAT: Picking VTS 01

STAT: Processing C:\Documents and Settings\ra1\Desktop\first run\MPlex_Muxed_File00.mpg...
ERR: Error opening C:\Documents and Settings\ra1\Desktop\first run\MPlex_Muxed_File00.mpg: No such file or directory
"


After searching on Google I found that other people were having the same problem for a while and no one has seem to find a solution for this error!....or I just haven't found one posted.



In my output folder I have a bunch of files where some are:
"Encoded_Video_TMPGEnc_NTSC.mpv" (over 4GB)
"Encoded_audio_1.mpa" (1.067GB)
"Encoded_audio_1.mpa.wav" (1.067GB)
"Extracted_audio_1.mpa" (101MB)

The files seem to play seperately fine but now i need to combine them and make my DVD files. Is there another way I can do this maybe? I downloaded dvdauthor on its own from their website but having trouble compiling the files to set it up and make it run. Is there another program or way I can do this?

Thank you

[killswitch77]

Wow...it took me all night last night, but I finally got it goin, burned the dvd and put in my lightscribe image. Works great on each dvd player I have here.

Turns out I found some solutions online for my problem that got me started and hopefully this petty little thing wont arise again. I was probably better off starting over but going through the lines of code and changing some gave me some self satisfaction being a 3rd year college electrical engineer

Thanks for everyone's help!