Various Media to DVD

[cyruscloud]

I am currently looking into purchasing an external DVD writer as well am researching software to get my videos onto DVD for playback on standard players. I have pretty good knowledge on video formats and editing but not much on DVD authoring as I have yet to own a DVD writer and only got a DVD recorder for my TV several months ago.

My question is basically to get opinions on what software more experience individuals here believe would work better for my purpose.

I have videos of different types and sizes typically AVI's with Divx or Xvid compression but sometimes mkv with vorbis audio and such. Video sizes seem to differ amongst them though such as 560 x 272, 592 x 288, 528 x 256 or 720 x 576 all are near 16x9 ratios but not all exactly.

I've looked into software such as dvdflick, convertx2dvd and TMPGEnc DVD Author 3.0

All seem to do basically what I want, dvdflick missing menus and for some reason convertx2dvd wouldn't load one divx file but did load xvid files and other divx files, while dvdflick was able to load the divx file that convertx2dvd couldn't. TMPGEnc DVD Author 3.0 seems like the one with more options.

So basic question straight out, I want to take one or more videos as I described them put them onto dvd with a simple menu to choose between the different videos if more than one. As well I want it to be able to convert them to NTSC as well as add black bars to maintain the video sizes for the nonperfect 16x9 videos.

I know that is a mouth full but while research each the question of the video sizes still bothers me as well I don't know if there is another software that I have overlooked so far that would work better than any of the 3 described. I don't really need really special menus or anything but the options would be nice if I ever wanted to, options for subtitles and dual audio is ok but doubt I would actually use it I doubt non english videos would leave my pc.

So any thoughts anyone that can help me out desciding on this. I don't have my dvd writer yet but I have been look through the software prior.

[Bjs]

Welcome cyruscloud

Start with , gspot ... whats what internally , and super ... many functions and dose a good job at conversion between pal > nstc > pal fps ... convert stubborn files .

Both , should be in your kit

Problem is you will need to place clips onto a background or to add bars to keep their proportions correct from what your saying .

Ulead video studio , but file needs to be of a supported type .
Wax2 , same problems .

You can do almost anything with freeware , those on this site , other places , and they are well supported by guides , both this forum and others .

Answers are usually not very far away when you get stuck .

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As you have found , video conversion isn't plain sailing ... you'll find one conversion program works , or need to use another in order to convert what you have , to what you need .

Imgburn will do the burning for you , so thats one problem cured .

I have an lg external burner ... just remember to set the burn speed to 4x ... 8x max .
Connect unit to pc , then turn the external unit on and go .
Remove it by using the removal icon in system tray first , turn it off , remove cable from pc connected to unit .
And put it somewhere , where you wont trip over it .

[cyruscloud]

Figured out a temporary solution till I figure out future methods I would rather use, this has probably been discussed here before but maybe for anyone looking and has these devices laying around it's an option they might of missed.

Basically I'm using my xbox360 to view my videos on the tv but running it through my dvd recorder first, so boom recording them straight to dvd and letting my pc and xbox working out the transcoding.

Details are like this, PC on a home network, xbox360 on the network, use tversity software on the pc as a media server to play divx and xvid files in a way the xbox can use since it normally only runs wmv or mpeg2. With that done as I said, xbox in through dvd recorder and record what I'm playing, quality is pretty good, some differences and doubt you'd want to try this with HD or anything but for videos like I was mentioning it works pretty well. Unfortunatly that one video I mentioned convertx2dvd wouldn't load also didn't work on the xbox must be some odd encoding on it somewhere, details from gspot looked pretty normal, going to find a new version of it or reencode it one. For time being though one way to get my videos on dvd.

[Bjs]

Just a thought ... the xbox360 output is interlaced and connecting straight to dvd recorder isn't recommended .

Mine : xbox360 > tv > tv outputs > dvd recorder = colour .
Hdv output on the xbox360 is only if you have a tv that supports hdv ... or the xbox360 denies output ... it detects this .
At this time , anything that can record in hdv format , and connect to the xbox360 output , would be extremely expensive .

You'll want to have a look at what is supported for the xbox360 :

http://www.xbox.com/en-US/support/systemuse/xbox360/digitalmedia/videoplaybackfaq.htm

As for that clip ... it isn't to common to get hold of a clip which appears normal , yet provides a challenge to convert over , which is why super might be handy ... although I would suspect its an issue with the audio type included .

Watch out for clips using licensing scheme's ... you need to remove this before it can be converted .

[cyruscloud]

So what are you saying the down point is really. I onyl have a standard definition tv, and tested what I prior mentioned and it turned out a pretty sharp looking video, sound working fine on my 5.1 setup and video looked good. I'm just running RCA cables out of the xbox360 into the input1 of my emerson dvd recorder which usually I have my directv going into. No issues that I have found so far.