DV AVI to DVD Suggestions?

[spaaarky21]

I've seen a lot of advice on converting VOB's to DV files but I am looking for a good way to go the other direction. I have a ton of home video that I have been digitizing and "sprucing up" (deinterlacing, cropping and resizing) with VirtualDub and I now I want to get those DV AVI's onto DVD's. I have Pinnacle Studio 8 and I used it to convert one of the videos to DVD but I wasn't very happy with the outcome. I've never been very happy with the video quality of DVD's made with Studio, not even at 100% quality (2 hours per DVD) and two pass encoding. Their encoder just loses sooooo much detail. So, I was wondering what a good process is for encoding DVD-compliant MPEG-2's and getting them on DVD's. I'm not really interested in making DVD menus - I just want the video to play.

And, of course, I would prefer to stick with free and preferably open source tools. I've been really impressed with some H.264 MPEG's I encoded with an ffmpeg frontend. Is there any good way to encode MPEG2's with ffmpeg, then copy them to a VOB container and build the rest of the DVD files? In my mind, that would be ideal but I'm up for suggestions. Are there any decent all-in-tools? I'm open to using a variety tools for Windows, Linux or Mac.

- Brandon

[Dark Shikari]

I'd recommend HC for MPEG-2 encoding. It's adaptive quantization feature (same algorithm as x264's) puts it above most of the other encoders in quality.

[setarip_old]

@spaaarky21

Hi!Are there any decent all-in-tools?Try my favorite, DVD Flick...

[spaaarky21]

Great. I am in the middle of encoding using HC right now. I have high hopes for the video quality but I'm not quite sure where to go from there, once I have the m2v file done. I'm not too familiar with not-so-automated DVD authoring but am willing to learn.

I will also give DVD Flick a try. The fact that it uses FFMPEG and can use AviSynth are both good features. I once read a feature request for FFMPEG that AviSynth support be added. The general consensus seemed to be that adding support on Windows was fine as long as it didn't interfere with builds for other platforms. Did that feature ever make it into FFMPEG itself, or was it approved but never implemented?

Are there any other free MPEG2 encoders that use H.264-like adaptive quantization?

[spaaarky21]

For anyone reading this after the fact, DVD Flick turned out to be a neat tool. It uses FFMPEG to encode but if you would rather use another encoder (like HC for example), you could add your DVD-compatible MPEG-2 file to your DVD Flick project and then add the audio track separately. Just make sure you choose the option to not re-encode the video.

On the downside, I have had some trouble with noisy audio and blips from DVD Flick. That's pretty disappointing but maybe I would be better off just using it for mastering and not encoding.

[rica]

but maybe I would be better off just using it for mastering and not encoding.

You've found your way :)

Demux video and audio
Encode video with HC
Encode audio with Aften
Author with DVDFlick using those encoded files.

[setarip_old]

@spaaarky21

For anyone reading this after the fact, DVD Flick turned out to be a neat tool.

Glad to hear you found it useful ;>}

[spaaarky21]

@spaaarky21



Glad to hear you found it useful ;>}

I think one of the best things about it is the option to add chapters every X minutes. That's really useful for home movies.

[spaaarky21]

You've found your way :)

Demux video and audio
Encode video with HC
Encode audio with Aften
Author with DVDFlick using those encoded files.

Is that what you do? If so, what bitrates do you use for the audio and video so that everything on the DVD ends up fitting on a single layer disc?

[rica]

Is that what you do? If so, what bitrates do you use for the audio and video so that everything on the DVD ends up fitting on a single layer disc?

I use HC in making SD mpeg files from BD discs.
I import avs to HC and simpy click on the button "Make DVD Compliant" and leave the audio encoding job to eac3to.(which uses Aften)

[spaaarky21]

I use HC in making SD mpeg files from BD discs.
I import avs to HC and simpy click on the button "Make DVD Compliant" and leave the audio encoding job to eac3to.(which uses Aften)

IIRC, if you enter a large number in the target file size and press "make DVD compliant," it will change the target file size for you. I assume that the new size value is the size of an entire single layer DVD? Don't you have to subtract out the size of the audio track? And what about the few other files that end up on the DVD, like the IFO? I would hate to end up with a final disc image that is just a couple bytes too big, you know.