I went camping and a friend brought his camcorder and taped a lot of the events. He had it converted to DVD and made me a copy of it on a CD (he only has a DVD-Rom and a CD-burner). So I can watch it on my 'puter but I’d like to watch it on the TV. The file is coded as an .AVI file and needs to get converted to an .MPG file to be burned as a VCD so I can watch it on my DVD player.
I’ve tried 2 different types of freeware to convert it and they went *very * slowly. So I’m wonder what’s the best program out there for quickly converting this data?
Bonus question for 2 points:
Is it possible to just burn the .AVI to a DVD-R? (I don’t have a DVD burner but it might make it worth it to give copies of the camping trip to the others as well).
Unfortunately, MPG encoding is just slow. Especially if you’re talking about a 30-60 min video. Even if it works in realtime (1x), that’s still a long time to wait.
You should try burning it to a CDR and seeing if your DVD player will play it. It’s easier to just do that than to figure out whether it should work.
From what I’ve heard, TMPGEnc is the best program overall, but CinemaCraft Encoder (CCE) might be a bit faster. My Athlon XP 2500+ can encode in real-time with TMPGEnc.
If you do this a lot, you might want to look into hardware encoders. I’m interested in getting one, but I don’t know much about them.
I’ll take the 2 points for the bonus question. The answer is no if you you expect the DVD-R to play in a DVD player. The standard format for DVD’s is MPEG-2.
I will weigh in with a question as to why you are so concerned about the speed. If this AVI is on a CD, it is about 700 MB at most. 700 MB of DV generated AVI should be only 3 minutes of video. My guess is that this has been seriously compressed, probably with low resolution and you are not going to get much quality out of a DVD or VCD.
If you were converting 700 MB of AVI directly from the DV camera, on a reasonably fast computer, this would take 10 minutes max. My guess is you are having to reconvert the video from it’s compressed format.
The right way to do this is to recapture the original tape as a full quality AVI (3.6MB/sec) and then convert it to MPEG-2 and a VCD using real authoriing tools like TMPGEnc and VCDEasy, etc.
I assumed the .AVI on the CD was a DivX file, in which case the CD should be almost the same quality as the DVD.
If you want to distribute a DVD, just copy the one your friend made. Unless he spent thousands of dollars getting it made, it’s just a DVD-R, and anyone with a DVD burner should have no problems making an exact copy.
I don’t think this is what the OP said. He said that the tape was “converted to DVD” but that clearly was wrong since he also said it was an AVI on CD.
Here’s the story and I’ll keep it as short and as simple as possible. My friend brought his VHS camcorder, not the small tapes but the regular full sized ones. He brought the vhs tape to his friend’s house and his friend made a DVD of it. My friend took the DVD and rip it (not sure what program he used) but it ripped it to an AVI file. He burned it on a CD for me and stuck it in the mail. The AVI is of fair to good quality and is about 72 minutes long.
As for why I want it to convert the file quicker…well, mostly it’s out of curiousity. I tried the Cucosoft and tmpgenc and both were truckin’ seemingly slowly.
OK, that helps a lot. AVI’s come in all varieties, depending on the Codec used to read it. It’s very possible this one DivX which has great compression with a limited amount of quality loss.
However, what you probably have to do in this case is convert the AVI back from it’s compressed and encoded form to a “pure” AVI which is the standard DV format. Then you have to convert this to the required MPEG format. All this can take a long time. For 72 minutes, it certainly looks like an overnight run to me.
A couple of thoughts. First, you would be a lot better off if you got your hands on the original DVD. But, of course, you knew that. If you make a VCD from this, you might not be happy with the quality. VCDs, at best, are only VHS quality and in this case you started with a VHS source and now it’s going to be converted about 4 or 5 times before you are done.
Here is what I would do. I would get the original VHS tape and recapture it to computer as an AVI by using a DV camera with an analog in connection and “pass through” dubbing capability. I would then use a DVD authoring program and a DVD writer to create a high quality DVD from that. Of course, that’s easy for me to say because I already have the equipment. Here’s a breakdown of the estimated time that would be required (using Pinnacle Studio 8 software).
Capturing 72 minute VHS tape - 1.5 hours
Adding titles, transitions, etc. (Minimal, no background music) - 1 hour
Compiling and converting to MPEG-2/DVD - 3 hours (AthlonXP 1800+)
Writing each DVD - 20 to 80 minutes, depending on writer and media.
There is no need to convert to DV in the middle. DV is itself a lossy compression format, so that will add an extra layer of compression. You are better off going straight from AVI to MPEG with Tmpgenc which is an excellent program.
You should immediately give up on converting an AVI to a DVD. Divx AVIs look great for their size because of a Postprocessing filter that is applied on playback. ATM, there is no software which will re-encode a Divx and use post-processing. Without post-processing, Divx files really start to show their size.
I find TMPGEnc to be astonishingly slow. I keep looking for new converters that will work well at faster speeds. A few go somewhat faster and give at least as good quality. But the only ones that go “as fast as I want” create really awful files.
Can’t help the OP, but would really like to find an alternative to TMPGEnc.
