So many of us want to stick movies onto DVD's or VCD's to watch on standalone players. Why does every flick come as .avi format when they are so damn difficult to convert? I've spent a day trying to convert a great quality AVI to mpeg suitable for a DVD, to no avail. (XVid codec) It's stupid, AVI's are crap, .mpg's can be used in DVD authoring without conversion.
Hehe... dont start with me on dvds and mpegs 1. MPEGs that are designed for TV (i.e., SVCD, VCD) are crap because TV by its very nature is CRAP. Low resolution, terrible dot pitch and definitly not the same color precision as you can get from a computer 2. Other MPEGs like DVD when played on a standalone.... well... one little scratch and do i need to let you know what happens? ;-) PLay it on a computer, you might not notice it... as for a standalone, scratch, pop, hiss, crackle disort. 3. At the end of the day the thing is as far as size per unit quality goes, AVI is the best option by a LONG shot. Just think about it.... 4500KB/s for a DVD..... 700-1400KB/s for an AVI... damn near the same quality provided you know what you are doing. Because really you cannot compare a computer and a TV... TVs are big for a reason: they are not sharp and provide a very basic output functionality... one look at the resolution of a TV screen will confirm that. 4. Not everyone likes nor even WANTS DVDs (hehe like me for instance). I get my DVD, rip it and trash the DVD. So really, there are people out there not interested in "DVD authoring without conversion" 5. Watching a well done AVI and a DVD on a computer... in most instances there is no significant quality difference. Partly because of the resolution of our retinas and partly because of the framerate and image frame resolution. Of course this doesnt apply with TVs because they are terrible as it is. So for people who (a) dont have money for a TV, (b) dont have money for a 50"+ tv or (c) dont have money for some of the more exotic display units, computers are the only display option (as well as being a bar by which all images should be compared). 6. Not every flick comes as an AVI. If you want an MPEG ready for DVD... grab a SVCD... of course then there is the quality issue.... but you hate AVIs so much. So what's it gonna be? Quality or 'ease of conversion'? 7. There is a perfectly legit reason why high quality MPEGs arent available for download.... think of their filesize again relating to the bitrate of a highquality DVD in the multi-megabyte-per-second class and given a 2 hour movie... well do the math. Not everyone has a T3+ or heck for those filesizes, not everyone has an OC48+ 8. If "so many of you want to watch movies on standalones", then download the SVCD or VCDs! Don't downlaod the AVI and complain hehe ('sides i would venture to say the majority of the initial reliases are all (S)VCDs). Of course then you waste multiple gigabytes and/or multiple discs to provide either (a) virtually the same quality with regards to DVDs and (b) crappier qualitiy with respect to (S)VCDs.
Clearly an educated view there. BUT, wait, lots of people want to watch films on the TV. Sure, we (as PC users) know that the resoloution on a monitor is far superiour to a TV, but lots of people like sitting in front of the TV in the armchair (I have a decent home cinenma set up, nothing fany but quite nice) watching a good film with a beer or whatever. The beauty of owning a PC is that you can produce things like DVD's, things regular people take for granted. I admit, I download AVI's because they are better quality, I then re-encode them to fit nicely on a DVD. The problem lies with the mind boggling amount of codecs (video & audio) out there to fox us?!
Try "Ulead dvd movie factory 2" Be a little patience during conversion (about 3 beers)But you won´t need any other programs after conversion to burn a VCD,SVCD,DVD.
If you have the Right software and have you computer configured Properly and have a Good working knowlege of digital video then any AVI file no matter what codec it uses can be easilly encoded to Mpeg and Quite Quickly(As long as the avi was made properly and isn"t corrupted), It takes me less than an hour to encode a 2 hour DivX file to Mpeg for DVD....Cheers
Thx Granted a very valid point and i would dare say that this is the most significant factor -- the average dude prefers sheer size and "greatness" over minute barely discernable properties like dot pitch hehe. Me - i spend a significiant portion of a day in front of a monitor so my opinion is slightly biased ... in the end it comes down to whether you want the gigantico-enormous screen or you prefer the sharper image.
.if you are trying to convert a divx or xvid to a dvd anyway then thats pretty lame.its already in a compressed format and now you want to re-encode it?its also not the avi thats the problem..thats just the package..its whatever codec is inside it(in your case xvid).i make my own dvd's for other people( i am a videographer)i go minidv to uncompressed avi to mpeg2 dvd format to dvd burn..dvd's are way cheaper than music cd's now too and watching a movie on a pc aint too bright.its better to rip and then burn your own dvd if thats how you wanna do it.its also sometimes faster then downloading somebody elses crappy conversion or corruption..might as well just do it yourself.praetor clearly does NOT have an educated view and needs to learn about refresh rates etc.many mistakes in that post..that knowledge given was from someone who is simply a ripper and biased in opinion.
