Hi. I have a problem I hope you can help me with. I would like to convert avi files to dvd with menus. The thing is I want to convert many avi files, which about 6+ hours of playback onto 1 4.5gb dvd disc. Does anyone know how i can do this and exactly what software is needed. I have tried doing this with software such as ulead movie factory but it only allows me to convert about 2 hours of playback onto a single 4.5gb dvdr which is no good. I have got many dvds which have 4-5 full movies on 1 4.5gb dvd with customised menus and the movie quality is decent, and wanted to know how i can go about doing the same thing. Any ideas peeople??? Thanks in advance
Stuff from Ulead, nero or Roxio will never do what you want. What you need is a good encoder. I have fit about 5 hours on one disc with very good quality. I have done it with TMPGEnc, but maybe something free like avi2dvd can do it with a good job as well. It is all about the bitrate that you choose to encode your movie. Also, you will need to get a sound file that is smaller than PCM (.wav). I use dolby AC3. I finally had one done succesfully with Besweet, so you can try that program out for your sound. For TMPGEnc you can safely encode 5 hours to fit on 1 DVD by setting your average video bitrate to 1750kbs. You will then have to encode 192kbs AC3 stereo. Make sure you set TMPGEnc to output .m2v and .wav files. Encode your movies and play back the video to get an idea of the quality. Then encode your .wav into.ac3 using Besweet, or if you have it, Sony Vegas. (Vegas, ~$400 is much slower, but better and more reliable). After you have everything, you should download a good Authoring program like DVDlabpro. You will have to do an Advanced project (the one that includes a VMG menu). You should make a VMG menu that you can pick from your different movies. Also, make a separate VTS for each movie you have in the disc. If you need help with this program, post again after you get to authoring and I will be glad to help you out. If your files are only video clips, you can use a simple program like WinAVI. After, delete the .ifo and .bup files and import the .vob files into your Ulead DVD making software. You can make a simple thumbnail menu in that program. Also, it will not have to re-encode your files since they are already DVD format.
Thanks for the reply. I actually want to convert avi clips not movies. I downloaded clips in avi format which are approx 30 mins long (tv episodes) and wanted to put 10 of them onto a single dvd. I have downloaded winavi. I will convert all of my avi clips to dvd format using winavi then import then into my authoring software as you said....Will this definately work and will it affect the quality in anyway if I have 5 hours of playback onto 1 single 4.5gb dvd?? Does anyone also know of the best authoring software available for what I want to do, which is easy to use and allow me to make animated menus with sound?? As I dont want to spend ages downloading different software to find the best one. Thanks again.
nerovision will do everything from menus to encoding.it will let you adjust the bitrate to fit many hours on one disc but quality is always reduced when you shrink to fit,but i've never shrunk something so much as to see any loss of quality worth complaining about. i have done upwards of 50 dvds using small clips and tv shows using nero and am satisified with that software,and it isn't 400 dollars.
If you are using WinAVI, make sure it is registered otherwise it leaves an ad in the middle of the screen of your video. If you do not have a registered version, you will be better off with Nero Vision Express. It does auto fit on a disc, but you have to be smart when doing it. 6 hours may end up being ok, but make sure you have your audio bitrate a bit lower. 192kbs is good enough for stereo.
I have used nerovision express to try and convert 5 hours of avi clips onto dvd with menus. However, its says it takes 5 hours to do so but when i return to the pc 2 hours after the start of the process the programme comletely shuts itself and the is no dvd made. Any ideas why this is not working?
Check out "DVDLab Pro". You can set up the menus in a snap, (with animation sound), and it will look really snazzy. There is also a guide on the DVDLab website on how to set up various menus (tho the english is somewhat lacking) tho it's understandable.
i have tried use winavi to convert the avi files into vob before i use dvdlab pro. However, The vob files created are in widescreen format. I have tried converting in auto, 4:3 and 16:9 but still come out in widescreen. I want it in the normal fullscreen format otherwise the clip looks squashed. Any ideas please?
