Multiple VCD's to one DVD

[Dracorius]

Hey everybody.
I'm pretty new to the whole DVD thing, so i'm gonna need some help with what i'm trying to do.

Basically, i've got about 7 VCD's, with film for a total of about 4.6GB. Now, what i'd like tot do, is create one DVD, with menu's and chapters and all that, that contains all 7 vcd's. Ofcourse I'd have to tone the quality and resolution down to that of a standard vcd for the movies to fit on one DVD.

This is how far I've gotten.
I started out using the program that came with my drive, WinDVD Create. This worked pretty good, but it did'nt allow me to create the menu's as I wanted, and more importantly, it didn't allow me to change the quality, so I end up with only 2 hours on a DVD. On this forum, I read about a program called "TMPGEnc DVD Author". This would have better menu-creating capabilities, and it would allow me to scale the quality down. However, when I try to add a video file, it never seems to be correct. Either the file seems to have an incorrect header, of the format isn't usable for a dvd. So, when i try to add the Mpeg1 video file from my vcd (found in the folder MPEGAV) I get some error that keeps me from adding my files.

So, does what i'm trying to do make any sense, and, if it does, how can i get TMPGEnc DVD Author to read the vcd files?

thnx in advance
Dracorius

[sfheath]

TMPGEnc DVD Author will only take mpeg2 files. You must convert to mpeg2 before compiling them within Author.
Try TMPGEnc Plus or 2.5 (different to Author) to convert your mpeg1 to mpeg2. I'm not too hot on this last point but I am a regular user of Author.

[Dracorius]

Thnx for the info. I tried using TMPGEnc Plus. However, when I encode into Mpeg2, DVD author tells me that the GOP (or something) is too big. When I recode them as Mpeg1, everything seems to be working fine. So now I wonder, if I use mpeg1 files in DVD Author, will I get a standard dvd, or something more like a vcd, since Mpeg1 is the format for vcd?

[sfheath]

Right, I'm a little clearer on this now. Quoting Setarip (which I do quite often these days ) :

One set of procedures (other posters may/probably will suggest alternative methods) would be:

1) Use "TMPGEnc" (or "TMPGEncPlus") to convert the "AVSEQ01.DAT" file to compliant MPEG2-for-DVD format - Use "TMPGEnc's" DVD wizard/template to accomplish this (This step may not be necessary, if your MPEG-2 filies are already in DVD compliant format)

2) Use "TMPGEnc DVD Author" (a different program than "TMPGEnc") to easily create the required additional DVD files and structure (and chapters and a menu, if you wish)


**If the combined filesize of the DVD "package" written to your hard drive is greater than 4.37Gb, use DVD Shrink (or similar) to compress


If your O/S is either Win2000 or WinXP, TMPGEnc DVD Author can also burn your DVD. Otherwise, use NERO to burn in "DVD-Video" mode
(As an alternative to "TMPGEnc DVD Author", you could use "DVDLab")


Let us know of your success ;>}

[Dracorius]

Thanx a lot. I have succesfully converted one of my vcds to a dvd compatible format with TMPGEncPlus, and burned a test dvd that seemed to work fine with TMPGEnc DVD Author.
So now I can begin converting all my vcds. Again, Thanks a lot.

[sfheath]

Our pleasure