Program For Making DVDs from AVI

No Limit

No Limit

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I wanted to put a season of weeds I have in avi format on a DVD for my girlfriend so she can watch them at home on her DVD player. Since I haven't really used DVDs in ages anyone have some suggestions about a good program that can do this? Hopefully it would be free.
 
Legally free? DVD Flick.

Free via torrents? Nero.

I prefer the latter, but the former is okay, too.
 
I would recommend dvd flick as well, worked fine for me just to do simple stuff
 
Thanks, I'll try out dvd flick when Im back at home.
 
I've seen a lot of guides online for DVD flick. Although I have not used it.
Going from AVi to MPG2 you will get larger file sizes. So if 10 AVIs look like they would fit on a DVD, converting them to MPG2 so they play in a DVD player you may end up with only 2-6 episodes fitting.

I use TMPGEnc for any video MPEG2 encoding I do. And then I use any program that can take MPEG2 files and create VOBs and the DVD structure. Most that can do dvd structure can also burn or you can use a separate burner app. I usually use nero burning rom (plain nero, no wizards or encoding) or TMPGEnc DVD Author.

For encoding you can do VBR and set the bitrate higher or lower depending on the quality you want or the space you need on DVD. If you want it more exact you can use a bitrate calculator (TMPGEnc has one built-in using the wizard). You can set min bitrate to something like 1000kbps. To get fair quality at 720x480 resolution don't set the max bitrate or avg bitrate below 4500/5000 kbps. If the audio is stereo I use just MP2 audio instead of PCM to save a little space. Maybe at 224 or 192.
 
try 'burn aware free' its very usefull, free and works really well. also if you can make them into divx files you'll save a lot of space.
 
A bit slow but seems to be working, at 46% 20 minutes in. Will try it out once its done, Im curious about the quality. I only put on 6 episodes right now (so about 3 hrs I guess).

On edit: Oh shit, that 46% was for one episode :/. This is gonna take forever.
 
Rebel Racer said:
Legally free? DVD Flick.

Free via torrents? Nero.

I prefer the latter, but the former is okay, too.
Click to expand...

David.Seth2 said:
ConvertXtoDVD
http://rg.vso-software.fr/products/convert_x_to_dvd/

It works really well if your looking for something easy and quick. Unfortunately, its not free... unless you, um... *cough*torrent*cough*
Click to expand...

OK, enough.

If he already uses torrents, it's not like he would need a hint, damn. How about just answer the question he asked instead of suggesting illegal activities.

Hopefully it would be free.
Click to expand...
What do you think that means? Hopefully you can give me a hint on how to acquire it illegally because I've never heard of file sharing?

He's asking if there is free software that can do the same job as the paid programs.

"hopefully" - because he doesn't want to buy it or download it illegally. How's that for a *cough* hint?


If I was a boss, you'd have been perma-banned on the spot. Get that out of here, I'm for serious. If you want to recommend paid software, then do so. "It's not free, but it's good, I use it all the time."


Please read this: http://www.halflife2.net/forums/showpost.php?p=2752431&postcount=1
 
VT, Im sorry if I pissed you off. It was more of a joke than anything.

I have tried many free avi to DVD programs, and most sucked fat ass. The good ones usually were not free, but free to try with limited options, just like ConvertXtoDVD was. But I was so happy with the demo that I actually bought it because I wanted to support the company. Now I haven't looked the past year for free software, so maybe theres a really good prog out there that does the job that I dont know about, but I was just trying to help. 50 bucks for a program to convert any AVI or mpeg or whatever to DVD seems pretty good to me.
 
Virus, your post reminds me of myself sometimes on these forums.
 
I should post back that DVD flick works great the only thing that bugs me is it takes about 2 hours to do 4 hours of video.

How fast does X to Dvd accomplish that same task?
 
2 hours for 4 hours of video does not sound bad to me at all.

You understand that it has to re-render the video to new dimensions/codec and shit?
 
Vegeta897 said:
2 hours for 4 hours of video does not sound bad to me at all.

You understand that it has to re-render the video to new dimensions/codec and shit?
Click to expand...

Yeah, but with a quad core I feel like I should be a bit more spoiled. Seems like it should be a lot faster, I can download a whole season off the internet faster than it takes to encode 4 episodes, that doesnt seem right. I haven't looked but I would guess it doesn't do multi-core processing.
 
There's something in the options about multicore rendering.

And downloading an episode of something is way faster than rendering a video.
 
I'll check the options out on the next run, thanks.
 
Just checked and it seems to be set to 4 cores. Let me know if x to dvd is faster, if not I can't really bitch too much, this is free and it works as advertised.

If I can figure out how to encode an entire season at once then split it up on 4 or 5 DVDs that would be ideal since I could just leave the encoding overnight. I'll have to play around with it a bit more, haven't really spent any time on it. If not I could always do what Asus suggested by doing the encoding seperate and then using a program to make the VOB files, but then again I dont want to waste too much time on this; its probably a temporary thing.
 
My DVD player can play avi files and DivX, which makes things a ****ing load easier. It's one of the upscaling ones, a couple of years old.

