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Hozie · Jan 14, 2003, 11:23 AM

I just wanted to know how one would go about transferring DivX movies both in - .mov and .avi formats - to DVD? I don't own a mac just yet, but I'm about to shell out for a 12" PB with SD, and I was wondering whether this is possible...

The aim is to be able to watch any DivX movie I have lying around on my DVD player. Anyone have an idea if there's an easy way to do this? Is it as simple as importing in quicktime and exporting to iDVD? (BTW, SuperVideo CD's could work as well, any clue on that?)

Thanks!

Weezer · Jan 14, 2003, 12:51 PM

since youre going with a potable, you have several options. First, you can just hook up your PB directly to your TV with the video out cables, play the movie on the powerbook and it will be displayed right on your TV. Your other option will be to doctor your avi files with divx doctor (www.3ivx.com). There are no real standards in divx, so its a mixed bag weither or not it will doctor properly. Some movies will work if you put them through the divx validator (www.divx.com) and then through the doctor. Once you have the .mov file, you can open that up in idvd and burn it.

Uncle Skeleton · Jan 14, 2003, 03:41 PM

keep in mind iDVD is capped at 90 minutes of video. For longer, you will have to encode the video to MPEG-2 and audio to mp2/ac3 separately, then author a disc image and burn. For encoding, you can use DVD Studio Pro's MPEG-2 quicktime encoder ($1000) or ffmpegX (free) or MediaPipe (free, open source). For audio, I have no idea. For authoring, there's DVDSP or Sizzle, and for burning there's Toast ($79 or so) or Disc Copy (comes with OS X but I don't know if it will work for this)

Hozie · Jan 14, 2003, 03:56 PM

Thanks guys, that's really helpful. On a side note, is there any way to circumvent iDVD's 90 minutes treshold? Probably not, but since it's the easiest solution that'd be pretty cool.

Anyway, appreciate the input!

jtc · Jan 14, 2003, 04:37 PM

I usually convert movies to xvcds or svcds to watch on my DVD player(apex). They can be burned on CDRs or CDRWs (hell of a lot cheaper than DVD-Rs or RWs) and played in most set top DVD players.

cejones · Jan 14, 2003, 04:38 PM

If you are looking to store Divx movies offline... you could just save the files as a data DVD disk. 4.3 Gigs holds about 35 one hour TV episodes... (typical hour episode is around 430 Megs.... divx down to 120Megs per ep.)

Hozie · Jan 15, 2003, 04:49 AM

@jtc: yeah, I figured that would probably be the most effective way of doing it... Any tips on the programs to use for DivX --> SVCD ?

@cejones: nah, not really trying to store them, just want to be able to watch them on a DVD player.

jtc · Jan 15, 2003, 10:36 AM

Originally posted by Hozie:
@jtc: yeah, I figured that would probably be the most effective way of doing it... Any tips on the programs to use for DivX --> SVCD ?

Unfortunately the best program for doing this is a windows app - TMPGenc (tsunami mpg encoder). I keep a PC around for making vcds, but it should run in virtual pc if you want to try it out. Also check out vcdhelp.com, it has everything you could ever want to know about making vcds. (I usually rip from DVD then encode directly from the .vobs and the quality is superb).