AVI - DVD conversion

[richie]

I purchased Mrs Itchy a miniDV camcorder for her birthday and have burnt the resulting AVI files straight to DVD.  My DVD player however is struggling to handle them and playback is incredibly jerky.

So i thought I'd trial  few of the AVI to DVD convertors that abound on t'interweb.  Having now had the embarressment of having my works PC re-imaged due to virus infection as a result of this, I need to know if anybody has a personal recommendation as to what to use that is a) virus free and b) cheap!

Luckily the IM department were most understanding.  The pre-emptive packet of  chocolate hob-nobs probably helped.......

[tiermat]

Handbrake seems to be the one most use (covers most bases, video conversion wise) HandBrake

[Craig]

Isn't HandBrake for converting in the other direction i.e. ripping DVDs to MPEG or whatever?

I've used DVD Flick for converting video to DVD. Its free, and fairly simple, and seems to work fine.
Note that for large files it might take quite a while to convert them (depending on your processor speed etc).

[urban_biker]

It might be cheaper/easier to find a DVD player that can play avi files off a DVD data disc or to get a cheap media-player. I gave up trying to convert avi to DVD. It takes ages and often doesn't work properly - sound out of sync etc.

[Jaded]

Ripping to DVD is a minefield of data flow rates and compression ratios etc.

Have you ripped them as a DVD proper (You'll have two folders called AUDIO_TS and VIDEO_TS on the disk), or as AVI files on a data DVD?

[tiermat]

Isn't HandBrake for converting in the other direction i.e. ripping DVDs to MPEG or whatever?

I've used DVD Flick for converting video to DVD. Its free, and fairly simple, and seems to work fine.
Note that for large files it might take quite a while to convert them (depending on your processor speed etc).

Handbrake will do both, IIRC (and the site seems to indicate that it will).

Completely forgot about DVD Flick, I have used that too and find it useful, if a little slow (I made a whole series of Heores DVDs using DVD Flick, before I rebuilt the laptop with Linux, now I use Devede)

[richie]

I have ripped them straight as .AVI files - which my DVD player (meant to be AVI compatible) struggles with.  I've also converted to genuine DVD (i can see the audio TS and Video TS files).  Whilst this plays back fine i've no sound - due to operator error during conversioni think as i was rushing.  It was whilst i was playing about converting the AVI to DVD format that I managed to wreck my PC.  Don't want to do that again as I'll get my wrists slapped....

As mentioned before it's all a bit of a minefield.....  will have a gander at handbrake.

Thanks all for info....

[richie]

I've used DVD Flick for converting video to DVD. Its free, and fairly simple, and seems to work fine.
Note that for large files it might take quite a while to convert them (depending on your processor speed etc).

DVD Flick looks quite user-friendly.  I'll probably download this at home later as it seems to tick the right boxes....

[Wombat]

I may be missing something here, but isn;t the obvious anwer to use video editing software, which is meant for precisely the task of getting DV off a camcorder and onto a DVD or other media.  Having coughed up for a DV camcorder, paying £50 or so for video editing software seems fair enough to me.  I use Adobe premiere elements, having only just changed from ulead videostudio 8.  Cheap and effective, not meant for computer nerdy whizzkids...

[Valiant]

Nero can author and burn bog standard DVDs. Look on the cover of comp magazines, they're always giving away stuff like this