4GB H264/MP4 to DVD

[Merkaba188]

I just filmed my cousin's wedding on my Flip Mino HD camcorder. It came out to be exactly 1 hour worth of video, and on this camcorder that means I have a bunch of .mp4 files totaling 4GB. I have 2 options: I can send the video to the manufacturer of the camera and they will create a professional DVD with the footage, or I can create it myself and save a ton of money. I'm just running into a little problem burning.

I normally use ConvertXtoDVD to pop out a decent quality DVD5 from Divx or Xvid, but that's only using a small 1.4GB avi file. When I try to convert using this huge 4GB .mp4, you can probably guess I'm getting errors about the filesize and it won't let me convert. I don't have any dual-layer DVDs on-hand, so I don't know if that would work with ConvertXtoDVD or not, or if it will still be too big.

What would be the best way to get this footage onto a DVD? Has anybody made a DVD from 4GB of .mp4 before? It isn't the greatest camcorder in the world, so I can't really afford to lose a lot of quality by converting it a bunch of times, yet I do have 4GB worth of data.

Here is the data I get from GSpot from a 4 and a half minute clip of what I'm dealing with, notice the filesize from a short clip like that:

Size:
336 MB (344,703 KB / 352,976,639 bytes)

Container:
MSNV: MPEG-4 (.MP4) for SonyPSP
- mp42: MP4 v2 [ISO 14496-14]
- isom: MP4 Base Media v1 [IS0 14496-12:2003]
Recommended Display Size: 1280 x 720
Created: 2009 Oct 12 15:32:16
Modified: 2009 Oct 12 15:32:16

Audio:
Codec mp4a: MPEG-4 AAC LC
Info 44100Hz 64 kb/s , mono (1/0)

Video:
Codec avc1 Name H.264/MPEG-4 AVC
Leng 4:30.666 Frms 8,120 kbps 10,368 Qf 0.375
Pics/s 30.000 Frames/s 30.000
pic 1280x720
sar 1.778 (16:9) dar 1.778 (16:9)

[MilesAhead]

I would take a look at AVStoDVD. I just converted some HD .wmv to standard DVD5 and it looked very good. With that much input though, you might be better off going to DVD9 if you can somehow get it burnt. I'd try making the DVD9 first and see how it looks.

It's a free program. If you have multiple core PC make sure to check the multi-thread option. The program is a bit unusual in that instead of picking which encoder to use, it calculates the output bit rate and depending on the range, uses QuEnc or HCenc. I've only tried a few conversions but so far the output looks very good with it.

[UncasMS]

MediaCoder will be able to convert from mp4 (and many other formats) to mpeg-2

NeroVision could also be worth a try


++++

i completely forgot about avstodvd: follow miles advice and try avstodvd first

it's a great tool


+++++++

you can select one out of the three encoder manually by clicking the option, then click on the lock, next save this as default and then RESTART avstodvd

next time avstodvd should use the last chosen encoder option

[Merkaba188]

Which of the three encoders should I use for the file format I'm working with and what I'm trying to get done?

I haven't downloaded AVS2DVD yet, but is it pretty easy to setup like ConvertX? Are there any advanced options I should look up or a tutorial I should follow?

[UncasMS]

use hcenc with TWO passes

avstodvd is pretty straight forward so why not give it a go?

[Merkaba188]

Okay I'm giving it a go right now. It's actually going to fit everything onto a DVD5, and I even gave the program the choice to do a DVD9 if it wanted to, but it didn't even need to. This is probably because I'm going from 1280x720 down to the much lower standard DVD resolution, and this is what is going to allow me to encode the 4GB of .mp4 files.

The only thing I have questions about are the preferences. When you click the Prefs button at the top of the program, everything is pretty straight forward like you said other than the encoding tab.

If I mess around with these settings, is it possible to get a better quality end result? It gives you the option to change the AVS Source Filter, Resize Filter, change the bitrates of the profiles (QuEnc CBR 1-pass, HCenc OPV 1-pass, HCenc VBR 2-pass), and the AC3 Audio Encoder. I understand what each of these are, I just don't understand the options they give me to choose from. I don't know which I should be using for the project I'm trying to do.

You said I should be using the HCenc VBR 2-pass, correct? Should I mess with the bitrate or either of the 2 filters/audio encoder? Right now I'm doing an encode with A2D Source set as the AVS Source Filter, Lanczos4Resize for the Resize Filter, and Wavi+Aften for the audio encoder because these were what it was automatically set at to begin with.

I'm going down from 1280x720 from my HD camcorder to 720x480 for the DVD default resolution, so should I be using the Lanczos4Resize filter? If you could link me to a tutorial or something that explains all of the differences of the given options, it would be greatly appreciated.

[MilesAhead]

This is the bit that confused me with AVStoDVD. I guess when it was first written most people had a single CPU to work with. So the scheme was if the output bit rate was very high, it selected QuEnc high quality one pass with Trellis quant. If mid range, it selected HCenc predictive quant one pass, if the range was low, it selected HCenc 2 pass.

Well now with quad core PCs running QuEnc one pass high quality is actually slower than running HCenc 2 pass or pretty close to it.

