best way to make dvd from an avi

hi i made a film with camtasia,,,, edited it with premiere pro,,, now i have an avi file

what is the best way to make this into a video ts dvd folder i can burn to disc ,,,, i tryed to use cc encoder because i thought i could just drag the avi into cce and it would make me a video ts folder i could burn to disc but it doesnt it makes some files that i cant play and are not in a video ts folder ,,,,i have been using convertx to dvd which works it makes the video ts folder but i am loosing a lot of quality which i need to keep

thanks

 

You can use DVD Flick, it is free.

 

thanks

but is the quality better than convert x to dvd and do you know why cce does not do it

 

Try Womble EasyDVD, it's very easy and quick, and they provide a 30 day free trial.

What is the size of your original file? If it's big, then the compression will start and degrade the quality.

 

convertx2dvd is the best avi to dvd available. I use it all the time. Next time try using the high setting (the default is medium). But anytime you convert an avi to dvd you will loose quality.
In my case I always use the medium setting, and have never had any issues with the quality being worst than the original avi.
CCE encoder, only encodes (outputs) to mpeg2 files. Then you would need another program to convert them to dvd files.

Another thing you can try is instead of encoding to avi, encode straight to mpeg2. Now when you convert to dvd, you won't loose to much quality since mpeg2 are basically dvd files and won't need too much encoding.

 

Avi is a compressed file format, and is not the format that DVDs use.

DVD video uses a compressed file format, mpeg2, but mpeg 2 files are generally not compressed as heavily as AVI files, which means a larger file size. When you burn an AVI movie to DVD format, the software will first "transcode" the AVI movie into MPEG2 format, which will degrade your video quality.

 

CCE has a Premiere plug-in. It works like the stand-alone CCE (the user interface is similar). Have you tried that?

Like some have said, AVI, MPEG-2, etc are compressed formats, meaning you'll lose some quality each time you (re)encode (change format). The trick here is to get from Camtasia/Premiere directly to a DVD compliant format with as little (re)encoding steps as possible. CCE's Premiere Plug-in is just one, there may be others.

Instead of making an AVI from Premiere, you can export this directly to a DVD compliant MPEG-2 using the CCE Premiere Plug-in. Just make sure that you tick the "DVD" box and all other encoding parameters match your DVD playback capabilities (PAL or NTSC). It would be very wise to follow your source frame-rate in determining PAL or NTSC (25fps or 29.97fps), and make sure your DVD player (and TV) will play both formats. Otherwise, CCE will be forced to do some internal conversion to match your DVD player/TV limitations.

It would also be very wise to use Camtasia/Premiere to get the frame-rate and frame size to your specific PAL (25fps, 720x576)/NTSC (29.97fps, 720x480) format before exporting to CCE and just let CCE do ONLY encoding work.

Note that CCE is the "best" encoder for DVD compliant MPEG-2 video (I dont care if anyone says otherwise), but is LOUSY/limited when it comes to encoding audio. So, I would let CCE encode just the video to a DVD compliant MPEG-2 Elementary Stream (.mpv) and just output the audio as WAVE.

These two "files" now become your sources for turning/authoring into a DVD, instead of the AVI.

I use TMPGEnc Author Works 4 (TAW4) which will eat the .mpv file as-is for the video clip and encode the WAVE audio into Dolby Digital AC3 during authoring (supports 2-ch or 5.1 surround input), where I will get the VIDEO_TS thingy. TAW4 can do all that you do without Premiere and CCE but I still prefer CCE's video encoding quality (multi-pass VBR).

You are free to use any other DVD authoring software that can eat CCE's .mpv WITHOUT further re-encoding (and lose quality) and just encode the audio into a DVD compatible audio stream, preferably AC3, for maximum compatibility with all players.

XEQ.

 

I also used to spend a lot of cpu time converting avi to dvd format, until the divx compatible dvd players became inexpensive and easily available. Now I just transfer my avi films to a rewriteable blank disk and watch them in my divx compatible dvd player...

 

When you start with "Camtasia", you're most likely moving away from "viewing AVIs on TV", to "creating multimedia for training, teaching, selling, etc". Ie, moving away from "personal use" to "global, commercial use". Maximum compatibility with the outside world becomes more important than "I can play on my player".

Your target audience becomes important - where are they? Europe? US? Which parts of Asia? Even PAL or NTSC selection becomes important.

The DVD format becomes the "most common denominator" here. Therefore, the need to get to DVD complaint format without any further encoding loss, becomes our Holy Grail - in this particular case. Then, there is the PAL/NTSC acceptable audio format where only AC3 is the "common denominator". (MPEG-1 Level II is secondary for PAL, LPCM is secondary for NTSC.) If semajjame's audiences are in both PAL and NTSC regions, s/he should have 2 versions, one for each region.

S/he has chosen Premiere as his/her editing/effects platform. (I'm not an Adobe fan, but that's my bad.) The steps I've outlined takes him/her from Premiere directly to DVD format in a single encoding step. S/he already has CCE, one of the best/fastest DVD-format encoders around, why change? S/he now needs to author all these to a DVD, adding menus, buttons, etc, without further quality loss. Anyways, this is what most studios have been doing for eons now.

XEQ.