Conversion experiences?
December 30, 2005 1:41 AM Subscribe
Suggestions on reliable, inexpensive (<$50) software for converting AVI to MPEG-2?
I believe, that like Quicktime, AVI is just a container that could be using any number of codecs. I think you could even have an AVI which is already an mpeg2, just by using an AVI extension.
Better to know what specifically you are converting from: Divx, Xvid, ASF mpeg4 etc. That being said, I think Flask and VirtualDub will do this kind of thing - but I haven't done this on a Windows box for a couple of years.
posted by Dag Maggot at 4:51 AM on December 30, 2005
Better to know what specifically you are converting from: Divx, Xvid, ASF mpeg4 etc. That being said, I think Flask and VirtualDub will do this kind of thing - but I haven't done this on a Windows box for a couple of years.
posted by Dag Maggot at 4:51 AM on December 30, 2005
Make sure you check out:
videohelp.com and doom9.com
Tools galore at both.
posted by filmgeek at 4:55 AM on December 30, 2005
videohelp.com and doom9.com
Tools galore at both.
posted by filmgeek at 4:55 AM on December 30, 2005
I use tmpgenc. It was running on this machine overnight and I just closed it. The results are beautiful.
(tip: use virtualdub to save the audio as a wav, and then use that wav as the audio source for your mpeg-2. Tmpgenc can't always handle avi audio, but follow my suggestion and you will be amazed.)
posted by Mayor Curley at 5:00 AM on December 30, 2005
(tip: use virtualdub to save the audio as a wav, and then use that wav as the audio source for your mpeg-2. Tmpgenc can't always handle avi audio, but follow my suggestion and you will be amazed.)
posted by Mayor Curley at 5:00 AM on December 30, 2005
I have to agree with TMpgEnc. WinAVI would be the other option, though slightly less reliable.
posted by rolypolyman at 5:48 AM on December 30, 2005
posted by rolypolyman at 5:48 AM on December 30, 2005
Most DVD burning software can do it, built-in. You just grab a bunch of crazy video and say you want to toss it onto a DVD and it will transcode for you.
posted by mathowie at 8:44 AM on December 30, 2005
posted by mathowie at 8:44 AM on December 30, 2005
Most DVD burning software can do it, built-in. You just grab a bunch of crazy video and say you want to toss it onto a DVD and it will transcode for you.
Granted, it's been a while since I've done that, but the results were truly awful in Nero 6-- everything forced into 4:3 aspect ratio whether it started that way or not, mosaics and it took about 20 hours, too. Oh, and once I got no sound. The aspect ratio might have been my fault, but I tried really hard to find the solution and couldn't.
posted by Mayor Curley at 10:18 AM on December 30, 2005
Granted, it's been a while since I've done that, but the results were truly awful in Nero 6-- everything forced into 4:3 aspect ratio whether it started that way or not, mosaics and it took about 20 hours, too. Oh, and once I got no sound. The aspect ratio might have been my fault, but I tried really hard to find the solution and couldn't.
posted by Mayor Curley at 10:18 AM on December 30, 2005
Response by poster: I should have specified that I'm using WinXP.
I've spent a lot of time lately at VideoHelp.com, Doom9.org, and Afterdawn.com. I've seen dozens of tools mentioned by different folks (and tried many of them, with mixed results).
TMPGEnc converted my AVIs but stripped out the audio.
posted by Artifice_Eternity at 10:52 AM on December 30, 2005
I've spent a lot of time lately at VideoHelp.com, Doom9.org, and Afterdawn.com. I've seen dozens of tools mentioned by different folks (and tried many of them, with mixed results).
TMPGEnc converted my AVIs but stripped out the audio.
posted by Artifice_Eternity at 10:52 AM on December 30, 2005
TMPGEnc converted my AVIs but stripped out the audio.
Right. So get VirtualDub, save the audio of the avi as a wav, and use that as your audio source in tmpgenc. I agree that the audio bug is annoying, but you're not going to get better mpegs with anything else.
posted by Mayor Curley at 10:57 AM on December 30, 2005
Right. So get VirtualDub, save the audio of the avi as a wav, and use that as your audio source in tmpgenc. I agree that the audio bug is annoying, but you're not going to get better mpegs with anything else.
posted by Mayor Curley at 10:57 AM on December 30, 2005
I use avi2dvd. I have only used it half a dozen times, but it worked perfectly each time.
posted by SNACKeR at 11:22 AM on December 30, 2005
posted by SNACKeR at 11:22 AM on December 30, 2005
Response by poster: SNACKeR: Avi2Dvd crashed when I selected the AVI I wanted to convert.