To answer your question, in the Encode tab, highlight HCenc 2 pass with the mouse, then click the Lock button. You need to do it before you load a file in or set it as the default to avoid closing/opening the gui all the time. (If you already have the video loaded it will say something about the option taking effect on the next project.. which means you have to unload and reload the video. A little quirky until you get used to it.)


The HCenc 2 pass should give the best results.

[UncasMS]

use:

- hcenc with two passes
- dont change the bitrate settings (just make sure it's 2 passes instead of one)
- dont change lanzos filter as it is excellent

- use a higher audio bitrate and not just 192kbps

+++++

@ miles
using avstodvd my quad ildes at about 30-40% max, what do you do to make yours go full throttle?

[MilesAhead]

Originally Posted by UncasMS

...

@ miles
using avstodvd my quad ildes at about 30-40% max, what do you do to make yours go full throttle?

Under Options menu if Advanced Project Settings is checked, then there's another panel with a checkbox Enable MultiThreads Encoding(if available)

It doesn't fully peg my cores but with HC I get about 70% or a bit higher on each. FAVC running 4 instances I get 100% on all cores but it doesn't seem to do as good a job filling up a DVD5. Like if I give it a poor .avi 2 hour movie the VIDEO_TS output is only 2 Gig and a fraction. AVS seems to do better calculations.. at least it seems that way so far. I should put the same .avi through both as a test though.

edit: I'm not sure yet if it makes a difference but on another board someone advised using the May 2009 0.24 HC beta and just renaming it and plunking it in AVStoDVD HCenc folder. He says it gives better fps throughput. I haven't used it enough to tell, but it doesn't seem to hurt.

[UncasMS]

Originally Posted by MilesAhead

Under Options menu if Advanced Project Settings is checked, then there's another panel with a checkbox Enable MultiThreads Encoding(if available)

It doesn't fully peg my cores but with HC I get about 70% or a bit higher on each. FAVC running 4 instances I get 100% on all cores but it doesn't seem to do as good a job filling up a DVD5. Like if I give it a poor .avi 2 hour movie the VIDEO_TS output is only 2 Gig and a fraction. AVS seems to do better calculations.. at least it seems that way so far. I should put the same .avi through both as a test though.

edit: I'm not sure yet if it makes a difference but on another board someone advised using the May 2009 0.24 HC beta and just renaming it and plunking it in AVStoDVD HCenc folder. He says it gives better fps throughput. I haven't used it enough to tell, but it doesn't seem to hurt.

i have that checkbox on but it doesnt make a difference here

as opposed to dvd rebuilder there is only one version of hcenc running and cpu usage is so low (~50%) that even cool&quiet kicks in - c.f. screenshot

[UncasMS]

tried hcenc 0.24b but it doesnt make much of a difference

do you actually run ~70% load with one version of hcenc working?


++++

even with c&q disabled there is no increase here - c.f. 2nd screenshot
(actually saw that disblaing c&q for some processes will speed things up when the cores are not runing full throttle)

[MilesAhead]

Originally Posted by UncasMS

tried hcenc 0.24b but it doesnt make much of a difference

do you actually run ~70% load with one version of hcenc working?


++++

even with c&q disabled there is no increase here - c.f. 2nd screenshot
(actually saw that disblaing c&q for some processes will speed things up when the cores are not runing full throttle)

Going from standard size .avi to dvd I'm getting about 130 fps with HC. If the source is HD and I am resizing down to 720x480 then I'll see frame rates like you show. Even with FAVC when resizing down I only get about 16 fps per instance.

Try a source file that's being resized up to 720x480 and see if that shows a big increase.

[UncasMS]

i dont worry about the fps because the quad is up to speed using x264, which i normally do

the fact that hcenc causes so little cpu load makes me wonder

[MilesAhead]

I don't know. I'm starting to see that the runs vary wildly with the sources. I haven't been doing a run with one method, then doing it again with the same source to really test it. I should probably use an editor to slice off test clips or something.

I think I am going to try using AVStoDVD default ranges for the encoders and just bump the audio bit rate to 224 and let it pick the encoder, and see how it goes. It may run pretty well for my purposes with the default ranges.

[MilesAhead]

UncasMS maybe you can help me understand what's going on. I tried reading Dual Layer vs Double Layer FAQ Wiki whatever. All I get is that one is DVD-R based and the other is DVD+R based... but here's why I'm wondering. I tried AVStoDVD making a DVD9. Everything went OK. Then when I tried Imgburn it told me "no suitable cell for layer break".. so I looked at the help for AVStoDVD and noticed it only mentions DVD-R Dual Layer DVD9(all I have for DL blanks are Verbatin DVD+R double layer.)

Anyway, having gone through all that I downloaded latest Imgburn and it gave some numbers where the layer break should be, even though it wouldn't put it there itself. So I put some numbers in the range manually. It burned, and it seems to play ok in the stand-alone. So I'm just wondering if this is a distinction without a difference or I just got lucky or whatnot?

I'm enjoying using AVStoDVD but I'd feel better if I understood what's going on.