You should check out your girlfriends DVD player, in case it can. Then you could just burn a DVD with as many .avi's that you could fit.

Re-encoding video sucks. I would use a second computer to run that shit all day and night if I were you.
 
Thanks but I already checked that, it doesnt support avis. You would think that most new dvd players would, but for some reason they dont.
 
How about CCE? Fast encodes after you spend $2,000.

A lot depends on the source file like the resolution or if it is xvid or divix (it's quicker to convert a video when the source is Xvid instead of dvix). Also how complex the encode of course matters too like if you add filters (sharpen, noise filter).

Some of my videos encode only slightly faster than real time. I set them up and do batch encodes over night though. If you have a capable GPU and supporting software you could do the work over the GPU much faster. Although the software might be more limiting with what you can do.

edit: nvm I use 2 pass encoding so it really is twice as fast but done twice. The reason I do 2 pass VBR is so I can set the bitrate lower but 2 passes allow it to be smarter on which frames need more data to prevent a blocky mess.
 
Yeah, No-Limit, you're getting over 2x realtime encoding, that's quite good. I say over 2x because that 2 hours is including the actual burning too (I assume)
 
Convert X to DVD takes less than an hour when I only put four 1 hour long episodes per disc. like about 45 minutes to convert and burn. I guess it really depends on your PC specs and how fast you burner is... but my pc isnt anything great in that respect, so i think it should only take you 45-60min for 4 episodes per disc. but thats just a guess. Download the trial version and check it out

edit: i say 4 episodes per disc because thats how i get the best visual quality. I can cram about 8 or 9 episodes on there, but you can see (and really hear) the quality drop. Convert X to DVD will automatically encode the video files to the best quality possible for the amount of video you put per disc. So 4 episodes are as good as the original, 6-7 are ok quality, and 8-9+ are pretty crappy (but watchable).
 
I just did a test encode and it was quite a bit faster than I guessed above. I bet your 2hr job can be improved. CCE, TMPGEnc and others use their own encoder. ConverX2DVD and DVD flick use ffmpeg. I think convertx2dvd has more options like VBR?
What about HC Encoder?
Or apps that use HC as their base like AVStoDVD?
I'm not sure what is faster though. hehe

But it might not be worth it to you to try out other apps. Maybe just keep what you got and do it over night...unless you will be doing it again for a different set of videos.

The video I tested was an hour long avi. 12.7 GB in size, 720x480 resolution, video bitrate of 28,780 kbps, audio bitrate of 1536kbps. I had pulled it from my DV camcorder awhile back.
Took 40 minutes to encode. TMPGEnc uses 2 cores on my quad.
The MPEG2 it made came up to 2.23 GB
video - 2 pass VBR @ 7000 kbps max, 5000 kbps avg
audio (MP2) - 224 kbps 48000 Hz

Maybe I'll just buy a Cell expansion card to encode my videos.
 
Has anyone heard of DivX dvd players? cus i have one, plays off a data disc (not all codecs work but xvid and divx work fine, if they don't, then its poor converting on the providers side) cost £25 for cheap one, great for not spending hours converting a bloody single movie.
 
Yeah, I have one. The main reason I got it was because .. well

It was on sale and I had my eye on it for about 6 months. The price kept dropping. Finally, they had one left and it was only 1/3 of the original price.

It has HDMI for a good audio/video signal to my HD TV.
It up-scales DVD's to HD.
It's a DVD recorder.
It looked bad ass.
Front panel mini-USB for my Video camera

I didn't even know it could play avi, so that was just a bonus.


Though, TBH, I watch movies on my computer, so it was kind of a waste.
 
Thanks Asus, great information. But I think I'm really over thinking this on my end, this isn't something I will be doing on a constant basis. If I wanna get fancy I'll find a way to do the batch processing overnight so atleast I can get a full season done while I sleep; I dont think I need to get any more complicated than that.
 
Yeah, they have about one thousand at my little town library, even. They buy some, but many come from donations. I almost donated my collection of over a hundred (viewed once or twice) DVDs.

But I don't need a tax break, and ... well, I don't know. Giving away my movie collection isn't my biggest priority right now.
 
No Limit, they also have a few dozen Wii games available for checkout at my Library. Let us know what yours has.
 
I would but I haven't been to the library since I was a little kid, if I ever go I'll post back but its unlikely. I just find it odd (or I guess cool is a better word) that they have more than just books these days.
 
If you're allergic to books, don't worry! I discovered that you can't accidentally learn unless you actually open the books.

Seriously, but I can check out 7 DVD's, 6 music CD's, quite a few books, audio books, and even Wii games, all at the same time, for up to 2 weeks, for free.

Just go, man. What have you to lose? You might find Weeds and you can just check shit out and go curl up with your woman and vegetate.

Really I'm just curious what libraries are like in Canada; oh well.
 
Canada? I don't live in Canada, I live in New Mexico. And it's a time issue for me. At this point whatever I can get at the library I can get online, so its just not really worth the trouble for me.
 
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