Compress video before burning to DVD?

[JT101]

I have several movies I captured full quality from my DV camcorder, so they are in uncompressed AVI format.

Frame Size: 720x480, 25fps
Decompressor: Microsoft Video 1 (CRAM)
Data Rate: 17783
Audio Sampling Rate: 44100kHz
Channels: 2 stereo
Compression: PCM (uncompressed)
Data Rate: 1411 kbps

I want to put together a DVD movie. Should I compress them first, and then use some software to convert them to a format suitable for burning to DVD i.e. MPEG-2? Or would it be easier to do a straight conversion to the DVD compatible format?

If so would AVI Demux do the trick? And what settings would I need?

The problem is the files are huge, and probably difficult to process on my laptop, so that's why I was going to compress them first. Most of the movies are 6-9Gb

THanks in advance

[jagabo]

If they are really MS Video 1 (CRAM) then they are not full quality from the camcorder. CRAM is a very old, lossy, low quality (by modern standards) Microsoft codec. They should be DV AVI (usually the fourcc DVSD). That would be an exact copy of what's on the DV tape. Use a program like DVIO or WinDV to capture from the camcorder. You can also use Microsoft Movie Maker. Just be sure it's set to DV AVI, not WMV.

You also have something screwy with the frame size and frame rate. 720x480 is an NTSC frame size and should be 29.97 fps. PAL would be 720x576 and 25 fps.

If you can, you should go back and capture the video again as DV AVI. In any case, you need to convert to MPEG 2 with DVD specs to make a DVD that will play in any DVD player. Look at AvsToDVD, or:

https://www.videohelp.com/guides?searchtext=&tools=&madeby=&formatconversionselect=DV+t...or+List+Guides

And all the decent commercial video editing packages are capable of doing this. Corel VideoStudio, Sony Vegas Movie Studio, etc.

[JT101]

Thanks Jagabo

That's great advice. I'll give those things a go, and report back