Hi. Personally I am only interested in speed, I figure AVI's are already not the best quality so encoding speed won't make a difference. Indeed I've yet to see one. I have tried the following: Nero - Did the job though took close on 5 hours to turn 6 simpsons AVIs to DVD format. Sony DVD Architect - (V.V.V. expensive) Said it would need upwards of 13 hours to encode the same 6 Simpsons. I gave up after 6! Ulead - As with Sony this took long long time to encode to DVD. I didn't wait the full time for it to encode my 6 Simpsons. neoDVD - Now this I liked, it encoded at ajust under 3 times normal speed, so my 6 Simpsons were done in 50 minutes! neoDVD was a bit limited in it's functions though, so do any of you have any suggestions for a good and not too slow converter? Also I hear encoding in 64-bit XP is considerably faster. I'd love to try it but couldn't get neoDVD 5 to work on it. Might have to buy 6 or 7.
With CCE encoder a one pass cbr will encode you a two hour video on 3GHz P-IV in just a one hour + some 10 minutes authoring in TmpegEnc DVD Author and + 15 min. burning. But with CCE encoder you have to use the AviSynth which means you have to figure out yourself correct resolution depending on PAL or NTSC, calculate black areas if video is not 16:9 or 4:3. Ah, and you will need to encode audio with TmpegEnc Encoder or BeSweet, or CCE itself which needs another 10 minutes. So 2 hours you will need anyway. But with all this done you will probably wish to significatly increase quality / reduce file size and let it through second pass. This will add the third hour. And probably if the file is 23.976 fps you will need to spend some more 5 minutes to add pulldown (with pulldown.exe) before authoring.
Mainconcept will also encode faster than realtime. Those programs you mention, are not considered good encoders, especially for the price of some. Get a good encoder, then get an authoring app. Combined, it takes less time to go from avi to dvd, than everything you've mentioned so far.
elevate69, Hi, personally I feel that nero is not a good encoder. I would recommend santadvd or divxtodvd. I favour divxtodvd because this is the fastest encoder so far and copytodvd to burn it to dvd. You can open a new folder and put the avi files that you want it on. secondly, open divxtodvd program and pull all the files from your new folders and convert them to dvd files and burn them to the new blank dvd using copytodvd or nero or shrink.
I have DivxtoDVD which is admitedly very good, but if you select more than one item it joins them into one movie. Or is there a way of making them seperate without doing them individually so that I may then put them through an authoring prgram? Rebootjim Mainconcept I've heard of to be a good encoder, but what would you consider a good (and rpeferably easy to use) authoring program? Since my first post I have tried: DivXtoDVD - Very good and fast and FREE!! But (unless I'm wrong) better for movies than episodes of something. DVDit! - This seems both as fast as DivXtoDVD and as easy to use, but offers getting on to pro functions that aren't found in some of the others I tried (certainly Sony has them, but is so slow there's no point). I thought this one was probably the best I tried for a novice looking for a good result. I am about to try Mainconcept and CCE encoders and TmpegEnc DVD Author. They do sound better, but maybe a bit more difficult to master.
elevate69, Hi, could you elaborate what you actually want? Do you want to put 3eps into one dvd disk? What do mean by making them separate without doing them indivdually? Do you mean by converting 3 eps at one shot and then burn it into dvd?????? divxtodvd can do that for you. It will convert one file follow by another without selecting them indivdually. All you have to do is first make a new folder and put 3 avi files in which you want to convert and open the divxtodvd program and click on the source file folder. Then select the new folder and open it and select the 3 eps files press and hold ctrl key and arrow down key to highlight all the files and press open. All the files will be selected and last step press the convert key. vso divxtodvd will convert one by one for you. You dont have do to it individually my friend.
henryting, The original idea was to have a review of different programmes so people could compare and see if they might find a better one. Its has helped for one, divxtodvd is very good. Thank you for telling me how to doit. I suppose had I looked around a bit more I might have discovered it. I think the message is the simple easy to use ones are ok, but you can sometimes get better quality, and certainly save time and money by using the free programmes that require a bit of brain usage. Thanks for your help.
For good results, you're going to have to learn a bit. The programs you've tried, all go from avi, to dvd, with very few (if any) options. If you understand that a DVD is an mpeg-2 that's been authored, and there are specific bits of software designed to do each step (instead of all-in-one junk), then it's time to learn. If you're dealing with avi's, get virtualdub, and learn how to extract audio, and join files, and filter, and frameserve. Get an encoder. Mainconcept is easy. Use a template. Output an mpeg-2. For authoring, try DVDLab, Tmpgenc DVD Author, or Scenearist.
rebootjim You're absolutely right, and after a couple of days of hardcore learning, I have come to realise the many advantages of doing it your way. Not least that all the programs I mentioned don't seem to support AC3. What's the deal with that? Waste half the space on the DVD on wav sound! I am just going to try Mainconcept now. I have found CCE makes all the videos jittery regardles of the frame rate I set (even if I keep the frame rate the same as the original AVI!) could this be because I don't have AVI Synth installed? And while TMpegEnc encodes perfectly regardless of frame rate, I can't find out how to load multiple files without having to load each one individually.
Not sure about your CCE troubles, but tmpgenc has a batch function, so load up the video, set the parameters, then click File, Addcurrent project..., mpeg file. A window will open, with the batch list. Add as many as you like, all with different settings if needed.
