DVD conversion/authoring?

[aether]

Hi again, I have been thinking about something lately, I have read alot about people converting their DVDs to other formats to save space. What format would be the best to convert to without loosing too much quality and would it still be able to play on a DVD player? Basically what I wan't to do is make a DVD-R with 2 or 3 movies on it, is this possible and is there any freeware that will allow me to do this?

Thanks in advance.

[manono]

Originally Posted by aether

What format would be the best to convert to without loosing too much quality and would it still be able to play on a DVD player?

If all your standalone DVD player supports is DVD video, you can't convert to anything else. Some support XviD or DivX AVI. If yours does, you can create AVIs for your player. A lot of Media Players, ones such as the WD TV-Live Plus, support all kinds of formats.

As for sticking 2 or 3 movies on a DVDR, I wouldn't recommend that for DVD video. For AVI or others such as MP4, sure. But, again, you have to have something that can play them.

[Ghitulescu]

Those people have more time than space, obviously.

[aether]

I guess it would be best to stick to the original ISO files and DVD shrink then, thanks guys.

[hello_hello]

Originally Posted by Ghitulescu

Those people have more time than space, obviously.

My PC converted three DVDs tonight while I was at work, so time hardly even factored into it. Convenience and portability play a bigger part.

aether,
If you've got a lot of DVDs to convert you might want to consider investing in a new DVD player which plays AVIs. They're pretty cheap these days and pretty much all of them will.
Or if you want to future proof yourself a little more maybe invest in a Bluray player which plays MKV and MP4 video files. The second would be the better option because (without going into the details now) you can convert to a format which loses very little quality while being able to burn 2, 3 or 4 movies to a blank DVD disc, or over a dozen on a blank Bluray disc.

Either way, there's plenty of free programs which will do the converting for you.

PS How old is your DVD player? It might be capable of playing AVIs and you don't even realise. Does it have anything like mpeg4 or DivX in it's list of supported video types?

[aether]

It's an old one, it won't be able to play it lol actually I don't even use it anymore the main reason I'm asking is because most of the DVDs I had were either damaged or never returned when I lent them to friends a while back, so if someone wants to borrow a few movies I could just burn a few on a DVDr and I dont have to worry about it.

[manono]

Originally Posted by aether

...so if someone wants to borrow a few movies I could just burn a few on a DVDr and I dont have to worry about it.

That's if the original retail DVDs are on DVD5s, which most aren't. Most retail DVDs are on the larger capacity DVD9s. To be able to burn them to DVD5 you'd have to shrink them one way or another.