Converting XVID Entire Season TV Series (and create menus!)

Hi,

I have a TV series which is in xvid format which I would like to convert in to vob's or an iso for burning on to DVD. The files at present are broken down one xvid file for each episode in the series at present - 23 files and the total size is just over 8 gigs.

Given the number of files, I aim to create menus so that a particular show can be selected from the menu, as I plan to burn the whole series on to one dual layer DVD.

I have to say that neither myelf or my pc has ever been happy with DVD Lab Pro and I wondered if any one has any suggestions as to the most simple way to go about the authoring process using another easy to use application.

The software that I have at present is Nero 6.6.0.12 Ultra and I also have DVD Santa, however, Santa seems a little too basic to deal with anything other than a basic non menu conversion. I'm open to suggestions of other software.

Hope to hear from you.

Dave.

 

Hi there,

VSO DivxToDVD v1.99 Pre-Release will:

- Convert all your internet movies (.AVI / .MPG etc..) to DVD Format

- Add subtitles (using .srt files / More formats to come in future releases)

- Add chapters to each files

- Create a menu (Menu entry for each file, based on the filename, for now)

- Burn your DVD creation to media, with it's own built in burn engine

-----------------------------------------------------------------

I would rethink of putting all those 23 files on 1 media, you will loose too much quality because it will definitly need to be extremely compressed to fit on 1 media.

How big are those avi files ?

On 1 DVD5 media, you can usually put 2 x 700mb files and you won't need to compress it.

Adding more than that is possible, but will need to be compressed with DVD Shrink or an other shinker. (Loose quality here)...

Single Layer are WAY cheaper than Dual Layer.

My 2 cents...

 

Hi Cougar_ii

Thanks for reply.

VSO looks cool - I'll try it. The 23 files are approx 350 megs each at present so I figured that they will squeeze just nicely on to a single D/L. Having said that, I didn't take in to account any increase in the file sizes during the conversion process. Will they increase much in size from 350 megs each then? - I know from my days using DVD Santa that the Santa application seems to increase the file size of a SVCD to a full 4.3GB by the time it's coverted to VOBs, but I thought that was just a quirk with the Santa prog.

If the increase is not too dramatic, then like you say, I could use DVD Shrink just like I've always done when backing up normal retail DVDs over the past year and a half. I wouldn't want to compress the xvids much more that by 20% or so though...

What d'you reckon.

Cheers,

Dave.

 

Hi there,

With VSO DivxToDVD, if you keep the defaults, to give you the best results (Highest bitrates), 1 x 700 avi files will end up around 2gb for 1 AVI, this is why I was concerned with you said 23 files

You can try setting the bitrate to the min, but say BYEBYE to quality

Good luck !

 

cougar_ii,

Cheers for that - I see where your coming from. In my case:-

One 350mb xvid becomes roughly 997MB once converted, therefore the total burning project would be just under 23GB of dvd compliant files(!).

I reckon I'll try use 6 DVD5's for this one then and save myself on the D/L media.

Thanks for saving me a lot of time on this one.

Catch you elsewhere on the forums.

Dave.

 

DVD Lab Pro works great what seems to be the problem?I use CCE to convert avi to mpeg2 and its realy fast.If you want to increase the quality I would allow open GOP and also make the audio AC3.

 

Hi Matador,

I've never got on with DVDLab coz it regularly crashes my pc half way through a project. My pc spec's o.k. so I ruled that problem out. I spent a lot of time with DVDLab some months back when converting some SVCD's. Things seem to go fine some of the time, but to be honest, it's pretty much pot luck if I get a final result from it.

Even when a project actually compleates in DVDLab, if I burn it and test it on a stand alone player, I'm getting green patches distorting the picture 70% of the time!. I think that,putting it bluntly, I've lost patience with DVDLab. If I try the same conversion of SVCDs with DVDSanta, then I get no problems at all, but then with Santa you dont have the facility to create proper menus/titles.....

Like you, I've heard great things about the application from many others, but I have chosen to file it in a very deep cupboard out of my sight

Thanks for the suggestion tho, and if the VSO proggy doesn't work out for me, then I might give 'Lab' another shot.

All the best,

Dave.

 

Hi cougar_ii

I finally gave VSO a try last night and it seems to have converted my divx's a treat. Nice prog. But now the bad bit!! - ever since installing the application, I've hit hardware problems that I've never experienced before.

My dvd burner shows up as a 'dvd drive' in the my computer panel, but as soon as I place any brand of blank dvd media in it, the panel suddenly thinks that it's a cd burner and I just can't fix it. The issue does not arise if I place a retail dvd movie in the drive - that works fine.

If I ignore the cd drive status and insert a blank dvd-r, then a movie will burn o.k. all the way to 4.3 gigs, but it will not play back at all in either the pc or any stand alone players. All efforts seem to result in coasters and if I try playing through the pc it results in xp hanging for around 30 seconds. My xbox actually thinks that the burnt dvd is an audio cd!. I am definately burning the dvd movie files dvd video format.

I've tried burning through nero (as a dvd video file) and I've also tried the DVDShrink-iso-DVDDecriptor method, which gave the same result.

VOBs play from the hard drive just fine.

I've tried uninstalling all of my codecs, DVD Lab, DVD Santa, Nero, VSO and my dvd drive and re-installing them to no avail.

As a final step, I ran System Mechanic, Adaware SE, Spybot S & D and Norton AV 2004 (all up to date), but they found no registy offenders. MS update is all straight and I've not played with anything else whatsoever apart from the above.

What d'you reckon....any ideas?

Hope to hear from you.

Cheers

Dave.

 

Hi there,

I'm sorry you are having issues.

VSO installs their own flavor of drivers to talk to the hardware.

It's called Patin Couffin.

Uninstall DivxToDVD.
If Patin Couffin doesn't auto remove itself, go here:

C:\Program Files\vso\DivxToDVD
*OR*
C:\Program Files\vso\PcSetup

then run PCSETUP /REMOVE

This will uninstall Patin Couffin.

Logs for PCsetup can be find in

My Documents\PcSetup\PcSetup.log

Thinks should be back to normal, like it was before...

Every time you install a VSO software, it will reinstall Patin Couffin.

Just like SlySoft CloneDVD, they install "ElbyCDIO", their own flavor or driver also !

Again, sorry to hear you had issues...

 

cougar_ii,

Thanks for the quick reply. No need for an apology - hope you didn't think I was pointing blame @ you coz I wasn't. Just hoped that you might have an idea or two.

I tried uninstalling VSO along with everything else and nothing changed, but I have to admit I did not check to see if I still had the prescence of 'Mr Couffin' sill lingering on my hard drive after the uninstall.

Shall have a kick and shove around on my pc when I get home from work (hopefully not literally!) and hopefully your suggestions will sort it out.

Thanks again.

Dave.

 

Hi again,

I have an older LG-4040B and a new NEC-3450a (Dell OEM)

Windows XP tells me I have:

DVD-RAM drive for the LG
DVD-Drive for the NEC

Maybe, depending on the brand, model, it will display it in a different way.

Shocked it says CD-Drive but hey, personally, all I care is if it burns and read DVD media, it can call it a Pizza-Drive for all I care HAHAHAHA !!!

Good Luck !