Just wondering...

I'd like to know what programs you guys use to burn video files on DVD. I use Nero and ConvertXtoDVD. Nero would be good if didn't have any conversion problems like an animatic sequence being about 5 seconds off of the audio track. The other thing would be perfect if it didn't cut out the subtitles on the bottom. This is only for personal use, not personal gain. I like viewing the torrents I DL onto a DVD instead of relying on my computer.

We typically (speaking for about three of us) burn the files off as AVIs to a DVD and then we use DVD player that has DIVX and XVID decoding files as part of the list of features. <br>

This allows us to play the AVI files straight from a DVD that contains 24 or 26 episodes (or less depending on the file size).

Amazon has the model - Philips DVP642 DivX-Certif - which is priced at about $50 (or less if you buy a refurbished model) which should met your needs if you are interested in picking up one of these types of DVD players.

Then we have the whole issue with MP4 / H264 encoded files. These formats are too new and not yet part of the DVD players feature pack.

There is a discussion thread that talks about this issue at -

http://anime.mikomi.org/forum/showpost.html?num=113&posts=4

The most important aspect is to keep "file format conversion" and "data transfer to a silvery device" two separate tasks and use the appropriate tool for each one of these (so that you will be able to handle all the special cases for subtitles etc.).

In general, we tend to burn CDs/DVDs in "ISO/Data" formats with AVI containers, for that's what today's standalone DVD players are able to handle; more sophisticated containers have to be converted to that formats before burning them. Nero is a good tool for writing data onto a CD/DVD but not for handling ever new file formats (and converting an XVID stream to a MPEG2 stream just to burn one movie onto a DVD, like Nero would do, isn't the way to make you happy). We had certain threads about rather specific cases here already (such as http://anime.mikomi.org/forum/showpost.html?num=125&posts=7).

When it comes to selecting a distinct DVD player to buy, I will always suggest creating some DVD-RW with a number of subdirectories each of which contains more than one AVI container with different codecs (DIVX 3, DIVX 5, XVID with QPEL and GMC) and take that to the shop. The cheapest player being able to play everything on that disk would be the one I'd purchase as my next device, as Matroska support won't be available at a reasonable price for quite a while. Devices whose ads claim "MPEG4 suppport" might not suffice, as MP4 has a lot of different flavours, all of which are used by anime fansubs nowadays. (For example, my DVD player supports XVID but neither QPEL nor GMC.)

I don't know if this will tell you anything you don't already know, but here are some impressions from somebody who isn't capable of keeping track of more than a handful of computer terms. I, too, greatly prefer to burn fansubs onto DVDs and watch them in the comfort of my basement, reclining on a couch rather than sitting in a chair at my computer. Because I'm too impatient to wait until I have an entire series, I tend to burn three 23-minute episodes of whatever's new onto a DVD in MPEG-3 mode--like the latest episodes of, say, Pumpkin Scissors, Crescent Love, and Asatte no Houkou. Discs are relatively cheap, and MPEG3 works fine at any DVD player. Once I have the entire series, I go to Data Disc mode in Nero and burn them all together, making certain I've "renamed" each episode with a number (01,02,03, etc) at the start. I do this because my Philips DVP642 DVD player sometimes can't seem to keep track of which episode on a disc should be played first. I bought this MPEG4 capable player so that I could watch Data Discs (the ones with more than three episodes on them) in the basement. It's not as reliable as the computer itself--some Data Discs play just fine, some not at all, some will only play some of the episodes on them. But, like I said, I want to be able to watch them downstairs, and this player has greatly increased the number of Data Disc-stored episodes I've watched--no doubt Rozen Maiden would still be gathering dust if I hadn't gotten the Philips player. I'm not sure this has much to do with this topic, but I've also gotten a combined VHS/DVD recorder/player. I did this partly because I fear it may become impossible to obtain any kind of VHS player before long, and partly because it is supposed to be capable of transferring shows from VHS tapes to blank DVDs (though I haven't done that yet).

