.avi to DVD?

[amnarii]

I did a search or two and have found a little info on this in these forums, and other places, but was wondering if I could get more detailed information.

I would like to take the 200 gigs or so of video I have on my computer and make DVDs of them. I thought of VCDs for this, but since I do have a DVD burner, and since the VCD is less than 1/5 the size of a DVD, and I have over 200 gigs to move... well, DVD seems the obvious choice.

In most cases, I wll have a single AVI I wish to put on a DVD, and I would like to have no menu system for those at all - just a DVD that will play automatically on insertion in a standalone DVD player - is that possible? if so, what tools do I need? (Freeware nice, but I have the funds to acquire any software which will be of use to me, if needed).

Second, there will be some DVDs I would like to create from multiple AVI files - on these I will obviously need a menu to select which movie to play. Do I need the same tools, or do you reccomend others?

Also, in addition to the programs I need to make the DVDs, what steps should I take to move these movies from my hard drive to DVDs?

Please assume I am a total beginner and complete idiot in your replies, as that is probably not too far from the truth in this case

Thanks!

[setarip]

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

1) Use "TMPGEnc" (or "TMPGEncPlus") to convert the .AVI (DivX-compressed or otherwise) to compliant MPEG2-for-DVD format - Use "TMPGEnc's" DVD wizard/template to accomplish this

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 ;>}

[amnarii]

Thanks for the advice. I will work on it and let you know . . .

I only have 60 DVD blanks to work with, so that leaves me roughly 7 'test' dvds if I have figured out the sizes correctly (using 4.2 GB per DVD to account for probable 'overhead') - so hopefully I will figure it out quickly

[reboot]

Use a DVDRW for all your testing, and save the blanks

[setarip]

"Thanks for the advice."

My pleasure ;>}

[amnarii]

Hi again... I am wondering if this is normal; I have a vid converting from AVI to Mpeg2 - elapsed time is 1:40:00, it is 9% done at source position of 00:24:50, and remaining time is 16:30:00 . . . this seems ridiculously slow!

Up until the past 5 minutes, TMPGEnc Plus is the only thing that has been running on my machine. No TSRs, no Applications, nothing.

I have a 2.0Ghz AMD machine, with 512 MB ram, a 12,000rpm 120GB hard drive (2, actually), and an ATI Radeon 9800 with 128mb ram. I know it is not the best there is out there, but it is far greater than an 'average' machine.

What is the deal? Is there something I might have set incorrectly in TMPGEnc Plus that would cause this slowdown?

[setarip]

"Is there something I might have set incorrectly in TMPGEnc Plus that would cause this slowdown?"

Set "Mode search precision" to "Normal" (NOT "Highest Quality" - The results are almost indistinguishable, but the amount of time required by "Normal" is significantly less)...

[amnarii]

I am guessing you mean 'Motion search precision' - that is the closest I found... I looked at it without stopping the encoding process, just in case, and it is set to, "Motion estimate search (fast)' - I didn't set that, I didn't change anything from when I installed it, that is just where it was... I cannot see the other options without stopping the encoding, but I am assuming it is probably supposed to be a faster method based on the name? Should I stop it and change to something else and start over? it is now at:
Elapsed Time: 03:26:00
Source Position: 00:47:04
Remaining Time: 16:06:18

...very slow and frustrating!

[setarip]

Yes, my apologies - I did indeed mean "Motion search precision". And if it's set to "Fast", then that's not what's slowing you down.

Try turning off all unnecessary programs you may have running in the background (and stay offline while using "TMPGEnc")

[amnarii]

I have got it running alone on that machine - this is my second computer. I even killed all TSRs (Terminat but Stay Resident applications - background programs like antivirus, messengers, etc.) - TMPGEnc is running all alone on that machine.

I did run a few diagnostics about 2 hours ago just before I made the first post asking about the speed - but everything seemed to be running fine, and TMPGEnc is now all alone again. I don't get it.

[reboot]

When you say a "2.0ghz AMD", do you mean an Athlon XP2000+, or maybe even a Duron?
If so, that is actually running at 1.67ghz, and on a 2 pass VBR it's going to take a huge amount of time.
Although tmpgenc is not known for speed, that is pretty slow.
You can cut that time in half by doing a one pass, instead of 2 pass VBR. Run through the wizard, and write down the bitrate you end up with. Hit the EXPERT button, and change the encoding method to CQ-VBR, click the Setting button beside that.
Move the slider up to 100 (quality) and change the max bitrate to the one you wrote down earlier.
Your encode should be down to about 4 hours for a 2 hour movie (or less).
If you want speed, go to www.mainconcept.com and try their encoder (free for 30 days). It will do a 2 hour movie in about half the time, with very good quality results, just using the default settings.

[amnarii]

reboot;

Thank you for the advice and for the link - I will give the mainconcept encoder a try.

As to my machine, it is an AMD 2800+ - 2.08 Ghz. It has 512kb L1 and L2 cache - not the latest and greatest but not something that should struggle. I use it for a lot of 3D rendering and video editing, and have never had performance problems.

[reboot]

16 hours is still a long time. Something is wrong.