Heartland

Can anyone recommend a good program for converting video files (mpeg, avi etc) to vob files for making playable DVDs? I know there are a few out there but wondered if anyone could give me some advice on which to use.

Are the free ones any good? And does anything handle all file formats (eg flv, DivX etc) or would I need to use different programs?

Thanks for any help or advice offered.

The best I've used is VSO's ConvertXtoDVD.

It's not free (unless you acquire it ) but it's very good and has been able to handle every file format I've tried with it (although, I haven't tried flv files).

Thanks. I think that's one of the ones I looked at briefly earlier.

Anyone know of any open-source thing that does the same thing just out of interest?

AVI2DVD is a pretty good freeware application.

stufarq wrote:Thanks. I think that's one of the ones I looked at briefly earlier.

Need a copy?

TMPGenc DVDAuthor3 has never let me down. PM me if you need a *working* copy

can someone help? i've tried at least five bits of software and i can't get any of my avi files to convert to dvd and then actually play. ConvertXtoDVD worked ok but i don't have a copy that doesn't put watermarks all over it. i really need to do it, or i'll let someone down badly

robertzombie wrote:

stufarq wrote:Thanks. I think that's one of the ones I looked at briefly earlier.

Need a copy?

DerekR wrote:TMPGenc DVDAuthor3 has never let me down. PM me if you need a *working* copy

Get thee behind me Satan!

Nic wrote:AVI2DVD is a pretty good freeware application.

Thanks. I'll check it out.

Has anyone tried Flick? I had downloaded it but before I got a chance to try it out my PC had a major crash. Because of the timing I was concerned that it might have been the download and deleted it as soon as I was up and running yet. I know it might not have been but I didn't want to take chances. Has anyone heard any similar stories or used it without problems?

Just occurred to me: if some packages only convert certain file types, is there anything that will convert different movie files to a single file type? I know there are programs for audio (eg Switch) but I don't think I've ever seen one for movies.

Edit: Just found one in Nic's link!

Why would you want to convert avi to vob?
The quality is not great, so all you'll end up doing is bloating a lossy format.
Don't most dvd players play avi files off a disc nowadays anyway?

Do they? I don't know. I thought vob was the standard format for DVDs. Isn't that what's on commercial DVDs?

Clearly my knowledge of this is fairly limited. All I want is to make playable discs, whatever format that involves. If I'm barking up the wrong tree, please put me right.

Pista wrote:Why would you want to convert avi to vob?
The quality is not great, so all you'll end up doing is bloating a lossy format.
Don't most dvd players play avi files off a disc nowadays anyway?

For the most part, yes. But if (say) your DVD player that does play AVIs is in one room and you want to watch them in another room, it's either move the player (too much hassle shifting bajillions of cables around) or copy them to VOB DVDs.

On the other hand, I really need to set up a proper home network, run the TV off something like a VLC server...

No, that's too much hassle for me. Both DVD players (R2 & multiregion) in the living room, watch everything there.

It's true, some don't do avi, so you'd need to convert if your player can't read avi.

What are the players?

"avi" is only a container format wich can contain different codecs like divx, motion jpg, h.264..... If you like to figure out what codec is inside, I'd recommend this tool:

http://mediainfo.sourceforge.net/

Just drag & drop the file into this tool and you will get all the specs.



For transcoding video files into a DVD compliant format (like MPG2), you can try this one:

http://mediacoder.sourceforge.net/

It also may work with some Nero Burning Rom versions - just drag & drop the files into a new Video DVD project - Nero should transcode non-compliant files automatically.

Now something that simple would be ideal!