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TICKET ARCHIVE -> Burning AVIs?

kgates - Jul 22, 2006 - 2:59 am

Well, I have a bunch of AVIs I want to burn to DVD. But I want this to be a DVD that can play in a DVD player, as opposed to a media DVD. So, I thought I'd put them into iMovie, and then iDVD, and so on. But they're too big for iMovie, so I need an AVI splitter. I've tried a few (I think someone here suggested MacHacha, but I want the resulting, shorter AVI to still be functional) without success. VisualHub had the attractive function of being able to turn my AVIs into DV or DVD format, but the resulting files are never the full length of the originals. I'm running an iBook G4, OS 10.3.9, but as my iBook does not have a DVD burner, whatever I do would have to be able to be transferred to my sister's iMac G4, running OS 10.2.4(?), to be burned.

Thanks!

philippe99 - Jul 22, 2006 - 7:59 am

Hi and welcome to macosx.com

For instance, D_Vision (http://www.objectifmac.com/dvision.php) has in its Tools pane the capability of cutting AVI files

When you said "opposed to a media DVD", do you mean that your home DVD player is able to play AVI (Divx,..) directly ?
If not, you'll need to re-encode the AVI into a playable format: for instance commercial PopCorn 2 or Toast 7 do this job.

Regards
Philippe

kgates - Jul 22, 2006 - 1:56 pm

No - changing the format is part of what I'm trying to do. It seemed to me, though, that if I import AVIs into iMovie, it should work. Is this wrong? The AVI is sliced and importing into iMovie, but is there something I should know? ...when I said as opposed to a media DVD, I just meant I wanted it to be able to play in a player, rather than needing a computer to run it. I'm afraid my knowledge on this subject is somewhat lacking.

philippe99 - Jul 22, 2006 - 2:05 pm

I'm confess I never use iMovie -or IDvd- for handling movies.

I use for years the commercial Toast program which allows me to convert AVI (Divx, ..) -even coming from the Windows side- to a playable format for my home DVD player

Beside this commercial, there is also freeware which can do the same thing or help in doing it: ffmpegx, ..
http://www.videohelp.com/guides.php?...or+List+Guides


And more over, now, AVI/Divx compatible home DVD player are on the market at less than 100 $

Well, if you need a specific help on iMovie -which I cannot provide-, just tell me: I'll repool the question

Philippe

kgates - Jul 22, 2006 - 2:23 pm

I only wanted to use iMovie because I haven't really used Toast, though I understand what you mean now (the sliced movie is in iMovie, but it's just seven minutes of white). What format should I put the files into?

kgates - Jul 22, 2006 - 4:20 pm

Also, can I burn the DVD with ffmpegx? I'd rather not buy something if I don't have to - do I have other options?

philippe99 - Jul 23, 2006 - 3:03 am

As described in one of the articles I gave the main page listing link in my previous response:
http://homepage.mac.com/major4/dvd_sub.html
ffmpegx has a DVDImg for creating a burnable image of the encoded movie; then using Finder's burning facility, you can burn the movie

But if you creat a QuickTime compatible format, iDVD can burn it: well, that's why I discover in the Help section

Wel, a remark: transcoding videos, of course, takes time due to the process itself (2hours on my G5 for a 1/12h movie), but also to find the correct settings (speed vs quality ratio, good codec, good size for your DVD player, ..)
So, before creating a good DVD, you'll have to make several tries.

And you'll have to find the right tool (among ffmpegx, Moviegate, ...) which fit your needs the best.
http://www.macdgran.com/video.htm


Philippe

kgates - Jul 23, 2006 - 6:59 am

Thanks! I still kind of wanted to use iMovie, because I'm already familiar with it (and I have a strong stubborn streak), so what I did was I converted the AVIs into DVs with ffmpegx, and they transfer into iMovie just fine! Quite helpful, and perhaps next time, I wont go to all the bother .

philippe99 - Jul 23, 2006 - 7:15 am

Great you find the workaround.

Thank you for using macosx.com
And good burning !

Regards
Philippe