A Series of Unfortunate Conversions: cannot make 16:9 DVD files

[yurkyurk]

I have all of my home videos captured as DV AVI files. They are PAL 16:9. All I want is to make a simple widescreen DVD from these. You wouldn't think this would be so hard, would you?

First I try the software that came with my DVD burner - WinDVD Creator. Oh no! WinDVD Creator is buggy and creates the DVD with a screwy aspect ratio, putting black borders on *all four* sides of the picture. I suspect my camera makes weird AVI files, because this happens in other programs.

Next I try DVD Flick. Good! I can manually set the AR for the files and the resulting DVD looks fine. Oh no! DVD Flick has audio sync problems when using several sources - my audio and video are a few seconds out.

I am told to try Any Video Converter to create the DVD-standard mpegs, because it can fix the audio issue. Oh no! Any Video Converter is buggy and creates horrible mpeg files (some at 169Kbps even though it is set to be 8000).

So I am just about to throw my PC out of the window. Please please help. I am restricted to using free software because I have no money.

Whoever can help me get working widescreen DVDs from my DV files will have my eternal gratitude.

[Supreme2k]

What do you mean "DVD Flick has audio sync problems when using several sources"? Aren't the DV files a single source? Are you trying to merge several files? If you're trying to merge the files, try doing them one at a time and see if that corrects the problem.

You could also tryTMPGEnc, which is free for a little while

Hey! How are you on the intraweb if you don't have any money? If I was you, I would sell the computer and get some food and shelter.

[yurkyurk]

No, the DV files are several separate video files. I create one title in DVD Flick and add each individual DV file to it. This allows me to have chapters for each scene.

I'm not sure what you mean by doing one at a time. If I have about 50 small DV files, are you suggesting I load one into DVD Flick, convert to mpeg, and then the next one, etc? That will be quite time consuming, and I'm not sure if it will avoid the audio sync problem overall.

I have tried TMPGEnc, and the resulting mpeg file crashed WMP, so it did not fill me with much confidence.

[guns1inger]

The problem is that you are trying to use an authoring tool to do your editing for you. If you edit your footage in an editor then you wont have the sync problems when you author. Use the right tool for the job.

[yurkyurk]

So I should convert to mpeg2 in something other than DVD Flick?

Can you recommend a good free one that will convert DV to DVD-standard mpeg?

[Alex_ander]

AviSynth + HC Encoder

[yurkyurk]

The problem is that you are trying to use an authoring tool to do your editing for you. If you edit your footage in an editor then you wont have the sync problems when you author. Use the right tool for the job.

Okay, I created my MPEG2 files in a separate conversion application. They seemed fine. But again when I tried to author them, they went out of sync. The problem appears to be in the authoring of several small video clips into one DVD title.

Can anyone help me keep all of the files in sync during authoring?

[CogoSWSDS]

Try DVDAuthorGUI. I've not had a problem with it unless the m2v and ac3 files I fed it were not in sync. It is an authoring application.

I use AVISynth for editing, HC Enc for encoding video, FFMpegGUI for encoding audio, then use DVDAuthorGUI to put it all together.

CogoSWSDS