Convert AVI To MPEG

[Hau]

I am trying to convert some The Simpsons (around 700MB) movies from avi to mpeg so I can play it on my DVD player as VCD, (my DVD player supports VCD). I don't have a dvd-burner.. I can't afford it. I only have one of those normal CDRW... I am using Roxio Easy CD Creator 5 to burn my CDs. I tried to convert the movie with Ulead Media Studio Pro 6.0, but it convert 700 avi to 7 GB MPEG....

What would u recommend for avi to mpeg converter?
How can I burn it as VCD?

[RJ]

Hi,

take TMPGEnc 2.5 from www.tmpgenc.net

It's the best freeware MPEG encoder available, it includes a wizard and has some templates (VideoCD included).
When starting TMPGEnc the wizard will appear. Select Video CD NTSC, not Video CD NTSC Film, because the first one is the standard (352x240@29.97 for NTSC).

Not sure though if Roxio EZ CD Creator can make Video CDs. If it can't you can download the trial version from www.nero.com and burn it.

RJ

[Hau]

Thanks
I will try it out now..
thanks again

[RJ]

Oh, and just a note: When creating a VideoCD you can use the complete capacity of a CD. That means that you can burn about 800 MB of video on a 700 MB CD-R, so don't worry if the file gets bigger than 700 MB

RJ

[Hau]

really? Thanks
and all this time I worry about the size.

[RJ]

Yep. And if the file gets larger than 800 MB, then you need to split it up into 2 MPEG files to burn it on 2 VCDs. TMPGEnc includes a MPEG splitter, so no problem.

Anyway you should know that converting a 700MB AVI into MPEG will take some time, TMPGEnc is optimized for quality, not speed, therefore I recommend you to take a small avi (1 min. or so) for testing and if you successfully created a VideoCD then you can convert the Simpsons. You can let the PC do that over night, TMPGEnc lets you create a list of movies to encode. It's called the "batch encoding".

RJ

[Hau]

Thanks.

Yeah... Ulead Media Studio Pro 6.0 takes more than 2 hours too... and it turn out to be 7 GB hahaha... Almost crash my hd...

[RJ]

7GB ?? Wow. That's kinda large. Sounds that you didn't create a VCD compatible stream, but some large MPEG.

If you want to calculate the size of your mpeg stream, here the excerpt from www.tmpgenc.net :
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
How can we calculate the actual size of MPGE file which will be crated?
If you choose CBR, The fillowing equation can be used to calculate. "2048/2018" stands for bitrate of system stream.

Filesize (Kb) = (Video+Audio) x (2048/2018) x sec/8

E.g. Video is 1150Kbps, audio is 224Kbps, 15 sec MPEG file would be "(1150+224) x (2048/2018) x 15/8" = 2614KB
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

VideoCD uses CBR, 1150kbps and 224kbps audio.

RJ

[Hau]

do I have to decode the avi file first? The avi file is already encoded. (I am using TMPGEnc

[RJ]

Nope, you don't. An uncompressed AVI would be about 40 GB for 30 min, so that's a bit too large.

Just start TMPGEnc and the wizard should appear. Select VideoCD NTFS, load the avi, and do a few other settings, and then the convertion can begin.

RJ

[Hau]

do I select one for video and one for audio? Because it said error if I select under video.. It said unsupported video format. I have dixv codec...

[RJ]

You can encode them separately and multiplex it together afterwards if there are problems when encoding video+audio at once.
However, when TMPGEnc says that the format is unsupported, then this means that the codec isn't installed. Do you have the DivX codec currently installed ?

Personally I haven't much experience with the DivX AVI. Last time I wanted to convert a DivX AVI from a friend to a SVCD I had problems to code the audio stream. Haven't tried it again so far, but I had no problems in loading the AVI.
So check that the DivX codec is installed and download the newest release if needed.

Tomorrow I'll try to convert a small divx avi to vcd format to see if there are any problems. Can't do that today because I'll go to a friend again. . . with my whole PC of course. . .as always
. . I know, I know, I need a laptop

RJ

[Hau]

sorry for all ur troubles...
thanks

[RJ]

No need to be sorry, I do video encoding anyway 'coz I like it. VCD doesn't make any trouble anymore, just with SVCD I have still a little problem.

RJ

[Hau]

man, all this movie editing are filling up my hd.. How many GB do u have?

[RJ]

When I started encoding my first mpeg's I only had a 17,2 GB drive. That was a very very large drive for my when I bought it will a year ago. Installed all my programs and games and only filled it about 40%, so I divided it into 2 partitions. One 14 GB C: and 3 GB D: for backup.

But when I started with video encoding I had to buy the 61,5 GB drive. Now it seems that I will need a third drive. Hmm, what am I gonna take ? 'course the IBM Deskstar 120GXP with 120GB . .no, maybe too early. .

Yeah, this video stuff takes alot of hard drive. For example, if you want to cut an mpeg you need about 3x the file size as amount of hard drive space, because TMPGEnc will demultiplex the files and then edit it and multiplex them together again.

And it takes time. Just for fun and testing I ripped a VOB file, demultiplexed it and multiplexed the stream I wanted together and then converted it to a xVCD format (that's a nonstandard format. Just VCD with MPEG-2 instead of MPEG-1). It took 6 hours to convert 30min. Well, that was with CBR, tomorrow I'll try the same with VBR. . .

RJ

[Hau]

How fast is your computer? It takes me about 2 hours for 120 mins to convert from avi to mpeg...

[RJ]

PIII 800 MHz,

I'll to the DivX-VCD conversion test tomorrow, because tomorrow I'm going to another friend. . . again with my whole PC. .as always. . .
And he has some divx movies, so there I have various divx to test the conversion.

RJ

[Hau]

cool..
thanks.