Any similar tool for AVI to DVD-R?

[The Belgain]

I've just discovered DVD2SVCD and have used it a few times to do conversions from my DivX rips to SVCD to watch on my dad's standalone at home (I didn't reuse the original DVD because it was at uni and I'm at home now, and I was interested in the quality of the transcode anyway). I'm very happy with the results, and the ease of use of the program, nice work!

I now have a DVD recorder drive, and am wondering whether there is a similar tool to do AVI to DVD-R? Doom9's guide seems to suggest there isn't? Surely it wouldn't be too difficult to enable DVD2SVCD to output DVD-compliant MPEG2 would it? Are there any similar tools to automate the process (the way in the guide would be a pain to do)?

Feel free to move this post to somewhere more appropriate.

[dvd2svcd]

Soon I might have something for you. Keep an eye on my homepage.

[The Belgain]

Wow! Quick response. You gotta love that about this forum. Anyway, I'm very much looking forward to that. Will it take the same kind of form as DVD2SVCD?

How about ac3 encoding? Will it just use BeSweet, or will there be an option to use it as a frontend to SonicFoundry Softencode (which is supposed to be the best quality ac3 encoder, right?)?

[dvd2svcd]

I'll keep onusing BeSweet because it is imho the best tool for the job. I am extending dvd2svcd.

[jsoto]

@dvd2svcd
I am suspecting something like this, but I believe I was wrong because nothing is anounced in your future enhancements thread (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=24155)
Anyway, anything coming from you will be absolutely very appreciated.
Cheers.

[jorel]

@ jsoto and to d2s moderator
just like you jsoto i can post:
anything coming from you dvd2svcd moderator,
will be absolutely very appreciated.
;)

@ The Belgain
"a similar tool" maybe is possible but...
with the same result is "another question".
:)

[The Belgain]

Excellent. Am I to take it from your answers that there is no other tool at the moment which automates this task? This seems surprising since I would have thought there would be a lot of interest in doing this to playback in standalones with almost no quality loss compared to the avi source (obviously much worse than the original DVD though).

[Nick]

I would agree. You'd have thought a tool would exist by now as DVD writers have been commonplace for 6 months or so now (I still can't afford one but plenty of my friends have them).

But it looks like our man DVD2SVCD comes to the rescue again!

In the meantime take a look at this...

http://www.doom9.org/index.html?/mpg/avi2dvdr.htm

[The Belgain]

Also, the new version of Nero seems to do this (though I haven't tested it yet) using NeroVision Express. I don't know what the quality or speed is like compared to CCE (probably worse I would imagine, also it seems like there is only a CBR option), though the quality should still be pretty close to the source quality from Divx/XviD.

I'll test it out once I have enough disc space...

[The Belgain]

Right. I've set it going in Nero and, as expected, it doesn't match the speeds of CCE. I get about 0.5x realtime on my XP2000+. Having said that I think that is doing the audio at the same time, so not as slow as it seems.

It hasn't finished yet, but the quality seems to be pretty good from what people seem to be saying in the nero recode thread:

http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=58298

I'd just like to draw people's attention to a major bug in Recode which means Nero could potentially delete all the contents of a hard disc:

http://www.cdfreaks.com/news/7638

[The Belgain]

Well the encode's finished now, and I'm not amazed by the quality...noticeably worse than the source (which was admittedly not very good).

Also, does anyone know why it chooses mp2 stereo as default for audio rather than stereo ac3?

[Nick]

That is an odd one. I knew MP2 audio was supported but I thought in order to fall in with DVD-Video specifications there had to be a minimum of one AC3 or PCM audio track. Therefore a DVD with only an MP2 format audio stream is technically not standard compliant.

What was the source audio? If you only had stereo mp2 or mp3 soundtrack on the AVI then mp2 sounds a reasonable output format. I'm guessing if you have an AVI with AC3 audio it is left untouched...

Anyway, love the bug report - Top comedy! :D

As for the quality, looks like hand-encoding with CCE rules for the time being.

[The Belgain]

The source file had stereo mp3 audio. Nero also has an option to transcode to a stereo ac3, which would seem a sensible default choice.

It defaulted to 384 kbit stereo mp2 instead.

Oh, and I was wrong about the encoding being CBR; it is VBR (you only choose an average bitrate).

[da franksta]

@dvd2svcd
I'll keep onusing BeSweet because it is imho the best tool for the job.

just to warn you i'd like you to take a look at these two threads:
DVD-RW won't play on Pioneer DV-454 (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?threadid=57194)
DVD freezes with audio encoded with AC3-Machine (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?threadid=43466)

it seems that ac3 encoded by besweet is problematic in pioneer players.
you might want to check into this issue before the bugreports come rolling in ;)

[The Belgain]

This seems to only be a problem with Pioneer players, right?

Maybe an option to use Softencode instead of BeSweet could be added later on (if the author has time of course). For the rest of users though, BeSweet should be much quicker I think. Also, I assume there'll be an option to keep the ac3 track from avis untouched, right? This is very much lacking in NeroVision.

Also, the reason audio is set to mp2 as default in Nero seems to be that the ac3 encoder isn't inculded as default (or yet - can anyone confirm this?).

[KYUSS]

Originally posted by dvd2svcd
Soon I might have something for you. Keep an eye on my homepage.

is your homepage down m8?

[dvd2svcd]

No. http://www.dvd2svcd.org as always.