What Format Should I Burn to From .avi?

Milanodan 2009-04-25 19:55:10 UTC #1

I have managed to rip some DVD non-copy protected musical stuff into .avi files. They playback fine on my computer, but will not play on my Panasonic set-top DVD machines. I converted one of them to MP4, and the video quality is awful.

I don't want any/much compression, as disk space is not a factor. Quality is. What format should I convert the .avi files to?

Whappo 2009-04-25 20:02:30 UTC #2

What is “uncompressed avi”? Why not just play the original DVD’s on your stand alone player? Does your stand alone player support DivX?

Milanodan 2009-04-25 20:08:58 UTC #3

Thanks for the response. I use something called “Ashampoo” to burn the DVDs, and the free ver. will burn files as .avi’s. Sorry about the uncompressed, I was thinking about .wav files. Fixed my orig. question.

However, the .avi files are quite large compared with MP4’s, but the video quality is far better–using whatever MP4 codec is built in. I am just burning excerps from the original DVD–don’t want most of it.

Whappo 2009-04-25 20:29:46 UTC #4

You still don’t say if your stand alone player supports avi/DivX. I don’t use the software you mention, so no help with that. You have a few options. If the original DVD’s are unencrypted you can use DVD Shrink in reauthor mode to save the clips you want to keep. This will create a DVD structure for each clip, not altering the original vob (mpeg2). You can use AutoGk to rip the DVD to DivX/Xvid and then something like VirtualDub to cut out the clips you want. Are you wanting to create a separate video for each clip or do you want them all joined together as one video file?

Milanodan 2009-04-25 20:48:18 UTC #5

My newer DVD set-top is a Panasonic DMR EZ27, and the instructions say it should be able to play DivX and .avi files. I don’t know anything about DivX. I tried to play one of my burned .avi files on it, but no good. Do I need some other files besides the .avi? I think it was finalized on my computer–will have to check.

I am really lost with all this newer stuff. I don’t need to make one big file; shorter segments (one song length) are fine.

Milanodan 2009-04-25 21:22:39 UTC #6

Just checked. I had burned 4 .avi files onto a CD-R disk, but only one of them will play on the set-top. All will play on the computer. Seems that the set-top WILL play .avi’s, but not all of them.

Kerry56 2009-04-26 07:40:23 UTC #7

In your original post you say that “disk space is not a factor”. And you are trying to play these videos on a set-top dvd player.

There are only two good reasons to convert dvd-video over to avi or mpeg4. Saving space or converting to a format that is necessary for a certain device. Neither of those seem to apply here.

You should follow Whappo’s advice about using DVDShrink. Going from the original dvd, you can cut out sections that you want with Shrink in ReAuthor mode, using the Start/End Frame tool. The results will be small dvd-videos that have no degradation of the quality of the video since you won’t be transcoding or compressing the video. If you don’t have it, just click on DVDShrink in this paragraph and it will take you to the download page here at cdfreaks. Read some guides to using it at www.dvdshrink.info or here in our Movie Copy Software forum.

If you want to put several of these clips you make onto one disk and have a menu to select each movie, use DVDStyler for that.

SNYPA8064 2009-04-26 07:46:34 UTC #8

The software I use is DVD Santa. It will convert to a DVD format to play on all DVD players. Do a search for it or DL from a Bittorrent.

Kerry56 2009-04-26 07:53:46 UTC #9

@SNYPA8064
DVDSanta is a commercial program, and copyright protected. Please don’t advise people to download such programs from torrents, as it violates the rules of the forum.

Also, Milanodan is [B]starting [/B]with dvd-video, and doesn’t need this type of program at all.

Milanodan 2009-04-26 10:20:59 UTC #10

[QUOTE=Kerry56;2263954]In your original post you say that “disk space is not a factor”. And you are trying to play these videos on a set-top dvd player.

If you want to put several of these clips you make onto one disk and have a menu to select each movie, use DVDStyler for that.[/QUOTE]

Thanks. Yes, I’m trying to burn new DVDs or CDs with short videos taken from other, set-top compatible DVDs to play on my TV. Looks like DVDStyler is the way to go. Hope it’s cheap.

I also remembered that with the 3 .avi segments that wouldn’t play on the TV, I had used a freeware “avi splitter” program to chop off what I didn’t want. That must be the reason they won’t play, because on the one that did play I didn’t use the splitter.

Kerry56 2009-04-26 12:02:38 UTC #11

DVDStyler is free to download and use. Good luck with your project, and if you hit a snag, let us know.

Milanodan 2009-04-26 14:50:45 UTC #12

[QUOTE=Kerry56;2264053]DVDStyler is free to download and use. Good luck with your project, and if you hit a snag, let us know.[/QUOTE]

I D/L’d it along with DVDShrink. DVDShrink seems easier to use, but I’ve hit some snags.