Can anyone tell me how to find out what kind of AVIs I'm dealing with? I know they're PAL (episodes a British TV show) and 16:9, but not much else.
posted by Artifice_Eternity at 11:49 AM on December 30, 2005
Can anyone tell me how to find out what kind of AVIs I'm dealing with? I know they're PAL (episodes a British TV show) and 16:9, but not much else.
posted by Artifice_Eternity at 11:49 AM on December 30, 2005
Response by poster: Mayor Curley: I see lots of people grousing online about their audio and video getting out of sync. I'd prefer to use one program for converting both, if possible.
posted by Artifice_Eternity at 11:51 AM on December 30, 2005
posted by Artifice_Eternity at 11:51 AM on December 30, 2005
I have trouble making dvd compliant mpegs with avi2dvd-- and uncompliant mpegs are a pain in the ass. When I was making svcds, I loved it. Does it support batch processing now? Because I had to use a workaround to do it and I hated that.
You can find out what codecs are in your avi just by right-clicking and selecting "properties". GordianKnot can give you more info, but the days of needing lots of specs are over.
If you NEED to have one app do it all, then avi2dvd is your best bet (assuming that you can figure out how to make compliant output or it's been updated to do that more easily). But like you pointed out, it quits unexpectedly.
If you decompress to wav, you will never have a problem with a/v sync with tmpgenc. As your experimenting has suggested, there isn't a perfect solution; you can spend the extra five minutes getting a wav audio source and then get to authoring the dvd, or you can keep poking around and being disappointed.
posted by Mayor Curley at 12:45 PM on December 30, 2005
You can find out what codecs are in your avi just by right-clicking and selecting "properties". GordianKnot can give you more info, but the days of needing lots of specs are over.
If you NEED to have one app do it all, then avi2dvd is your best bet (assuming that you can figure out how to make compliant output or it's been updated to do that more easily). But like you pointed out, it quits unexpectedly.
If you decompress to wav, you will never have a problem with a/v sync with tmpgenc. As your experimenting has suggested, there isn't a perfect solution; you can spend the extra five minutes getting a wav audio source and then get to authoring the dvd, or you can keep poking around and being disappointed.
posted by Mayor Curley at 12:45 PM on December 30, 2005
Best answer: tmpgenc is good, but I recently found this from Cucusoft. If you have an AMD64, it's amazing:
Optimized for 64-bit CPU including Intel EM64T and AMD64.
It takes 1/4 of the time to transcode material versus tmpgenc.
posted by ryoshu at 3:11 PM on December 30, 2005
Optimized for 64-bit CPU including Intel EM64T and AMD64.
It takes 1/4 of the time to transcode material versus tmpgenc.
posted by ryoshu at 3:11 PM on December 30, 2005
Response by poster: Mayor Curley: Just tried Virtual Dub. After selecting the AVI file, I get this error:
Couldn't locate decompressor for format "XVID" (unknown)
VirtualDub requires a Video for Windows (VFW) compatible codec to decompress video. DirectShow codecs, such as those used by Windows Media Player, are not suitable.
I can play this AVI in VLC, Media Player Classic, and WMP, so it's not in some totally freaky format.
posted by Artifice_Eternity at 3:58 PM on December 30, 2005
Couldn't locate decompressor for format "XVID" (unknown)
VirtualDub requires a Video for Windows (VFW) compatible codec to decompress video. DirectShow codecs, such as those used by Windows Media Player, are not suitable.
I can play this AVI in VLC, Media Player Classic, and WMP, so it's not in some totally freaky format.
posted by Artifice_Eternity at 3:58 PM on December 30, 2005
Response by poster: ryoshu: I tried Cucusoft recently... and was dissatisfied with it, for some reason I've now forgotten. (I've tried dozens of different programs, and combinations of programs.) I'm checking my notes. Meanwhile, I'm giving the trial version another go.
--Well, this time around, it's screwing up my aspect ratio. Original is 640x352, and Cucusoft is set to render it to the same size. But it's rendering 640x480 instead.
posted by Artifice_Eternity at 4:16 PM on December 30, 2005
--Well, this time around, it's screwing up my aspect ratio. Original is 640x352, and Cucusoft is set to render it to the same size. But it's rendering 640x480 instead.
posted by Artifice_Eternity at 4:16 PM on December 30, 2005
Response by poster: OK, Cucusoft's "Advance Settings" dialog contradicts what's on the program's main screen. Even when the main screen says the output aspect ratio is the same as the input, the Advanced Settings have it set to 4:3. I changed that to 16:9. Results: Much better.
(Actually, 352x480 is about 4:2.9, but for some reason doing the conversion at 16:9 produces more accurate results. Go figure.)
I was hoping to end up with an MPEG-2 that I could just burn to a CD-R and pop in my living room DVD player. I've managed to make this work exactly once, with a random MPEG-2 that I pulled off the web as a test clip. Alas, my DVD player won't read Cucusoft's MPEG-2 output off a CD-R.
