November 06, 2005

Curious George: Collecting video clips I like to collect video clips, such as the one petebest posted below. If I want to collect a hodgepodge of different .avi/.mpg/.qt/.wmv and later write them all to DVD (regular VOB format) for TV viewing, what format should I transcode them all into? And what authoring program is best for burning all these transcodes?
posted by rolypolyman 18 years ago
  • I think that may depend on your DVD player. If it can play DIVX/XVID like some can, that's a pretty big win, because I believe you'll be able to fit hundreds of clips on one DVD. Otherwise, I think you have to encode as MPEG. Anyway, a good site to go to for help with encoding and authoring would be videohelp.com.
  • I know of one DVD authored by the program Nero. that's about it, really.
  • Yeah, I checked out videohelp.com but am getting information overload over there. I was many just interested to see if any monkeys have been in this boat before.
  • mainly
  • I vote for Nero. If you are wanting to burn a regular DVD that will play in most DVD players, then just let Nero take care of it all. Any other transocding would either be more technical, or would just turn it into something which would then need to be turned into a dvd, which would be sort of like a copy of a copy. I imagine Roxio would do the same thing, but I've not used it. Nero is pretty simple and I've not had it fail me yet.
  • So -- Nero can take all the .wmv, .avi, and .qt files and make a DVD disc out of them? I wasn't aware it could import all those formats on-the-fly.
  • It might not do quicktime, but wmv and avi and mpg. For quicktime you might have to convert it to something else.
  • $80... eh... hmm..
  • You know, I just discovered that WinAVI (which I like a lot) allows multiple file selection for encoding to DVD. My problem appears to be solved. It's complaining about not having codecs, but it looks like it's rendering anyway, so hopefully either they'll play fine or I'll get the codecs it needs.
  • Just as a postscript, WinAVI rendered a perfectly good DVD last night. Pretty good for $30.. the website is here. I swear I don't work for them or anything; I'm just happy I finally figured it out. Now if I can just find a decent program that will transcode Flash files without crashing or hanging.
  • Many Quicktime files are nothing more than .mpg or .mp4 files with a .mov extension. Renaming to (filename).mpg will often make them openable with other programs that will refuse to open Quicktime files. (Stupid Quicktime. How I loathe thee. Why can't you just call it .mpg and be done with it, foul beast? And why must I register your skank ass before you will allow me to save movies without having to hack the web source code to find the link? Bastard.)
  • Once I found out that the only difference between Quicktime and Quicktime pro was a vailid username and password, I felt absolutely no guilt about pirating the usernmae and password.
  • (I hear you, jccalhoun. I never said it was registered to me...)