Video Conversion AVI/MKV/MP4 to DVD (Free)

[Dement]

**While rm can be used I don't recommend it for sake of quality!**

This guide is tailored for people looking to burn to DVD for watching on their standalone DVD Player. All programs used in this guide are FREE!!!!
Programs you need:
FAVC: http://favcfavc.googlepages.com/
Avisynth v2.56a, or later, installed: http://favcfavc.googlepages.com/
.NET framework Version 2 installed: http://favcfavc.googlepages.com/
MKVExtractGUI (used for subtitles): http://www.videohelp.com/tools/MKVExtractGUI

Installing:

Install .Net framework and AVIsynth first and once those are installed proceed to install FAVC (it's just a self extracting .exe). To install MKVExtractGUI extract it into a folder within your FAVC folder named, "MKVtoolnix". If you mess up extracting when you attempt to open MKVExtractGUI it will error out saying your missing some components.

Once everything is installed and you have a avi/mkv/mp4 you want on DVD open up FAVC. Note: For this guide I'm going to show you a DVD I'm working on for my local Anime Club that consists of the best AMV's of 2007 ^.^

Now if your new to converting some of the functions might look foreign so let me go over what each one does so you can customize your program for what you need.

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Sources & Output Tab:


-Destination Folder: This is the place FAVC will save your totally converted DVD. Please make sure your destination folder is on a Hard Drive with at least 10GB of free space! Nothing is worse then running out of HD space during a convert.
-Temporary Folder: FAVC automatically places all essential conversion files like .avs files into this folder. Again make sure you have enough HD space.
-Disc Capacity: Most of you will be using 4.37GB DVD's but if for some reason you have a Dual Layer DVD's at your disposal check 7.95GB. You can check your DVD's size by reading the front of the DVD. I don't suggest messing with custom size unless you know what your doing.
-Chapter Length: I very rarely if ever use chapters for my DVD's but through experience usually about 8-10 minutes for each chapter is pretty good. Chapters are used for quick fast forwarding on your TV. FAVC will setup a chapter every X minute you put in. Being that my AMV's are about 5 minutes long I really dont need chapters. In my example I set the chapters to 0 this will make the program do no chapters at all.
-Menu: I always use a menu even for long movies. It is essential for DVD navigation. However FAVC is limited to only 8 menu objects (this is the weak point of FAVC) and for my example I'm using 20 AMV's this forces FAVC to turn off Menu creation. If your looking to do other conversions with longer footage 8 or less objects should be plenty to fill a DVD.
-ISO Creation: You can set this to yes or no it doesn't really matter IMGburn (the free burning software we will use) can either burn an ISO or make an ISO for us automatically. I usually set this to NO.
-Open Imgburn: This simply... opens IMGburn after conversion is done.
-Working Files: This option will atomically delete your temp folder. I leave this on No!!! You might run into a problem where you could use the working files! Just remember to delete the working folder later if your DVD came out good.
-DVD Format: This is IMPORTANT make sure you set yourself to the correct DVD format for your region. In general NTSC is for North Amercia / Japan and PAL is European if your unsure of which format your DVD player uses look it up. NOTE: If you use a Playstation or Xbox for your DVD player they can read both PAL and NTSC and so can your computer (usually tehe)!
-Encoder: I recommend HC it has a nice 2-pass encode and its quite fast at it.
-Shutdown: I set this to No but if for some reason you want your computer to turn off after converting is done check this to Yes.

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DVD Options Tab:


This tab is used for your DVD's Menu. Please note you can only put up to 8 videos on 1 DVD or you lose menu support. I will go over the Subtitles part more once I get there in this tutorial! Rest should be pretty self explanatory.

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QuEnc/HC Option Tabs:

I don't recommend customizing this yourself unless you know what your doing. Luckily for us FAVC has pre-built options for us at the bottom. I generally find Balance to be the best for most things. If you have a Dual Core CPU make sure you set your Cores to 2. If you have a Quad Core (lucky) set Cores to 4.
Lastly the only other option we have to worry about is, "Incorporate TV Overscan". Let me explain what this does really quickly and why it does it. This option will put 16 pixel width bars around your video for example here is a snapshot of the AMV Skittles (on my computer) after being encoded with TV Overscan on:

Now your asking yourself why do you do this? Well televisions all have different overscan ranges you see when you watch a movie or cable TV you are losing the outside picture to TV Overscan! It's not a big deal really but we want ALL or MOST of our picture to show right? So putting them boxes in gives us more viewable picture on our TV. If you would like to read more about TV Overscan check here. With that said if you plan for your DVD's to be played in Televisions set this to YES if not hit this to NO.

