Burning DVD's

[ps2cho]

Hi guys,

I have never for some reason ever burned video's to DVD before and had a few questions...

I have some of my CS clips encoded in divx....do I have to re-encode or can I just burn to dvd and it'll play on my dvd player?

Also what program is the best to use for burning DVD's? Vista DVD Burner seems to only allow 120minutes per DVD.

 

[shirker]

if you have a divx/xvid capable dvd player, then you can just burn the files straight on. otherwise, they'll only work on your pc, or other mpeg4 asp capable standalone player.

re-encoding from divx to mpeg2 (standard dvd video) is a messy procedure though, and video quality will definitely take a hit

I'd use nero, but I've no idea how well it works on vista, or what it's like for that matter

 

[JamesXP]

i just convert all my avi files to ISO image and burn away.

Imgburn is good for the burning.

 

[shirker]

i just convert all my avi files to ISO image and burn away.

Imgburn is good for the burning.

well if your .avi files contain xvid or divx video, then you'll only be able to play them on your pc (which I assume you do).

burning your avi files as an iso is essentially the same as burning a DVD in UDF mode though...it burns the video as a file onto the disc.

changing the method you use to burn a given video file usually won't make it any more compatible with other devices than it already was to begin with. to do that, you need to convert

 

[JamesXP]

works on all my DVD players

they are divx compatile though.


I was lucky actually, It's an olden really but it plays anything a i throw it :d

 

[Morvak]

dvd shrink ftw!

http://www.doom9.org/ is a great resource

 

[I.M.O.G.]

I would suggest DVDflik. It should convert basically any movie file directly into a format that can be burnt onto dvd and played in any dvd player.

I havent used DVD shrink to know how that works or what it does exactly.

http://www.dvdflick.net/

 

[shirker]

I havent used DVD shrink to know how that works or what it does exactly.

those were the good old days, when dvd decrypter + dvdshrink ruled
dvdshrink was ace at compressing raw dvd9 rips to dvd5 size, and it was quite fast at doing so. cinema craft encoder would have been the real (read professional) way to do it, but takes forever to encode

 

[ps2cho]

Ok I got it to work with a copy of Nero I had from a DVD Burner.

How can I fit more than like 150mins of video on a DVD though? My clips are like 300mb each, but 150mins fills the disk up it says. How do people get 4hrs of stuff on a DVD?

 

[JamesXP]

Compress it into a lower quality somehow?

dual layer disks?

 

[I.M.O.G.]

Different encoding tools give you different options. You should have choices to use a variable bit rate, which uses less data to represent frames with low motion. Or you can set a static bit rate, and lower the setting so there is less sampling - the video quality will decrease, however less data will be created.

Since your going from a lower quality format to a high quality format, you should be able to lower the bit rate a ways without significantly impacting the quality.

Even better yet, use gspot to find encoding information about the original file your working with. You can get information from that which will give you an idea about which settings it makes sense to use for re-encoding. Using a sample rate much higher than that originally used for encoding will yield little benefit while taking a lot more space. If your lucky, your encoding tool will allow you to encode a preview, which you can use to tweak the settings/qualtiy to your likeing.

 

[conway]

Lots of free tools you can use that work. If you already have it installed, or feel like spending the cash, Nero Recode works great. All you do is drag your avi's into the "New Movie" window and it takes care of all of the encoding for you, leaving you with the ifo and vob files you burn to dvd once complete.

 

[ToeKneeATX]

i have recently been using TMPGEnc DVD Author with DivX Authoring to make quick dvds out of avis. it makes it stupidly easy, add as many tracks as you want, make chapters, menus, etc. then just choose to have it all fit on a single layer disc and burn with nero or the built in feature. again this is for when i am lazy and am just trying to whip out a dvd quickly.

 

[grumperfish]

I'm a huge fan of Nero/Nero Vision in XP personally. Easy to work with and relatively painless. Not to threadjack too much, but does anyone have any recommendations for software to convert/burn video to dvd's in *nix? I'm using gnome, if that helps. I tried out gnomebaker briefly but didn't really see anything specific to burning videos and conversion.