Did you ever need to convert avi files to DVD’s so you or others could play them on your regular DVD player? For example, I record high definition programs using an HDTV tuner and BeyondTv. BeyondTV records HD programs in “TP” format, although you can “Showsqueeze” them into Divx encoded AVI files. If I want to record these onto DVD’s I have to convert them to something a regular DVD player can understand.
Here’s a relatively simple way to record these AVI files to DVD’s using free tools.
Onetime steps for Setup:
- Download and install “Super” – a free program for video conversion. Super is a graphical interface for command line utilities, including ffmpeg. The download link is here
Super is a good program in and of itself to convert all sorts of video files but I had some problems with it as it constantly gave me errors when converting. I attributed this to VISTA, but I’m not sure. We are not going to use Super, only the ffmpeg binary file that comes with it.
- Download ConvertAviToMpg.vbs, a little windows shell script I wrote to ease the use of ffmpeg without having to deal with the command line. Place it into the folder that holds your AVI files that you are converting.
If you installed Super in anywhere other then the default location (“c:\program files\eRightSoft\SUPER”) then you will need to edit this script (use a regular text editor) and change the following line to point to ffmpeg:
strPathToFfmpeg=”c:\program files\eRightSoft\SUPER\ffmpeg.exe”
- Download DVDStyler and install. For a tuturial on how to use DVDStyler look here: http://dvdstyler.sourceforge.net/docs/DVDStylerGuide.pdf
Conversion Steps:
- Once you’re done installing everything above and are ready to convert avi files, open up the folder where you have your AVI files and drag your avi file and drop it onto the icon for the ConvertAviToMpg.vbs script. This will start converting the file into an mpg file and will put the resulting file into the same directory where the avi file is.
- Open up DVDStyler and create a menu and load your created mpg file. See http://dvdstyler.sourceforge.net/docs/DVDStylerGuide.pdf for full directions.
- When done configuring the menu and you’re ready to burn, make sure that you select Options in the menu and check that your video format is correct (should be NTSC for US, PAL for elsewhere). DVDStyler comes set to PAL as default so if you are in the US you need to change it. Audio format should be AC3 for US although Mp2 normally works also.
- Ready to Burn? Select File->Burn DVD.. Although DVD Styler will allow you to burn directly to a DVD, I usually burn to the hard drive first (File->burn dvd ->Select “just generate” making sure the tempory folder is set to where you want the DVD files to go.
After the Video_TS folder is generated you can burn using your favorite burning software (in my case Nero)
This will start ffmpeg which will convert the AVI file to an MPG 2 file, running in a minimized window. If you click on the minimize window in your taskbar, the window will popup and you can see it’s progress:
When the process is done, a message box will pop up telling you the conversion has completed.
