Joining and Chapters

[nomis66]

Hi Guys,

Sorry if this is a bit of a dumb question but I'm pretty new to all this. Normally I download a film to my Mac (as an .avi), and use ffmpegx to convert it to DVD mpeg2 (or DVD ffmpeg) before burning to a DVD - I just burn the whole thing as one big chunk.

But now for the first time I've downloaded an entire series with 24 episodes (24 separate .avi) and obviously I want to be able to skip to specific episodes once the DVD is burned.

So:

1. Can I convert all 24 .avi at once?

2. Do I have to join the files into one big file?

3. Once all 24 episodes (or one big file) is burned to a single DVD is there a away that I can jump to individual episodes?

Cheers in advance for your help,
nomis

[Case]

How long are the episodes? There are only so many minutes to put on a single disc. You won't be able to put 24 episodes of 45 minutes onto one disc at SD resolution in DVD-Video format. That's why you might see commercial releases of tv series as a box set of six discs or so.

[nomis66]

They're about 175MB each, I think about 20-30 min.

[guns1inger]

If you really squeeze them, you might get 8 episodes to a disc at a quality acceptable to you. Personally I wouldn't put more than 6 on a disc (3 hours). You should keep them as separate titles to aid navigation. I haven't used ffmpegx, so I don't know how flexible it's authoring is. It may allow you to add chapters within a title if you want. You will have to do some reading on this.

[nomis66]

To be honest I'm not that worried about how many I can fit on each disk, it's more a case of being able to access the separate episodes once they're on there

[Herve]

use MovieGate : you'll have direct access to each episode, and you can chapterize (I don't know if this word is english ) them

[albloom]

Toast does that easily. And you can choose the menu layout
and contents.

[albloom]

Thought you might like to see what I mean
about Toast menus. Here's a sample:

[terryj]

Second Toast, it is the easiest as far as XVID encoded avis to
author to DVD. After that, you could try VisualHub, but it will
only author a standard DVD VIDEO_TS, no fancy menus.

Hey Al, did you use Toast 8 or 9 in making that Virginia Tech DVD?

[albloom]

That was Toast 9, Terry.

[Levina]

Unless of course you want to include selectable subtitles. Then use Moviegate (as both Toast and VisualHub are incapable of doing that).

[nomis66]

Thanks for the advice everybody. I've had Toast 9 all the time but only used it for straight burning.

Toast does almost everything I want: It will batch-process avis to DVD (mpeg2 I think), and adding the menu is as easy as pie, the only problem is A BIG DROP IN QUALITY

I have been converting .avis (approx 175MB) and putting four on a standard disc. I have been using the high quality setting. The first time I burned a disc image (mounted it )and burned using toast, the second time I burned direct - Everything works fine (menus etc) but (considering the high quality of the original .avis, the converted DVD is pretty pixilated.

Any ideas?
nomis

[terryj]

yes.
how long is the length (run time) of each avi?
if each avi is say 45 minutes in length, then to up the quality,
only put three max to a DVD.

The encoder works more off of the run time than the actual file size.
175mb per file is fine. But if each file is say 45 mins in length,
then authoring less avis to disc will increase the quality of the encode.

[nomis66]

but the avis are only 22-23min each, that's a total of 80min (for 4)

[nomis66]

I live in the UK so I'm reencoding to PAL instead of writing as NTSC, could that be a problem.
? Quality always seems fine when using ffmpegx.

[Levina]

How about using ffmpegX to author each avi as DVD and then in Toast 9 use the VIDEO_TS compilation option? Or will they be burned as one long file then?

[nomis66]

I guess that might be worth a try, but having to manually covert 24 episodes (files) per season (series) aaaaaaaaaarg

I'm sure it must be something simple in toast, I mean, apart from the quality it does everything else perfectly.

nomis

[pixel zombie]

it wouldn't be that difficult using VisualHub to batch convert them...

[guns1inger]

@nomis66 - most players in PAL countries, especially countries like the UK and Australia, will happily play NTSC material. Given how badly many converters, especially commercial ones, actually do format conversion (usually by dropping, blending or duplicating frames), you are better off keeping the formats native (PAL for PAL, NTSC for NTSC). It is a different story in NTSC countries, where PAL playback isn't as common, although this si slowly changing.

[nomis66]

Your absolutely right, I left it as NTSC (even though I live in a PAL country) and now it works perfectly. I think I'll use Toast 9 for all my encoding from now on

Thanks to everybody, and if anyone who has contributed to this thread up to this point wants a Demonoid invite I've got a couple lying around - just PM me.