mpeg-2 to dvd

[wannabepvr]

A slightly off topic view:

Most modern DVDs will play MPEG2 videos without all the formality of creating VOB's and IFO files for a 'proper' DVD format.

Doesn't necessarily help with the recompression but it is a quick and dirty way to archive and share.


(Also if your mpegs aren't too big there is no need to reencode.)

[dvasco]

Back to my findings...

When I use TMPGEnc it works very good. Quality is ranks up there. The only thing is that it takes a hell of a lot of time encode (is that the right term?) the files.
When using rejig it is very very fast compared to Tmpgenc. The only thing it is a little too complicated to get the files back together and authored in this program. Plus I think I would be able to get better support. Even though this program is free and fast I am leaning toward TMPGenc.

Thanks guys for the leads, There are still a lot of programs out there that I am experimenting with, lots of great coders out there!

The quickest, easiest, and cheapest are Rejig and DVDshrink. You still have to buy a DVD authoring program unless you can learn how to use one of the free ones at http://www.videohelp.com/tools?s=2#2

[dvasco]

Actually easiest would be to split the large files first then author. For example, split the 12 GB file to two 6 GB files then let the authoring program, ConvertXtoDVD, reencode to 4.7 GB and author all at once.

[bswiz]

There are some free DVD authoring programs out there, as well.

Two I've tried are:

DVDStyler: lets you create basic menus, and add video file(s) as titles. Only accepts MPEG as input files and I have had some files not work for unknown reasons.

DVDFlick: accepts a few different video formats and coverts them to MPEG. No menus, and as far as I can tell, no way to create chapters. The one time I tried it, it took forever to process, even though the file was already in MPEG format.

Both programs will create an ISO that you can then burn to DVD.

Hope this helps.

[jerryg]

The way I used to do it was to use dvd author from the people that make tmpgenc, as it didn't do any reencode and was fast enough, if the final dvd was over 4.4gb I'd use dvd shrink after.
With newer digital cards, the mpg files seem harder to handle, not the standard resolution. Still possible to use dvdauthor, but i've run in to more issues with sound being out of sync etc. At this stage I just burn the raw files to dvd, though some older dvd player don't handle udf dvds or larger file sizes so not ideal.
Was recommend a good mpeg2 file splitter here mpeg2cut, which seems to work well, if you to chop up files before authoring or burning
http://forums.nextpvr.com/showthread.php?t=24171