avi to dvd

[carlton68]

what s/w do you use to do this with ?/?

[Five]

Converting to DVD will just inflate the size without gaining any quality. Do you need a DVD just so you can play an AVI on your standalone DVD player?

anyhow, check here:

www.videohelp.com
www.doom9.net

[h_vargas]

ummm, if it's a raw, uncompressed .AVI file, then compressing to MPEG-2/DVD will actually decrease the size. or, if it's a DV25 file (miniDV/dig8 capture), then those (DV) .AVI files are still quite large - roughly 12.5 GB per hour of footage. so again, encoding to MPEG-2/DVD would be smaller than the original .AVI file.

however, if we're talking about something like xvid/divx .AVI files, then Five is correct.

in the past, i have converted divx AVI files to MPEG-2 so i could watch them on my standalone DVD player. but that was only for stuff i'm not going to trade out, e.g. some Glen Phillips/Toad The Wet Sprocket videos that i didn't have, which i downloaded.

[RainDawg]

divx > MPEG-2 absolutely destroys your video quality, as I am sure h_vargas can attest to. If you're doing this, make sure it's for your own use only.

Just about any video editing software will take uncompressed AVI video and create DVD compliant MPEG-2 for it. Is this what you're trying to do. Give me some more details on what you're doing and I'll try to recommend some software for you.

[h_vargas]

divx > MPEG-2 absolutely destroys your video quality, as I am sure h_vargas can attest to. If you're doing this, make sure it's for your own use only.

Just about any video editing software will take uncompressed AVI video and create DVD compliant MPEG-2 for it. Is this what you're trying to do. Give me some more details on what you're doing and I'll try to recommend some software for you.

yep, i can attest to that. on another board, someone put the topic of divx well: "think of it as crap - for output only, not for input (to be encoded)."

don't get me wrong, i like the divx format - and would like to get a newer DVD player that will play divx video burned to cdr. it is the best quality video in its category from the reviews and tests i've read (vs. Windows Media Video files, Real Media, etc.).

i did have one divx file captured in HDTV specs (MUCH higher resolution) that i converted to MPEG-2/DVD using the Main Concept encoder (which is good, but for converting concert video material, i only usse CCE). the HDTV divx > MPEG-2 actually looked very good on my 32" TV. then again, the divx file's size was actually larger than the MPEG-2's file size... clearly due to the resolution of the HDTV capture (when i converted to MPEG-2, i used standard 720x480 resolution).

but again - please never use these converted files for trading purposes. or if you do, please make it very clear on your list or whatever that the source has been re-encoded from the divx format. (i'd never trade it myself, because i'm a purist when it comes to show lineage, no MP3 or re-encoding to a lossy format.) but i know there are people out there who have very low quality standards who will take just about anything... so as long as they know what they would be getting up front, it's their choice.

it's this type of thing that makes me really wish the Blue Ray format would hurry up and become affordable... imagine transferring a miniDV tape to a hard drive via Firewire, and then burning the whole thing onto a disc the size of a cd/dvd. sounds like a dream come true to me. :)