Burning movies to CDR to watch on DVD/CDR/CDRW/etc.

[reboot]

Got a 60 gig hard drive full of home movies from an uncle who's into geneaology. I need to burn these to CDR so they will play in a DVD player. They all seem to be in .avi format (HUGE!), although there are some in .mpg as well. Of course the whole family wants a copy each (sigh), and I can envision myself burning out 2 or 3 recorders making all these.
What software do I need to a.)convert them to a useable format (VCD?) and b.)compress them into a useable size.
60 gigs of movies simply takes up WAY too many CDR's in current format, there's got to be a better way.

[Statica]

Nero does it efficiently enough (for the files that I've used) provided your videos are in MPEG-1 audio - 44.1khz; 24Kbits/s
video - 352 x 240 / 29.97Hz or 352 x 240 / 23.976 Hz or 352 x 288 / 25 Hz (information got by trying to put in a bad format mpg)

VirtualDub is by far the best tool out there to create compliant video files (if you have a number of files, the job script feature is superb).


_{now I'll just wait for Audiyoda to jump in while chuckling at me, and give you some info that will get the job done faster) :)}

[RJ]

Hi,

to watch CDs in a DVD player VCD or SVCD would be your choice.
The best non-expensive encoder program (free for MPEG-1, $48 for MPEG-2) is TMPGEnc.
For SVCD and DVD, forget Nero. It seems to make a nice VCD, though. Anyway, for both VCD or SVCD authoring, VCDeasy does the job very well.
www.vcdhelp.com has alot of info for this.

RJ

[reboot]

OK, got TMPGEnc to convert most.
Got VCDEasy to burn (might check out Nero as well).
Thanks for all the help, although I'll probably be back with questions.

[audiyoda]

I'll reiterate what I've said in the past -- Nero 5.5.9.0 does very well at SVCD -- it's a heck of a TON easier than VCDEasy and produces a high quality image.

Too test the theory last night I took some raw footage (AVI-DV 16:9 shot on a Canon GL-1, color corrected and edited in Avid ExpresDV) I'd shot and using a number of methods created 4 SVCDs. using my most expensive software (Discreet Cleaner, Ligos/LSX Encoder) I created an SVCD with VCDEasy and Nero (disks 1 & 2) -- there is no noticable difference. I then used TMPGEnc with Nero and VCDEasy (disks 3 & 4) -- not as good as what I got from disks 1 & 2, but there was still no real difference disks 3 & 4.

My conclusions: The combination of TMPEnc and Nero produced a high quality SVCD with the least effort. VCDEasy first needs to be renamed. Second is a tad bit faster than Nero.

-Craig

[reboot]

Yeah, I realize now that VCDEasy isn't. Period.
Gonna try Nero.
Thanks Craig.

[RJ]

What don't you like about VCDEasy ? Okay, it's not extremely easy, but not complicated. You just do your settings once, and then load MPEG and burn.

Nero has always made bad SVCDs, they always had errors. I highly doubt that Nero now makes perfect SVCDs, especially because the newest Nero is one of the worst programs you can use for burning a video DVD.

RJ

[audiyoda]

Well RJ, all I can say is that my wife, my parents, her parents, my wife's step-brother and wife all agreed with my assessment (they are all over for Christmas).

I don't know what to tell you. But I will say this -- I didn't use the fastest writing setting either -- but I've always burned (S)VCDs at around 8x or 12x regardless of program. So maybe that's why people have issues with Nero -- burning a SVCD at top speed is just asking for errors.

-Craig

[RJ]

Yep I know that, therefore I always burned VCD/SVCD with 4x.

Try to fast forward and rewind SVCDs made with Nero, do it in standalone DVD players. Alot of DVD players will have problems with it, that's a common Nero SVCD issue.
Nero-SVCDs don't have the scandata.dat file (at least the early Nero 5.5 versions up to 5.5.8.0 or 5.5.9.0, haven't tried a newer one. VCDeasy doesn't have the problem), that makes fast forward/rewind trouble with alot of DVD players.

Since VCDimager, and VCDeasy is just a GUI for it, produces real accurate, most-compatible SVCDs, why bother with Nero and its problems ?
Okay, maybe your DVD player doesn't have problems (not all do, it's just that many do), then you can use Nero if you like, but for the majority VCDeasy would be the better choice. And it's really not complicated. It looks a bit complicated coz you see alot of options right away, but once you did your settings it is very easy to create good SVCDs. Just load MPEG and burn.

RJ

[Floppyman]

Pardon me for jumping into this discussion, but I have found quite interesting thus far. Is VCDEasy, shareware, freeware? I was planning on burning some VCD's in the future and was planning on using Nero too, but I may try VCDEasy.

[RJ]

Freeware: www.vcdeasy.org

RJ

[Floppyman]

Thanks RJ, got it downloaded. Will let you what I think of it or if I have any questions.

[audiyoda]

Don't know what to tell you RJ, but I tried those SVCDs on a Apex, Toshiba (standard and progessive scan) and my wife's new Samsung portable. Didn't have a problem.

-Craig

[reboot]

Something I'm doing is a screw up. Used TCPMpeg (whatever it's called) and can't burn a thing in Nero. Errors out every time checking the files. I'm sure it's me, and some settings somewhere.
Some converted files will burn no problem, others won't, no matter what. Non-standard frame size, or some other unintelligable error.
Going to try one or two files at a time, if I can figure out how to add more later, otherwise it's a waste.
I'm just not savvy enough with how it all works yet. More reading to do, and I gotta learn how to convert all the stuff from mpg, and avi, into a format that Nero will accept.
I burned one CD (at 6x), and it seemed to go well, but only about half the things actually play, it seems to skip over stuff it doesn't recognize, and I tried 3 or 4 different players (software). If it won't work on the comp, it's sure not going to work in Grandma's DVD player.