Making a DVD suitable for DVD players

[ewen]

At the outset let me admit to being a complete newbie to DVD burning, copying etc and I sincerely hope that I have chosen the proper forum to make my query. I have searched the forum for an answer but not being sure of my facts I must admit to getting no suitable answers.

This in summary is my problem: I have recorded a number of short movies (.avi) with my webcam, satisfactrily captured and which I would like to make into a DVD suitable for playing on a commercial DVD player. I have tried converting them to mpegs which work fine but the resolution is awful.

I have a copy of "Ulead Movie Factory 2" which will convert .avi files to a DVD format and I have been able to use it successfully once. Now when I come to use it the hour glass just sits and revolves and the programme goes nowhere. My system is a Pentium III 860 and I have 384 meg of ram and this may be my problem (too small a system.)

Are there any other programmes that I might try which will do the job?

Regards.

PS: After posting this I did another search and found references under DVD Authoring (TMPGEnc in particular) but all suggestions will be welcomed.

[PhillipWyllie]

You say Mpegs, is that refering to MPEG-1? I'd use TMPGEnc and encode the AVI's to MPEG-2 with a decent bitrate. Oh what resolution are your AVI's in?

[atreides93]

Two things, your computer is extremely slow compared to today's systems...and Ulead software stinks. Try using TMPGEnc and TMPDvdAuthor...both have wizards that let you select DVD output so it automatically encodes video at the proper setting for DVD's.

Converting to mpeg-2 should have no effect on your resolution, unless you're somehow telling the program to encode at some rediculous resolution like 320x240 etc...

[ewen]

PhillipWyllie and atreides 93 thank you for your replies and you are right... my system is dead slow and it really is time for an update. Trouble is i got into this DVD thing by accident and cash wise I can't handle an update right now. But it's on the cards.

Meantime i am using NeroVision Express 2 with pretty good results.

Thank you both for your replies.

Regards.