here's what i want to do: i have dl some great movies in either divx or avi form from kazaa. i wish to burn them onto blank dvd's using my sony vaio dvdit! program. in reading other threads, it looks like i need to convert them to mpeg format. i have dl and installed both dvd2svcd and the tmpgenc program (which i think i did successfully convert, but video was choppy and had vid/aud sync problems). will someone please take a second out and help? I spent a lot on this puter to do stuff like this and would like to start getting my money out of it
Re-encode the video using TMPGEnc's DVD template and author it to DVD using some DVD authoring software and finally burn it. The authoring part varies from software to software.
But even after reencoding to DVD spec the picture can still be crappy. Depending on your original AVI, the MPEG2 might look worse. Some of the files found on those file shares are very compressee DIVX movies. Uncompressing them doesn't make them better. If you want to convert it to watch it on the TV through the DVD player, why not convert them to VCD or SVCD and spend 10 cent on a CD instead of a dollar on a DVD-r.
Re-encoding _always_ weakens the quality -- DivX -> DVD-R and DVD-R's quality is worse than DivX's. This is the case always when speaking of lossy formats.
The easiest and best way I found to watch DVD's on my pc is by using a program called Mediamatics DVDExpress. No converting, no burning, just put the dvd into the tray and click on the program. I have downloaded movies off the internet and have changed the format but it usualy comes out pretty rotten. Anyway, best to just go for a program that plays DVD's on the pc.