TV seasons to DVD disk.

[Mark121]

Hello there,

I'm new to most DVD burning and I have a complete season of a TV show I'd like to convert onto DVD's instead of keeping them on my computer, so I can watch them on my DVD player. The season is in HD and there is 22 EP's in the season roughly around 350mb's per EP. I only have normal DVD's that can hold around 4.5gig.

What would be the best program to use to convert all these EP's and how would I go about putting multi EP's on one disk, while having the freedom to choose which one I wanted to watch, without having to fast forward?

Might be kind of stupid, but I have no idea. Thanks and all options would be a great help.

[guns1inger]

a) they are not HD. They may have been taken from HD broadcasts, but any semblance of HD-ness left them long ago when they were crushed down to 350 MB.

b) How much you can fit on a disc is based purely on the bitrate you use and the quality hit you are prepared to take. If you convert these to DVD then you will limited to 3 episodes per disc without further compromising the quality you have. You can use DVD Flick or FAVC to create a DVD out of episodes. FAVC will give you a basic menu, DVD Flick wont.

c) Your best option is to get a player that will play Divx/Xvid files without conversion. You can then put 10 - 12 episodes per disc. You won't get fancy menus or chapters, but you will be able to choose which episode to play, and you won't have to convert them.

[IKnowNothing]

Firstly I agree with all that guns1inger about using a player which plays DivX directly.

However if like me you don't want to have to replace the half dozen or so DVD players dotted around the house you can get away with up to 6 42 minute episodes (or 4 hours) on a 4.5GB DVD+R.
In my experience this gives a similar quality to broadcast tv (in the UK at least) which for most people is adequate.

Personally I use NeroVision so I get menus and chapters and it adjusts the compression to near enough fill the DVD

M

[Fipsy]

Well option c would suck when those eps are MP4. Or can modern dvd players handle that too?
And I wouldn't go over 3h on a dvd-5, unless the source quality is already that bad that it doesn't matter.

[RobAdam]

After dvd flick can you go str8 to GUIauthor for DVD?

I wanna do the same as Mark, but FAVC is not doing the job for me at all...
EDIT:

DVDflick tells me when i open it....

"Error occurred during startup Number 7 from prjDVDFlick: Out of memory"

[guns1inger]

similar quality to broadcast tv (in the UK at least)

UK TV must look pretty crappy. Even the 350 MB versions are low quality compared to our SD broadcasts. Recompressing them to fit 6 episodes to a disc will make the quality very poor indeed.

But each to their own

[RobAdam]

Ive got 350MB avis on dvd and they look fine, perfectly acceptable, and thats on a 40" tv right up close....the opnly thing is you can only have 3 episodes per disc....are you by ay chance burnign the same as me...heroes?

[jman98]

Ive got 350MB avis on dvd and they look fine, perfectly acceptable, and thats on a 40" tv right up close....the opnly thing is you can only have 3 episodes per disc....are you by ay chance burnign the same as me...heroes?

You're talking about converting to DVD format. The other posters are talking about leaving the shows in Divx format and burning data discs. And you can have more than 3 episodes per discs. The quality will suffer with each additional episode you try to squeeze on, but it can be done. You're a new member so I just wanted to point out that there is no limit to episodes per disc according to DVD standards, but your authoring software may have some limit with it. It's best not to say things like "you can only have 3 episodes per disc" because that is an absolute statement and it is not correct. I could put 6 episodes of Heroes on a single layer DVD if I wanted to. There is nothing in the standards for DVD that would prohibit this. The quality of these episodes would not be good so that may not be a great idea, but it is possible. This is why it's best to avoid saying absolutes like you did.

[RobAdam]

ok cool, i cant seem to put more than 3 on, im hvaing problems authoring, the only way i can do it is renaming the mpg files that DVDFlick creates and using those in the main menu of GUIauthorforDVD to create a menu.

For some reaosn GUi ahtes the m2v files and fails everytime, this seems to be working, could you explain how with DVDflick i can get more than 3 episodes on a DVD?

[lordsmurf]

You're using crappy software. Use something better.

Use TMPGEnc Plus (or some other encoder of choice, like MainConcept, CCE, Procoder, etc) and convert to a compliant MPEG-2 for DVD file. Then take those in author in something, with menus like you want. I suggest TDA or SVCD2DVD.

Those "all in one" programs give you amateur-looking crap with low quality.

[Krispy Kritter]

Ive got 350MB avis on dvd and they look fine, perfectly acceptable, and thats on a 40" tv right up close....the opnly thing is you can only have 3 episodes per disc....are you by ay chance burnign the same as me...heroes?

There is a big difference between "acceptable" and HD quality. With a quality DVD player, you can likely see a difference between your "acceptable" discs and the original DVD's. Neither compare to the HD discs.

[oldandinthe way]

The low labor approach.

Consider a box like this with a 2.5" drive

http://www.meritline.com/portable-hdd-enclosure-and-multimedia-player.html

Load up through a USB port using Windows Explore and watch on your tv.