Alright folks, I have some questions, so bear with me and lend a helping hand where you can. Have AVI, MPEG, WMV and MOV files that I ultimately want to burn on DVD-Rs. The basic question is: what's the best way to convert them to MPEG-2 format? Everyone's talking about TMPGEnc, but that's just for AVI right? Surely, I can convert straight from the original (whether AVI, MPEG, WMV, etc.) to MPEG-2, without first having to convert non-AVI to AVI, right? Okay, once I have an MPEG-2 file, is IFOEdit the best way to go? At some point, I may want to add menus for the various files so I don't have to go through the whole dvd to find what's there. Since I'll put a few files on one DVD-R, I'm assuming I can do each separately and then, once authored, I can dump them all into Nero to burn. Right? I don't have to first join them as one huge file? And one more question, I tried using Ulead's Video Studio to convert and author an MPEG. By the time it was done, the file was 2x as long and the quality was no better. What gives?? THANKS!!
i don't know quite what your asking but if you want to put multiple files only on a dvd'r with menus try somthing like (tmpg dvd author). dont use ifo edit if you want menus!
schorca, thanks. yeah, I was afraid that with all the questions, the first one would get lost. so, for starters, I'm look for a free/inexpensive tool that can convert any type of video file (whether AVI, MPEG, WMV, etc.) into an MPEG-2 to author and burn on DVD-R. I guess TMPGEnc does it for AVI files, but I'd like to avoid the extra step of first converting non-AVI files into AVI ones just so I can then use TMPGEnc. Know what I mean?
Tmpgenc will convert mpeg1 and Mpeg2 (svcd Standard) to dvd compliant mpeg2 files and you do not have to convert to avi first, personally i have never tried to convert WMV files, and MOV files can be converted but I havent found an easy way to do this, SVCD compliant mpeg 2 files dont usually need to be reencoded at all as they usually follow dvd standard apart from the audio track, which has an incorrect sample rate, 44100 khz as opposed to 48000khz required by dvd, see this guide http://www.afterdawn.com/guides/archive/vcd_to_dvd-r.cfm The point you made about converting an mpeg to dvd and the file being larger and no better quality, this is normal, you can NOT gain quality by encoding a file any format, if anything it will loose quality slightly everytime you do it.
thanks. I understand that the quality won't improve, but should the converted MPEG-2 file be 4 (sometimes 5) times bigger than the original file? I can decreased the size of the converted MPEG-2 file by lowering the bitrate settings - sorry for asking a simple question, but will decreased bitrates significantly lower the quality of the new file?
You may be able to lower the bitrate a significant amount before any drop in quality is really noticable the best thing would be to run a test clip of a small part of the file at a lower bitrate to see what the results are like.