After a tremendous amount of time and downloading, I have found a great way to (fairly) easily make a DVD with at least 4 hour-long tv episodes on it, complete with menus. Firstly, everyone is right, NeroVision Express is your friend. Only tell it that you are making a dual-layer disk (one that is 8-9 Gig) instead of the normal 4.7 gig. When you go to "burn" it, the program will probably tell you that you'll need to "burn" to your hard drive. That's fine. Once it's done, however long it takes, you will need a shrinking program to burn the files to disk. The best one I have found so far is InterVideo DVDCopy. Not sure where to find it, but if you can, it has been fantastic for me...so far I have burned over 200(!) DVD's and every last one plays on every DVD player I have ever tried them in, old or new. Anyway, that's what I have found to work best for me. Good luck!
I keep hearing "the quality will suffer" but then how do they compress the files for the first 3 seasons of Family Guy? (Legal, purchased from Best Buy, DVD's of Family Guy.) They are in 100% perfect quality with 100% perfect audio yet there are like 6 hours on 1 disk after season 1. At the end of the last episode on the disk it flashes an add about the compression but I don't have the disks at my house to check what it actually says... I have seen a Home Made multi-hour disk at a friends house (She had season 1 of Invader Zim on 1 disk) and the quality was 2 or 3X as bad as VHS...The pixilization was HORRIBLE but watchable... There has to be a way to copy what the Family Guy DVD Creators did!!! This is VERY important to me because of all of the cost of the disks and the hours and hours of stuff I need to burn...I even sold my PS2 so that I could buy a DVD Player that plays DivX, .avi, and such files so that I could put 14 hours of video on 1 DVD! Thanks a bunch!
These professional DVDs are encoded using $25,000 hardware encoders. Most people do not have access to this. However, if you use a good software encoder, you can get very good results. The thing is, that you have to manually adjust the encoder settings. I do not even mean what I was suggesting previously with the bitrate. You can mess with a lot of things with your encoder like GOP structure. If you look at the advanced settings with CCE or TMPGEnc, you will see. Generally, an animation will not suffer from mega compression though. This is because there is not much movement in an animation. I think they are generally done in 8 frames a second, but I do not know much about this area, I just know most of them are not full motion. Family Guy is most likely on a DVD9 disc. This means that 13hours on this disc will be the same as about 6.5 hours on a DVD5. For an animation, the quality will not be that bad, especially with stereo sound. If your DVD player can play the .avi files, then all you need is to make your movies into divx. You can get a 3 hour movie to about 700MB with decent quality. You can then fit 6 of these on a DVD and that would be 18 hours per DVD5.
I just looked at Family Guy season 1 disc 1. It is 7 episodes on a DVD9 disc with stereo ac3 sound. I did not see how long the episodes are, but I would assume it is safe to say 160 minutes of movie for the 7 episodes. This would suggest over 6000 kbs bitrate. This is why the quality is high. You can probably safley fit 14-15 episodes on a DVD5 without much loss of quality. Say you downloaded season 1 in .avi files, you could use TMPGEnc with constant quality. Output to .m2v & .wav. Then convert your .wav into 2 channel .ac3 at 192 kbs. You are looking at about 15 episodes per DVD5 at very good visual quality. You are of course limited by your source. If you downloaded crap quality videos, then you will get crap quality conversion no matter what you do. The only thing you can do to improve on those is noise reduction which will up your converting time 3x. Another method would be to use avi2dvd. If you use the included FreeEnc, you will not lose much quality. You will also get very small files and the .ac3 sound right away since it uses besweet for audio. I just did an episode DVD with 13 episodes and two special feature clips using TMPGEnc, Sony Vegas, and DVD Architect. I have motion menus and 5.1 sound. The whole thing was 4.5GB. If DVD Architect and Sony Vegas are not an option, use dvd2avi to create your DVD and something like Nero Vision Express or DVDlab for your menus. Both are very user friendly and DVDlab is quite powerful and the better of the two.
THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU! I will try this out ASAP! 5 hours of video on 1 dvd that works ANYWHERE! Woot Woot! Now I can finally get Startrek NextGen!! YEAH!! Thanks again!
Hi there, VSO DivxToDVD v1.99 (Pre-Release) will: Convert all your .AVI/.MPG etc.. files to DVD format. Add chapters to each files. Create a menu entry with each filename. Add subtitles (.srt files for now, .sub/.idx in future releases) Has it's own built in burn engine.
