[Jim]

been using winAVI for a while.
looking for a recomendation of something better to use
your finest please

[squeek]

What kind of AVI?  (It's a pain that the avi extension is used for lots of different video formats, it makes it hard to get the right information, digital camcorder files, DivX, Xvid, etc)

[Jim]

mostly xvid these days.
just ther movie files you download pretty much

[dobbin]

Avi to DVD is quite painful. Specially if MPG4. You have to go out to raw then back down to MPG1. It takes ages, and is very easy to introduce sync problems - not an issue if you are watching kung fu movies, but yes a problem normally. Output qual aint great either. Best  answer is dont transcode, buy a 360 and use as a media center extender.

I have used virtual dub and TMPGEnc to do this in past. Before hacking xbox 1 and making that into media center. Just watch the xvids now. its the true path jim. Follow it to glory.

[Jim]

cheers dobbin.
I mainly watch xvid's on my divx dvd player. just wanted mainly for making dvds for other people.
I know about tmpeg and virtual dub but there are quite a lot of 1 click programs out there (eg winAVI) that do it in one go, dead easy

[dobbin]

on a remotely connected note, I found something called videodora ipod converter which works a treat for compressing files (inc VOB) into mp4 for display on ipod. Its quick and painless and free.

[xelaxela]

i dont burn dvd's personally but everyone i know who does uses nero to encode to dvd format before burning

[chicane]

I use convertxtodvd by VSO software - downloaded via torrent. It's never failed me yet and is as easy to use as dvd shrink. It also lets you do DVD menus complete with you own background image if your so inclinded. I recently used it to put 5 episodes of heroes onto 1 dvd for my brother to watch complete with menu - its a piece of piss.

Cheers

Matt

[slackline]

You might get some mileage out of menconder that comes with Mplayer.  Extremely comprehensive support of a wide range of formats (codecs permiting), but it may well be command line (no idea as I've not checked out the windows version).