--But I've also now tested Cucusoft as a DVD creator. A simple (no-menus) DVD burned from this output will play in my machine.
I still need to make sure that Cucusoft can handle a full-length episode of the show in question (as opposed to a short clip, which is what I've tested so far).
posted by Artifice_Eternity at 5:33 PM on December 30, 2005
(Actually, 352x480 is about 4:2.9, but for some reason doing the conversion at 16:9 produces more accurate results. Go figure.)
I was hoping to end up with an MPEG-2 that I could just burn to a CD-R and pop in my living room DVD player. I've managed to make this work exactly once, with a random MPEG-2 that I pulled off the web as a test clip. Alas, my DVD player won't read Cucusoft's MPEG-2 output off a CD-R.
--But I've also now tested Cucusoft as a DVD creator. A simple (no-menus) DVD burned from this output will play in my machine.
I still need to make sure that Cucusoft can handle a full-length episode of the show in question (as opposed to a short clip, which is what I've tested so far).
posted by Artifice_Eternity at 5:33 PM on December 30, 2005
Artifice_Eternity: that VirtualDub error just means that you don't have the VfW version of the XviD codec installed - you just have the DirectShow version, which works with most newer windows players (but not VDub). At a guess, you have DivX (which will handle XviD, long story there...) installed, but not the actual XviD codec (or ffdshow?).
Doesn't matter. As someone else suggested upthread, demux the audio to a .wav file. Use the original .avi as the video source for TMPGEnc, and the new .wav file as the audio source.
To demux the audio: well, if VDub won't read the file, try RAD Video Tools.
Oh, and if you're MPEG-ing it to put on DVD, you don't want 640x352, or 640x480, or whatever. You want 720x480, or 360x240 - I think both are valid DVD sizes in NTSC-land. Forget about the aspect ratio when choosing sizes - AR is handled by an AR flag in MPEG2. Basically, for DVD MPEG2, width x height is one of those two sizes in pixels - a setting in the container & bitstream tells the player to play it as 4:3, or stretch it to widescreen 16:9.
To answer your original question: TMPGEnc is cheap, flexible, and almost as good as the (much) more expensive options. It can be picky about handling audio in the original container (it sometimes ignores the audio altogether or, more insidiously, decide that they're different lengths and cause sync problems), but demuxing the audio beforehand usually solves that problem.
posted by Pinback at 5:54 PM on December 30, 2005
Doesn't matter. As someone else suggested upthread, demux the audio to a .wav file. Use the original .avi as the video source for TMPGEnc, and the new .wav file as the audio source.
To demux the audio: well, if VDub won't read the file, try RAD Video Tools.
Oh, and if you're MPEG-ing it to put on DVD, you don't want 640x352, or 640x480, or whatever. You want 720x480, or 360x240 - I think both are valid DVD sizes in NTSC-land. Forget about the aspect ratio when choosing sizes - AR is handled by an AR flag in MPEG2. Basically, for DVD MPEG2, width x height is one of those two sizes in pixels - a setting in the container & bitstream tells the player to play it as 4:3, or stretch it to widescreen 16:9.
To answer your original question: TMPGEnc is cheap, flexible, and almost as good as the (much) more expensive options. It can be picky about handling audio in the original container (it sometimes ignores the audio altogether or, more insidiously, decide that they're different lengths and cause sync problems), but demuxing the audio beforehand usually solves that problem.
posted by Pinback at 5:54 PM on December 30, 2005
Best answer: Pinback: Thanks for further clarification on the technical stuff.
At this point, I'm leaning toward Cucusoft, which seems to produce good DVD output, and at $20 for the full version is quite reasonable. I'm going to play around with the trial version a little more.
posted by Artifice_Eternity at 6:08 PM on December 30, 2005
At this point, I'm leaning toward Cucusoft, which seems to produce good DVD output, and at $20 for the full version is quite reasonable. I'm going to play around with the trial version a little more.
posted by Artifice_Eternity at 6:08 PM on December 30, 2005
On preview : 352x480 isn't a valid DVD size - but it might be a valid VCD/SVCD size, I forget. The reason why it's almost, but not quite, the right aspect (assuming that it's doubled horizontally) is that unlike computer displays, TVs use non-square pixels - they're wider than they are high.
There's a lot of reasons, both logical and illogical, as to why digital video has such confusion surrounding it ;-)
posted by Pinback at 6:13 PM on December 30, 2005
There's a lot of reasons, both logical and illogical, as to why digital video has such confusion surrounding it ;-)
posted by Pinback at 6:13 PM on December 30, 2005
This thread is closed to new comments.
posted by null terminated at 2:26 AM on December 30, 2005