Best method to get from .mp4 to DVD?

[bsw]

Hi,

I have a bunch of videos that are H.264 and AAC in .mp4 files. I would like to be able to put them on a DVD for transport convienience - it will be much easier for me to carry a disc than my laptop to the place where I want to show them...

I have found that I can use VLC to trancode to MPEG-2 and AC3 and then use other great tools I have read about here to build them into a DVD. This works well, but the quality is really bad. I am not silly and don't expect to get "DVD quality" video from highly compressed H.264. I am comparing the difference between watcing the H.264 fullscreen on my TV with the S-Video out from my computer to the DVD I have made.

I am pretty sure that this is coming from the VLC transcode process - re-encoding compression artefacts makes for bigger compression artefacts??

I was hoping for a method that would get "raw" video from the .mp4 that I could then feed into a 2-pass encode in HCenc (for example) and maybe get better results.

I've tried DirectShowSource in AVISynth with ffdshow but can't get this to work. I can't even figure out if it should work :o

Any comments or suggestions welcome.

I have posted this in the newbie forum because I understand that is what I am here. Please be gentle...

Thanks,

Brian

[Blue_MiSfit]

Welcome to Doom9 :)

Please read the rules, and learn to :search! Specifically, don't ask what's best, as everyone has their own subjective opinions on what's best, and such questions can lead to off topic flame wars :)

I don't mean to sound gruff, so I'll help you out.

Theoretically using DirectShowSource("myfile.mp4") should get the video at least loaded. You may need to force a certain frame rate. In fact, this is probably the only way to get MPEG-4 AVC into AviSynth at the moment, at least until somebody writes an Mpeg4Source plugin :)

DSS works but is a little unpredictable. Make sure you have your directshow decoders set up nicely, i.e. no ffdshow filters etc...

You sound like you know what you're doing - mp4 -> avisynth -> HC is a valid workflow and it should work.

One program I use for quick transcodes from mp4/mkv to DVD is VSO's ConvertXToDVD, a very nice (cheap) app that seems to accept anything you throw at it. It has a VERY simple and fast menu making system, and is very fast at re-encoding.

If you really want the "best" possible quality, you will need to use a proper 2 pass high quality MPEG-2 encoder like HC, QuEnc, CCE etc... and process a bit with avisynth.

As a (messy) alternative, you could try remuxing mp4 to mkv with mkvmergeGUI, and then muxing that mkv to an AVI with AviMuxGUI (which doesn't accept MP4, hence the pre-muxing to mkv). Then you could use avisource in avisynth, which is very stable. However, this may introduce audio delay depending on your audio codec. H.264 in AVI is a bit of a hack anyway..

Good luck, let us know how it goes.

[setarip_old]

@bsw

Hi!I have a bunch of videos that are H.264 and AAC in .mp4 files.If you created these videos from DVDs that you own, I'd strongly suggest that you can obtain far better results by simply duplicating (and, if necessary, compressing with a program such as DVD Shrink, DVD Redbuilder, DVD95Copy, DVD2One, or similar) the original DVDs...

[bsw]

@bsw

Hi!If you created these videos from DVDs that you own,

No, they are not from DVDs that I own. I'll happily discuss the source/legallity of them and my intended purpose for them offline if you want but I digested enough of the forum rules to know I should keep away from that here.

Thanks,

Brian

[bsw]

Welcome to Doom9 :)

Thanks.

Please read the rules, and learn to :search! Specifically, don't ask what's best...

Oops - sorry. I did read and it made perfect sense. It's just such a natural thing to ask. I should remember next time.

Theoretically using DirectShowSource("myfile.mp4") should get the video at least loaded. [..snip ..] DSS works but is a little unpredictable. Make sure you have your directshow decoders set up nicely, i.e. no ffdshow filters etc...

I have very vanilla ffdshow and have tried lots of different versions after reading threads about it here and on VideoHelp.com. None seem to work. I can only get my .mp4 files to play in MPC or VLC, not "normal" Windows Media Player so I suspect there is something wrong with my ffdshow VFW setup. The only tip I have found is to make sure H.264/AVC is enabled on the Decoder tab - which it is. I currently have ffdshow [rev 801] [2007-01-19] installed if it makes a difference.

Thanks,

Brian

[setarip_old]

I'll happily discuss the source/legallity of them and my intended purpose for them offline if you wantNot for me to discuss with you.Discussion of rules and the "ANNOUNCEMENT" at the top of the "Newbies" sub-forum and possible violations are the bailiwick of the moderators here...

[Guest]

>No, they are not from DVDs that I own.

Oh, well, too bad. Thread closed. Next time you should give enough information for us to assess the legality. "Don't ask, don't tell" is not our policy. We err on the side of caution so the onus is on you.