Covert video to put on a DVD

[zippyijk]

Need to put a 22Gb video file (its from a movie i made in windows movie maker) onto a DVD. The Movie is 1hr40min, the size is because I saved the movie to be DV avi, I presume its the same format as when I took it off my DV camera.

Any program that would convert it to a size that would fit on the DVD?, while not comprimising the quality too much??

I'm new to this btw...as if it weren't obvious

[senu]

Originally Posted by zippyijk

Need to put a 22Gb video file (its from a movie i made in windows movie maker) onto a DVD. The Movie is 1hr40min, the size is because I saved the movie to be DV avi, I presume its the same format as when I took it off my DV camera.
Any program that would convert it to a size that would fit on the DVD?, while not comprimising the quality too much??
I'm new to this btw...as if it weren't obvious

Everybodys gotta start somewhere

The DV AVI on the PC is minimally compressed but for practical purposes identical to what was on the tape in your DV camcorder

For software ,try this program

The process of going from a DV AVI to a DVD involves

1)Converting the DV AVI into an Mpeg2 ( another video file format of much smaller size but still retainng good quality)
2)Converting the mpeg2 ( by combining it with an audio: ac3 or PCM : muxing or multiplexing ) to a VOB file for use in a standard DVD ( VOB { video object} is a modified mpeg2 which is the video "file" a DVD video contains)
3)Creating a menu ( if desired) and a DVD navigational structure for decoding by a standard DVD player for universal compatibility

Regarding the first step:

A 4.7Gb DVD disc can take 1 hr of high quality video from an AVI of 13Gb.
At "standard" quality it can take 2 hrs
So, to go from say 22Gb to 4.7Gb and retain good quality, the software will have to do a very good job encoding from DV AVi to mpeg2. It is the quality of this encoding that determines how good you DVD looks compared to the DV AVI. In essense, the poorer the encoder , and the more you try to squeeze into one disc, the more compromised your DVD quality will be compared to original

The last 2 steps are DVD authoring

Whist I have broken the process into steps, The software will infact do it all seamlessly.

As such you will not need encoding , then DVD authoring software separately for now.

Nero Vision™ can actually do this as well and is usually the "freebee" way combined with WMM to go from DV camcorder to DVD.
IMHO, the Ulead product( MovieFactory) is "cheap" enough to justify its purchase as it can import, encode and author a DVD better although its actual editing features are fairly basic