JVC Everio MOD file conversion issues

[SillyLittleBoy]

Okay, I'm a bit of a newbie compared to most of you, but I've done lots of encoding, muxing, and demuxing of different formats. I started wiith VCD and SVCD as final result with multiple input formats from MJPEG to DivX and have now graduated to the world of DVD conversions and authoring (creation).

I have a ton of videos of my little grandson, with the first group being MJPEG taken with my Canon PowerShot, then converted to SVCD and burned to disc. After getting the DVD burner and JVC Camcorder, I converted these to DVD compliant MPG files. All of these conversions were done with TMPGEnc Plus 2.5 and the necessary codecs.

I couldn't get TMPGEnc to work with the MOD files and used Nero 8 Vision to convert these and when burned with Nero worked just fine. Then I wanted to create a large compilation DVD of ALL the videos, both those taken with the Canon and the JVC and have it be all fancy with a nice little short music viceo I created for the opening and some coustom menu screens (main and submenus), so I used Roxio Easy CD/DVD Creator 6''s DVD Builder, which offered me all theswe features.

My first disc did not have any sound for any of the JVC videos, so I used GSpot to analyse the videos and saw that the JVC ones I had converted using Nero Vision that LMPC (or whatever that is) audio, whereas the MJPEG converted to SVCD then DVD compliant MPG had AC3 audio. So, I figured Roxio didn't like the two different audio formats,so I used FFMpeg to convert the audio on those videos to AC3 and used to TMPGEnc for my de-mux (pull video and WAV file), converted theWAV to AC3, then muxed the AC3 together with the video and they worked just fine. Those videos now have sound on my finished "fancy" burnt DVD compilation.

Now my issue is new videos I'm taking, which shouldn't require THIS much effort to get to DVD compliant video format. I read in the forums that I can just change teh file extension from MOD to MPG and it shoudl be good. Nope... didn't work. THe audio IS AC3, but I'm not gertting it to play on any of my DVD players. The video plays fine on ALL other videos on my DVD, exceptt the newest ones that I'm just renaming the file extension. The only difference I noticed with GSpot was the audio sampling rate for the AC3 audio on the ones that had audio was at 192 kbps, whereas the new ones w/o audio were at 394 kbps. I didn't think this should be an issue, since burning audio discs I can mix different sampling rates, but hey... this was DVD, so I again used FFMpeg and TMPGEnc to convert the audio on these files to AC3 at 192 kbps, but STILL NO AUDIO on finished DVD for these files.

My camcorder does have a Direct DVD option, which I believe will transfer the video from Camcorder straight to DVD disc (burn), which I could then simply use the VOB files on THAT disc in my compilation, but again... there HAS to be an easier way tto make these conversion..... OR perhaps what I need is a better DVD authoring/creator software tool, BUT one that will have the functionality for me to drop in opening videos (autoplayed when disc is first inserted into DVD player) and ability to create custom menus (with my own backgrounds) and submenos (customer background) and that can even provide for still pics between videos for ID, etc.... and any other fun features I might find useful or handy.

Any thoughts suggestions? OH... at NO time has any of the videos in any stage of production/conversion NOT played with both audio and video on my PC.

Thanks,
JP

[SillyLittleBoy]

NOTE: One thing I haven't tried is JUST using the new JVC MOD vidoes (with file extension change) in Roxio to see if the finished product plays on DVD player.

The issue MAYBE the mixing of these two original formats (MJPEG and MOD) on one Roxio created DVD. Perhaps there is some extremely subtle differences in the final converted videos that Roxio doesn't like and perhaps NO DVD author/creator will.