Creating DVDs: advice for a newbie

October 15, 2005 11:58 AM

I'm trying to get .avi files (15 files at 300kb) onto a DVD in a DVD format so that I can see them on my DVD player. I have two DVD-making applications, WinDVD (which crashes when I try to create one) and Cyberlink PowerProducer, which took 2 hours to do 8%. My questions: One: Does it really take that long to convert from avi to DVD and Two: What is the best home package to create DVDs with interactive menus?
posted by wibbler to computers & internet (12 comments total)

It'll depend on the ability of your machine. I think it has to recode the image into whatever format DVDs use. I've usually left mine running overnight to do them.

I use Nero - it came with the DVD-R - but I've never really messed with more than one menu.
posted by Auz at 12:25 PM on October 15, 2005

i'm not sure if this is what you're looking for but I use deepburner for my DVD burns. For me burning a FULL dvd's worth takes about 45 min. I really think it depends on your burners speed and your settings in the app you are using.

for instance my friend's burner takes maybe 15-20 min.

Anyway, deepburner is free and has never crashed for me. However, according to DeepBurner's "features" page it says "Burning Video DVDs is no problem" but it's only available in the Pro version.

I saved a lot of hassle by getting an inexpensive dvd player that could play avi's, mpg's, and lots and lots of other regular video formats.

sorry if i'm not very helpful :)
posted by freudianslipper at 1:01 PM on October 15, 2005

Nero - http://www.nero.com
posted by gregariousrecluse at 1:24 PM on October 15, 2005

I saved a lot of hassle by getting an inexpensive dvd player that could play avi's, mpg's, and lots and lots of other regular video formats.

Ditto. The Phillips DVP642, I bought at Wal-Mart a year ago, has done me well.
posted by bwilms at 1:27 PM on October 15, 2005

Try WinAVI. Out of all the programs I've tried, it's the fastest. I use DVD Lab for the menus.
posted by Otis at 1:42 PM on October 15, 2005

bwilms thats my exact same DVD player as well. great isn't it! divx and all. i love it. i bought mine at target for $50-65 or something.
posted by freudianslipper at 1:46 PM on October 15, 2005

Part of the huge hassle of making custom DVDs is converting from AVI to the DVD video format, and I'd suspect that's where your hangup is. You might want to check videohelp.com and read their How-to section (here's a start), because there are a variety of free and shareware video converters that can do the job you want to do.

That said, echoing other people, I cannot recommend the Phillips DVP642 more highly, as it eliminates the tremendous hassle of conversion and DVD authoring completely. You can literally burn those AVIs as data to any CD or DVD and the DVP642 will play them.

Of course, the problem is if you want to share your videos, at which point I recommend you just tell everyone you know to buy the same player.
posted by MegoSteve at 4:37 PM on October 15, 2005

AVI2DVD is superb and freeware. You can use DVD Decrypter to burn the final ISO file, the entire process can be done with freeware.

But it doesn't create menus.
posted by exhilaration at 5:59 PM on October 15, 2005

AVI is just a container - various formats (i.e. DivX, XviD, RV, etc for video; RA, MP3, MP2, WAV, etc for audio) at various sizes / frame rates can be put inside an .avi file. But DVD is very specific about such things - MPEG2, 720x480 for NTSC / 720x576 for PAL (but there are others), audio of AC3 or PCM in NTSC-land / MP2 or PCM in the PAL world (all at 48k sample rate).

So, you can see there's a lot of variables there, all of which will affect conversion quality & speed. As everybody else mentions, the simple option is to buy something like the DVP642, which plays almost everything (except DivX & XviD using non-standard-profile features, & ? H264/MP4 ?).

Having just transcoded a bunch of QT7 H264 .mov files to DVD last night (this is something I do every few weeks ;-), here's what I do / use:

RAD video tools : Freeware. If you can play it, you can transcode it. I usually do a straight conversion to HuffyUV lossless encoding.

Encode to MPEG2 : If I'm feeling lazy, I use TMPGEnc - quick & easy, but costs money. Using that, it's easy to correct the frame size / aspect ratio / interlace order / de-interlace. The freeware tools, like HCenc, QuEnc, or MPEG2enc are handy to know about, but more difficult for the fiddling that is often needed.

DVD authoring: The freeware GUI DVDAuthor (which includes MPEG2enc) is probably worth a look - it was very fiddly/finicky last time I tried it, but looks better now. DVDLab is what I consider to be the ultimate hobbyist tool - it does things right, gives full control, and teaches you good habits, while at the same time being pretty much "drag and drop". Once you've built & compiled your DVD structure (menus, links, etc), you can burn straight away.

-----

Or, you can just use the full (paid) version of Nero to do a not-too-bad-but-still-half-assed job of converting, recoding, and burning in one hit ;-)
posted by Pinback at 6:48 PM on October 15, 2005

Ulead DVD Workshop is a good DVD creation program (particularly for menus), but if your files are even a bit out-of-whack, the program just craps out on you in the middle of encoding. This can be particularly irritating when you've been waiting 2 hours and you're 90% finished.

AVI2DVD is a nice program because you can choose your own MPEG encoder (CCE is probably the best out there right now, certainly one of the fastest).

DivXtoDVD is good for simple multiple-AVI conversions, but I've had it crap out on bad AVI's just like Ulead. Very easy to use interface, however.

To answer your specific questions:
1. Yes, it does. Conversion can be sped up with a good encoder, however. CinemaCraft's encoder is fast as hell compared to free/shareware alternatives, and the final output is awesome.

2. See above. I really like ULead's interface, I just hate the idea of wasting all that encoding time and having nothing to show for it. I really, really hated Ulead's new program (movie workshop or something like that). The DVD menu creator sucked balls.
posted by Civil_Disobedient at 8:06 PM on October 15, 2005

For those in the know if they're still checking this question - is it possible to play a 15 frames per second .avi video on a regular dvd player?
posted by terrortubby at 8:26 PM on October 15, 2005

That would require a DVD player that plays AVI's first. I have an older DVD player that can handle MPG1 files, and IIRC it played clips recorded at different frame rates.
posted by Civil_Disobedient at 8:12 AM on October 16, 2005