Started “Reauthor”, set the video to “No Compression”, but I can’t see how to do the same with the audio. I think I want the PCM (or LPCM, whatever that is), but I don’t see how to set it. I do NOT want any audio compression at all.

Also, in Reauthor mode, how do you use the little horizontal arrows (stacked, on right side) to start and stop the desired segment? I started playing the DVD, clicked what I thought was the START arrow, but I couldn’t tell what it was doing. I’ve been checking the various HELP sites, but most of them seem hung-up on how to use compression.

DVDStyler looks to be even harder to learn–not much info is present.

Kerry56 2009-04-26 15:19:32 UTC #13

Here are some instructions with pictures on using DVDShrink to capture clips.

Kerry56 2009-04-26 15:22:33 UTC #14

Once you have the clip start and end points set, click ok. Now click on Backup. Select Hard Disk folder as your target. Hit ok again and it will make the clip and put it on the hard drive as a small dvd video.

Oh, and DVDShrink won’t compress the audio at all. All you can do with audio in DVDShrink is deselect certain streams, which I don’t think applies to your case, unless you have more than one audio stream.

Milanodan 2009-04-27 12:25:03 UTC #15

So far so good. Managed to get several music segments to the hard disk. I discovered that if you don’t have a check in at least one of the audio boxes, you won’t rip the audio.

Unfortunately, on one of the segments I want the audio just will not play back. The video is fine. I had checks in all of the audio-English boxes, but no audio. Other segments of the same DVD are fine.

Milanodan 2009-04-27 16:14:57 UTC #16

Read about other peoples audio problems, and the answer seems to be “wrong/missing codec”. I d/l’d something called VLC Media Player, which is supposed to have a bunch of codecs built in.

That solved the audio problem, but shows that DVDShrink apparently does use audio compression (AC3) instead of PCM/LPCM.

Since there doesn’t seem to be any way to set the comp. level, I just have to hope it’s set real low by default. I’ll run the burned DVD thru my set-top/audio system and see how good it sounds–can’t tell on the computer.

Milanodan 2009-04-29 09:44:25 UTC #17

Burned a disk with .vob files. Works fine on computer; won’t plat on either of 2 Panasonic set-tops. Now what?

Kerry56 2009-04-29 10:53:13 UTC #18

Did you just burn the .vob files? DVD-video consists of .vob, .ifo and .bup files in a Video_TS folder. Most set top players won’t play mpeg or .vob files by themselves. Some even demand an Audio_TS folder along with the Video_TS folder, though those are usually very old players.

Panasonic players seem to have a reputation as being picky about burned media. You should use high quality disks, ie: Verbatim or Taiyo Yuden, and burn at moderate speeds, say 8x or 12x for 16x speed media.
If your burner is capable of bitsetting (also called changing booktype) you can use +R disks and bitset them to look like a commercially made DVD-Rom to the player. This will increase compatibility. We’d have to know your burner make and model to tell you if this is possible for you.

Otherwise, just use high quality -R disks.

Edit: One other thought that occurred to me. If you used DVDStyler to make a dvd-video, I hope you chose the correct format for the dvd. In the US we use NTSC.

t0nee1 2009-04-29 16:01:44 UTC #19

Hey Kerry56, both MysticEyes and myself tried to explain to the OP, about burning a [I]proper[/I] DVD structure in this other similar thread…

http://club.cdfreaks.com/f59/filename-problem-272891/

Milanodan 2009-04-29 18:57:53 UTC #20

[QUOTE=Kerry56;2266119]Did you just burn the .vob files? DVD-video consists of .vob, .ifo and .bup files in a Video_TS folder. Most set top players won’t play mpeg or .vob files by themselves. Some even demand an Audio_TS folder along with the Video_TS folder, though those are usually very old players.

We’d have to know your burner make and model to tell you if this is possible for you.

Edit: One other thought that occurred to me. If you used DVDStyler to make a dvd-video, I hope you chose the correct format for the dvd. In the US we use NTSC.[/QUOTE]

Thanks, Kerry
When I burned the disk, which was a CD-R disk burned in a Plextor PX-W4824A, I had to rename the .vob files. The associated .bup and .ifo files were in the same folder, but I didn’t rename them too. Does most burning software look for these files, and if so, must they be renamed? They all end the filename with a 0, whereas the .vob’s all ended with a 1.

In any event, only the .vob files were burned. If the others have to be burned also, that is probably my problem. If they don’t, the problem is something else.

Yes, I do know the difference between PAL (superior) and NTSC, and had the burning software (Ashampoo) set to NTSC.

Also tried to use ImgBurn, but couldn’t get it past the “Build” stage.

Hard to believe I have to become some kind of DVD structure expert in order to burn a stupid disk.