I've banged my head against my desk long enough - time to go to the pros... I want to burn a HD recording (from my Motorola HD DVR) to DVD. I have already captured the raw ts files by firewire to my computer. Next, I used HDTV2DVD to convert the ts files to dvd-compatible mpeg2 files. Here is where I hit the wall. First, the football game I am trying to record is about 2.5 hours of video, but the mpeg2 files ar 9.7 GB total! That means that I can't fit the game onto a single DL DVD, even though an 8.5 GB DL DVD is supposed to hold 240 minutes of video. Why are my files so big? Second, I am trying to use Nero 6 Ultra to author the DVD, but when I import the files, it tells me that Nero doesn't support DD5.1 - that I have to BUY yet another plug-in. I am sick of Nero. What DVD-authoring software should I get that will allow me to do what I want? Any help would be greatly appreciated. It is frustratng that it is so darned complicated to transfer HD video to DVD!!
As I've not used that software mentioned I don't know about the size problem, but between that and the problem that Nero gave you it sounds like they may not be fully DVD compliant MPEGs. That being the case I did some research into ANOTHER way to do this. From what I've read, .ts files are a TYPE of mpeg, and a little more research led me to believe that the following MAY work for you. Get tmpegenc (they do have a trial to find out if it works for you or not) and download a standalone directshow mpeg1/2 decoder. Recommend this one (direct link to download site, download should auto start), which also gives you a free dvd decoder to play dvds in wmp without a player software installed. After installing both that and tmpeg you should be able to open your .ts files in tmpeg and encode them to DVD format, and should be able to use an author software to go from there. If you want easy to use, then I've had great luck with tmpeg dvd author also, but if you want powerful, one of the best I've found is dvdlab. Do use the trial version of tmpeg though in case this doesn't work. Good luck. As I've not used that software mentioned I don't know about the size problem, but between that and the problem that Nero gave you it sounds like they may not be fully DVD compliant MPEGs
Getting DD5.1 audio support is usually an extra on most authoring programs. Nero is not alone in this. It will do DD2.0 right out of the box though. It's all about bitrate. You do realize that HDTV2DVD will convert the HD source to standard 720 x 480 (for NTSC). Assuming 384 kbs audio for 2.5 hr you would need a bitrate of about 3600 kbs for a 4.7 GB blank. For a DL disc the bitrate would be about 7000 kbs. Doesn't HDTV2DVD have a place to manually change the bitrate or a 'Fit to disc' option? ConvertXtoDVD will maintain DD5.1 if the original source has it. You might try their free trial and see what it does with the large file you have now. It has DVD5 and DVD9 output options.
