Which Is Better?

[spetrillo]

I have a number of movies in AVI format that I burn straight to DVD. I am burning to an external (USB 2.0) burner, and it seems like it takes a long time to complete a burn. Is it better to convert these AVI movies into ISO format, and then burn them to my external burner when I need to or does it not matter? Is there anything I can do to increase the speed of the burn process?

 

Thanks,

Steve

[Larry]

I have a number of movies in AVI format that I burn straight to DVD. I am burning to an external (USB 2.0) burner, and it seems like it takes a long time to complete a burn. Is it better to convert these AVI movies into ISO format, and then burn them to my external burner when I need to or does it not matter? Is there anything I can do to increase the speed of the burn process?

 

Thanks,

Steve

A lot depends on what you want on the DVD. Are you just trying to burn the original .avi files on discs or are you trying to create DVD-Video discs?

 

What program in the suite are you burning with?

 

An .avi file is a video file, and an .iso file is a disc image file, so they are two completely different types of files.

[spetrillo]

A lot depends on what you want on the DVD. Are you just trying to burn the original .avi files on discs or are you trying to create DVD-Video discs?

 

What program in the suite are you burning with?

 

An .avi file is a video file, and an .iso file is a disc image file, so they are two completely different types of files.

 

I am using MyDVD to create some custom DVDs that contain movies. One aspect of MyDVD is that the output can be an ISO. Would this make burning to disc faster or does it not matter when compared with burning an AVI to disc.

 

Thanks,

Steve

[cdanteek]

Burning 4464mb of anything to a disc at say 8X speed takes the same amount of time about 8min.

 

MyDVD to create some custom DVDs that contain movies.

 

MyDVD is a DVD Video Compliant author program. It converts the video to a compliant DVD video that will play on a settop DVD player. The time it takes to convert your movies/avi is what takes all the time in MyDVD. You need a working knowledge of the process and the language to understand the basics.

 

MyDVD will burn to a disc (after it encodes, I don't recommend this option) or a ISO file and a Video_ts folder set. All are ways of authoring a Compliant DVD Video.

 

cd

[Larry]

I am using MyDVD to create some custom DVDs that contain movies. One aspect of MyDVD is that the output can be an ISO. Would this make burning to disc faster or does it not matter when compared with burning an AVI to disc.

 

Thanks,

Steve

Makes more sense now. You're wanting to make standard DVD-Video discs using the AVI video as your video source files.

 

The output choices of Disc, Image file (.ISO) or Video Folders is where you are choosing to "burn" the disc data to. So when choosing an image file to burn to, inside of that .ISO file is all the restructured folders/files that you would see on a disc, that can then be burned to an actual disc using a disc image burning app. In EMC 10, the Video Copy & Convert app is used to burn disc image files to discs.

 

Burning your MyDVD project directly to a disc or to an image file first then to disc is going to take the same time in the end. What is taking a "long time" to complete is not the burning part, but the video encoding part of the process. Since you are using .avi files as your source files, they must be converted (re-encoded) to DVD-Video standard format (basically MPEG2). Depending on your pc, it can take anywhere from a 1:1 to a 1:5 ratio in the video file time length to complete. That means that if the total of your video files in the project is 30min, the encoding time will take at least that long, but more typically it would take closer to an hour for most.

 

Many here do recommend burning to an .iso image file first, then burning that to an actual disc. It not only separates the two processes (which are very resource intense for a pc), but you can then burn additional copies to disc just using the image file if need be without having to go thru the whole rendering process again. Basically, you have a copy of the disc in that image file that can be burned again if something happens to the first disc.

[Guest ml]

If you want to save the file as an avi ( which for dv avi takes up about 13 GB per hour ), a very large second internal hard drive or a very large external hard drive will allow you to save the files quickly for backup.

 

Otherwise, I agree with everyone else, burning to an .iso file and then using that file to burn to the external burner to make a DVD that you can play on your computer or DVD player is the best method. The encoding process will take some time and I recommend you take a computer break while the computer is encoding the file.

[spetrillo]

If you want to save the file as an avi ( which for dv avi takes up about 13 GB per hour ), a very large second internal hard drive or a very large external hard drive will allow you to save the files quickly for backup.

 

Otherwise, I agree with everyone else, burning to an .iso file and then using that file to burn to the external burner to make a DVD that you can play on your computer or DVD player is the best method. The encoding process will take some time and I recommend you take a computer break while the computer is encoding the file.

 

Is MyDVD the best tool to do this in the EMC10 suite of products?

 

[Guest ml]

Is MyDVD the best tool to do this in the EMC10 suite of products?

 

Yes. Although MyDVD Express works too.