Video conversion

I've been trying my hand at digital video for a while now, but things get pretty frustrating.

I have an AVI (my favorite X Files episode), and I want to put it on a DVD with my two other favorite eps for posterity.

The two other eps I can deal with because I got them off Tivo. The AVI, on the other hand, I'm not sure about.

First, it won't directly import into any DVD making program, because they will only take MPEG streams. I then attempted to convert it using TMPGEnc, but I got an error.

Does anyone know how to convert a file like this? If you need any more info I'll try to get it. The video is great quality, so there should be little quality loss in the conversion.

Thanks.

What was the error in TMPGEnc?

Have you tried using seperate audio and video sources? Some avi's need to go through another process.

I use dvd2avi to convert the audio stream to a wave or mp file.

Use the newly created audio file and original video file in TMPGEnc and see what happens.

Doom9.org is a great site. I linked to the faq you needed.

What was the error in TMPGEnc?

Oh, the best kind! It's the type of error you get before posting a question on the topic, but when someone asks for it, it goes away and everything works

TMPGEnc seems to have successfully converted the file to MPG2, but I don't know how good the file is, since WMP claims to not be able to download the right decompressor, and PowerDVD shuts down with errors. DVDlab is muxing the file at the moment, so we'll see what it produces.

Thanks again, guys. If this doesn't work out I'll try the Doom9 guide. I keep forgetting about that great site.

ps-to tell the truth, TMPGEnc was giving me a variety of errors, depending on what I attempted to do with the AVI (VCD/SVCD/DVD/my own settings). Half of them stopped the conversion, the other half halted the process entirely.

*edit*
Looks like it wasn't successful. The file has no audible audio track. I'll try the Doom9 guide.

Did you try dvd2avi? Or was it not a sound issue with the conversion?

I'm worried that if I seperate the streams with external programs, they won't get muxed properly. That's a possibility, right?

Possible, but I've never had a problem with it. And if its not working now it may be worth a shot.

Wouldn't dvd2avi be going the wrong way? I have an AVI I want converted to MPEG.

Yes, but the program has the ability to load an avi file and create a separate sound stream. Its recommended as many avi files will give a/v synch errors when writing to DVD. I use it for all my avi movies.

Give it a shot. It may not work but it takes only a minute or so to create a wave.

Edit: Just noticedy you successfully got a video file, so this should allow you to use the audio file to fill in the missing sound.

Thanks, I'll give it a shot.

Oh, and waterman, the most common error I'm getting in TMPGEnc is "invalid pointer error." I also got this when following the Doom9 instructions. And since I can't convert the video with TMPGEnc, that makes the guide a little tough to follow

try Virtualdub :
http://www.virtualdub.org

Yeah, I've used it a couple times. I'll try it again for the full conversion if this way doesn't pan out. I don't seem to be getting errors from TMPGEnc right now, and it successfully created the video file. The Doom9 guide worked for the audio, though.

And I've now been able to put both the video and audio files into DVDlab, compile the DVD, and play it on my standalone! Woohoo! I'm now messing around with the other two episodes.

The other problem I was having was that my audio tracks weren't DVD compliant, and recently when DVDlab tried to convert them, I got an error right at the end that shut down the transcoding program. I've found, however, that I can tell it to transcode to PCM, then all I need to do is convert the sample rate in Cool Edit Pro. It's working perfectly for me at the moment! I'm loving it! Hooray for DVDs!