iTunes episodes to DVD?

[rack04]

I'm interested in converting the MP4 (h.264 and AAC) episodes that I purchased from iTunes to a DVD compliant format and burn to a DVD.

The source files are either 640x352 (16:9) 23.976 fps or 480x352 (4x3) 23.976 fps.

My questions:

1.) How do I resize these files to DVD compliant NTSC resolution?

2.) What HCenc settings do I need to generate a DVD compliant file?

3.) Are there any open source DVD authoring applications?

[deets]

are they drm free?

[rack04]

are they drm free?

Yes they are.

[setarip_old]

@rack04

I believe you can accomplish this with "multiAVCHD"...

[Inspector.Gadget]

Yes they are.

Are you certain? All of the available information seems to indicate that Apple has not yet made available DRM-free video through iTunes, but I'd be very happy to be proven wrong :o

[Ghitulescu]

I'm interested in converting the MP4 (h.264 and AAC) episodes that I purchased from iTunes to a DVD compliant format and burn to a DVD.

The source files are either 640x352 (16:9) 23.976 fps or 480x352 (4x3) 23.976 fps.

Weren't cheaper the option to directly buy the DVDs instead of MP4s? If one adds the time wasted, the electricity, the usure of the equipment, the quality of the down-/upconversions, I really think so ....

[rack04]

Weren't cheaper the option to directly buy the DVDs instead of MP4s? If one adds the time wasted, the electricity, the usure of the equipment, the quality of the down-/upconversions, I really think so ....

Most of what I have purchased isn't available on DVD's.

[qyot27]

Yeah, thread's been here for 2-3 weeks, but I just saw it now.

1.) How do I resize these files to DVD compliant NTSC resolution?
AviSynth is the most likely candidate. Or practically anything else that can do video processing. VirtualDub, ffmpeg, mencoder, etc.

[Preferred]Resizer(720,480) #where [Preferred] is the user's desired resizer: Bilinear, Bicubic, Lanczos or Lanczos4, one of the Spline methods...

HCenc has aspect ratio flagging capabilities, so as long as you know you're dealing with 4:3 or 16:9 material then 720,480 is fine - you can specify the correct ratio to HCenc in the profile given to it at encode time. If it's a non-16:9 widescreen ratio, then just do some proportional resizing calculations to match the width, letterbox to 480, and then squeeze the width back to 720 (or skip part of that step and just resize to 720 but use the proportional values derived from 848 to determine your height and letterboxing). VirtualDub's internal resize filter does proportional resizing now, as does the VDMod_Resize filter, which I still prefer. I'd use those to get the values and then plug them into the AviSynth script for the actual resizing.

You could also go down to 352x240, since DVD supports that resolution also. In such a case, only 4:3 is permissible - 16:9 content has to be letterboxed (that is, 320x176, letterbox to 240, and resize horizontally to 352). For these VCD-like encodes, you really don't need a bitrate higher than ~2000kbps.

2.) What HCenc settings do I need to generate a DVD compliant file?
HCenc is focused towards DVD compliancy (even says so in the PDF that comes with it), so it's not a huge ? over whether a stream will or won't be compliant. Just make sure not to use a dc precision of 11 or 3 b-frames (or perhaps non-4:2:0 colorspace, although I've never experimented with that one), and you'll be fine. Those are the only features I know of that HCenc can use that fall outside of DVD spec. Aside from the obvious bitrate/framerate/resolution limitations to consider.

My two most common profiles for DVD encoding are below:
for 23.976fps material,
*BITRATE 6000
*MAXBITRATE 6000
*1PASS
*PROFILE best
*ASPECT 16:9
*GOP 12 2
*DC_PREC 9
*PROGRESSIVE
*INTRAVLC 2
*CLOSEDGOPS
*PULLDOWN
*LASTIFRAME
*MPEGLEVEL MP@ML
*MATRIX mpeg
*WAIT 0

for 29.97fps material,
*BITRATE 6000
*MAXBITRATE 6000
*1PASS
*PROFILE best
*ASPECT 16:9
*GOP 12 2
*DC_PREC 9
*PROGRESSIVE
*INTRAVLC 2
*CLOSEDGOPS
*LASTIFRAME
*MPEGLEVEL MP@ML
*MATRIX mpeg
*WAIT 0
As you can see, the only thing that differs is the use of the PULLDOWN option. Said option only works for 23.976fps material.

DC_PREC could be upped to 10 or lowered to 8, and ASPECT should be changed to 4:3 if that's what you're working with.

For 24fps (24000/1000) or 25fps stuff, I use the 29.97 profile(s) and then use DGPulldown to apply custom flagging.

Making sure the profiles DON'T contain INFILE and OUTFILE parameters makes it simple to use them on any file from the CLI or batch script, which is how I normally use HCenc.


Bringing it together, my common workflow looks like:
wavi "16.9 23.976 input.avs" - | aften -b 192 - "16.9 23.976 output.ac3"
hcenc_025 -i "16.9 23.976 input.avs" -o "16.9 23.976 output.m2v" -ini "C:\Program Files\HC025\16-9_23fps-6000.ini"
mplex -f8 -V "16.9 23.976 output.m2v" "16.9 23.976 output.ac3" -o finaloutput.mpg
The wavi/aften line isn't necessary if there's a 48kHz 5.1 AC3 involved. In such a case, just extract it using mp4box or something first. If the framerate is anything other than 23.976 or 29.97, though, that AC3 means you will need to use DGPulldown to maintain the sync without skewing or reencoding the audio.

3.) Are there any open source DVD authoring applications?
AVStoDVD. It can pass compliant video/audio through without re-encoding, if that's what you prefer.