I was thinking of opening a new topic about the bewildering array of modes fansubs are being released in--XviD, H264, DVD, LD, 1024x576, etc, etc. All I know is that Avi works fine, MKV will only play on the computer itself, and I don't dare to dabble in any of the others.

Sometimes I have problems with subtitles getting trimmed at the top or bottom of the screen, but I suspect it's the fault of the TV set, because it never seems to happen on the computer screen (even though it's not nearly as large).

The triming on the DV642 is because your TV can't handle it. DD posted a large explanation about Overscan.

Basically, chuck the TV and get a nice new LCD tv on Black Friday (For about $100 for a 15" at bestbuy) and you are good to go again.

Stretch actually nailed one of my problems with some of the fansubs getting trimmed from either the top or bottom. As far as any other file formats, I'm able to get .mkv files onto DVD by using a prog called mediacoder. .ogm files I use a prog called mkvmerge which takes the .ogm file and remux it into an .mkv file. After that, I can burn it using Nero without a problem, or so I thought. Every time I use Nero, the fansubs really get screwed up. It either the video was slower than the audio or the entire episode becomes severely distorted. I'd like to know if there are any burn programs beyond Nero that I can use.

I repeat: You expect Nero to handle a format conversion where you'd be better of doing that manually with specific tools such as VirtualDubMod (where you can fine-tune the process in case of problems), and then just use Nero for the burning process alone.

Just as a coincidence, I am playing with a demo version of ConvertXtoDVD. It does not use the Divx codecs but it seems to convert just fine. It currently takes about 16 minutes to convert a 23 minute file to a DVD format. The demo version converts all but puts a big 'TRIAL SOFTWARE' across the screen.

Try it at http://www.vso-software.fr

Wow, to be able to make MKV fansubs playable on a DVD player--now that would be a real Christmas miracle! If only my own computer was up and running again, I'd jump on this.

I should have left a link for the MediaCoder program just in case someone wanted to try it. My bad. http://mediacoder.sourceforge.net/

Stretch, you gave me some good inspiration right now.

I am wondering about a new method of converting MKVs to whatever format I want. The idea is to simulate what the player software on the PC does while playing Matroska containers (open them via the DirectShow interface of Windows, thus getting already splitted and decompressed streams) and then simply write the result into an AVI file with an XviD stream. The tool for doing so would be avisynth (http://www.avisynth.org/ , site is currently not fully available) and write a script with a single line:

directshowsource ("pathname of MKV container")

into a file of "somename.avs", and then open this script file (!) with VirtualDubMod.

This will open the container the same way as any normal video player program will do (using the default selection for audio and subtitle streams, probably meaning the Japanese raw version - we don't have any GUI to select specific streams now), regardless which codec was being used for the video. I sucessfully tested the method with some H.264 encoded anime movie that I couldn't open with VirtualDubMod directly because I don't have a "regular" H.264 codec (just a H.264 enhanced DirectShow splitter).

The subtitles could easily be extracted from the MKV container, then merged into the video stream with one more directive in the AviSynth script:

LoadPlugin ("pathname_of_VSFilter.dll_library")
TextSub ("pathname_of_subtitle_file")

That's the same subtitle library VirtualDubMod can use by itself - AviSynth can use it as well, and VirtualDubMod would then receive a video stream with subtitles already merged in. (This is how I am currently encoding some anime fansub we'll be releasing soon.) Of course we could also add a filter to VirtualDubMod and load the subtitle stream there, that's the same effect only later in the processing chain (you would then see VirtualDubMod's input window without subtitles and VirtualDubMod's output window with subtitles).

The audio stream could be handled separately like I already described in some discussion about converting OGM to AVI containers.

The one thing that is new with this method is the possibility of making use of DirectShow to open the container, meaning that whatever file you are able to play on your PC via DirectShow can automatically be opened with VirtualDubMod as well, by using AviSynth as "bridge" between the DirectShow interface and the stream format universe of VirtualDubMod. I was long avoiding AviSynth because of its cryptic command language but I recently had to learn that language anyway for a current project, so...