DOH! Meant to say that most of my AVI files are at 23/25fps and need to be 29fps to play on a UK pal TV ( I think thats correct...?)How do you increase the fps to suit? Do you have to?
NOPE...You got it wrong, For it to play on a Pal TV you have to use 25fps Frame rate, 23.976fps/24fps is NTSC Film and 29.97fps/30fps is NTSC...When I have to convert Frame rates I usually use an Editing Program like "Premier Pro" or "Vegas Video 4" to convert my AVI files to AVI with the Correct Framerate useing the "HuffyUV" Codec, Then encode the HuffyUV AVI file to Mpeg with a High Quality encoder...The conversion from your AVI file to the 25fps HuffyUV compressed File is Allmost Totally lossless so you don"t have to wory about the quality being degraded while converting Frame rates, Most Editors have built in Encoders so you can use the editors encoder to encode the file and save some time skipping the encodeing to AVI step...Cheers
Thanks again Minion. Posted in a couple of spots for coverage. I was going to use premier pro but I have a copy of Vegas 4 so I will try that first.
Still Confused more than ever. I just obtained the knowledge to download from IRC, (best source to download from by the way) To me my understanding is that AVI's are smaller and I don't have a T3, which makes everything that much more managable. The problem is that everybody talks about converting to vcd or svcd, I have a bunch of cd-r's that my friend gave me with movies on each of them. The funny thing is that there are 3 complete movies on some disc and... They are in AVI format. My question to the forum is how is this possible and why am I able to watch them on my standalone dvd player but nobody can tell me how to make them, (I already asked my friend to explain but he has an uncle who does them for him and contact has not been able to be made.) On the other hand I would think that more than one person would know how to comlete this task. Is there anyone who might be able to clear up my confusion. P.S. I verified the files with g-spot to make sure that they were indeed avi files. Niko2000 Still Confused....
well if these are AVI files and you can watch them on your DVD Player then it is because you Must have one of those Very Rare DVD Players that Play DivX/Mpeg-4 Format...These Players are extremely rare and you usually have to pay a Pretty penny More for these Players...The Files them selved are easy to make,Most movies you download are allready in this Format allready so you would just burn them to CD..But you should not most of this allready because DVD Players that Play DivX/Mpeg-4 are a specialty item so when you bought it this would have been one of the Major Selling Point on this Player .....Cheers
Well they are Very Rare were I live, You have to actually have them ordered in from the United States or Japan and they are about $300-$500 here compared to $50 for a regular DVD Player so I would call that rare and expensive...Cheers
Yea ..They call it Canada...Well I got to go and feed the Polar Bears and put a New Door on the Iglo..LOL...Cheers
Thankyou for replying but I have not solved my problem. I have an Apex DVD player $50.00 circuit city. I don't want to make avi's they are downloaded as avi already. I know what I'm asking for is possible because I watch the movies every day on my standalone player. Minon: [qoute]...The Files them selved are easy to make,Most movies you download are allready in this Format allready so you would just burn them to CD..[qoute] Any conversion first off is not easy to create when you have to go through 6-8 hours of painful converting for your file to end up not working or it being corrupted. Movies in avi format are small enough to manage multiple downloads of the files vs (400mb - 600mb files, MPEG1) So they are perferred. Burn them to CD, and how should I do that? Am I burning the file as a data file or how, because the avi's on my disks are not vcd/svcd. Please help Still confused.... Niko
Where abouts? Dang... we dont have to replace our igloo door for another couple weeks. No. There are a very few select players confirmed to be able to play very specifically formatted AVI files. Both LiteOn and KISS Technologies produce standalone DVD players capable of playing DivX/XviD movies. KISS makes the KiSS DP-500 DVD (http://www.kiss-technology.com/templates/side.asp?level=1&pid=411) and LiteON has the LITEON LVD-2002 (http://www.liteonit.com/DC/english/lvd_2002_2.htm) and the LITEON LVD-2001 (http://www.liteonit.com/DC/english/lvd_2001_2.htm). What guide or technique do you use? Regardless of the technique, if you follow it to the letter you wont have any problems at all AVI files = DataCD MPEG1 files = VCD MPEG2 files = SVCD (S)VCDs require specifically formatted files so that they can be played anywhere. If your files are not formatted properly you will have to encode them so that they do. Do not use the Nero encoder. More problems than answers For more info on encoding to (S)VCD with TMPGEnc: http://forums.afterdawn.com/thread_view.cfm/43085 For information on burning VCDs with Nero: http://www.afterdawn.com/articles/archive/nero_videocd_guide.cfm To see some common solutions for various TMPGEnc related issues, visit http://forums.afterdawn.com/thread_view.cfm/40101