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Audio Options and Advanced Scripting Tabs:
Don't touch the Audio tab this should already be setup perfect for you.
The Advanced Scripting tab is used for AVS scripts. Being that AVS is a command line program it gets pretty technical. In general this tab should never be used unless you know how to write AVS scripts.

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Importing and Encoding:

So we have FAVC all setup like we want it now so import your video/s you want on this DVD. Make sure your videos are in the right order in the box!

Now flip to the DVD Options tab you should see all your videos you imported. You can rename what they say on your menu from there. Also if you want a picture you can import a nice wallpaper in the background. NOTE: If your using Subbed MKV files and you want to retain the subtitles you have an additional step before converting.

FOR PEOPLE USING MKV ONLY! IF YOU HAVE AVI'S SKIP THIS STEP.
Quick explanation for why we need to rip a MKV before convert. Think of a MKV as like a "shell" inside the shell there can be multiple things (this is why mkv is so popular) like different audio languages, multiple Subtitles, and other things. Because of this shell we have to take the subtitles we need for our DVD otherwise if you convert now you will have a unsubbed DVD on your hands.

Ripping Subtitles from MKV: (Added pictures of me ripping the subs from the unlicensed show, "Shakugan no Shana II".)
1. Open up MKVExtractGUI
2. Import your MKV
3. Box should then be filled with the contents in the mkv "shell". Find the Subtitles track and check it. If you have 2 or more sub tracks choose the S_TEXT/UTF8 one. Otherwise if all you have is S_TEXT/ASS read the note below.

4. Click Extract.
5. Go to the saved file and open it in Notepad.
6. Resave the file in Notepad but change the Encoding to ANSI.

7. Repeat these steps for each video.

NOTE: FAVC HATES .ass SUBTITLES! YOU MUST CONVERT THEM TO .srt! Search google I assure you there are free programs that will also do this for you.

Once you are done go back to FAVC and there you will have to import your subtitle files for each video.

1. Highlight your first video.
2. Click the notepad icon.
3. Find your first extracted subtitle file.
4. Hit OK

Match up each Video with the correct Subtitle. Double check them in the box to make sure you have them correct.

Hard Subtitles this option is truly only available to people with MKV. Unchecked this will not show the Subtitles on your TV till you click your subtitles button on your remote. Checking this will force subtitles to always be shown on your video. I leave this unchecked but if you always want subs to show check it.

NOW BOTH AVI AND MKV USERS SHOULD BE IN THE CONVERTING STAGE!

Depending on how fast your computer is conversion could take all night or an hour. FAVC will tell you when it is safe to close FAVC during encoding.

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Burning:

Before we mess with Burning our DVD. Double check your converted files and make sure they look and run right. I do this with VLC Player. Right click the Video_TS folder and hit, "Play in VLC Media Player" from there you can see your menu and everything. If it all looks good continue to IMGburn.

Once in Imgburn do the following steps:
1. Click Mode at the top and make sure your on Build.
2. Click the Browse for FOLDER icon.
3. Find your Video_TS Folder and hit ok.
4. Insert your Blank DVD.
5. Click the calculator and make sure your DVD is big enough (make sure it's not over 100%)
6. Click the Big icon on the bottom left that looks like a Folder pointing to a DVD.
7. If a Box pops up asking about the DVD's name just hit OK.
8. The Writing and Burning should start.
9. If you get some type of error saying "BAD SECTORS" or something like that don't worry it's nothing you did it was your blank DVD. If this happens just throw away that Blank DVD it was a faulty disc and try again. If this happens often you might need to buy better blank Media.

Thats it your all done! If you made it Congratulations! Now you know how to convert all your videos to DVD! Have fun!

If you want a menu larger than 8 videos or a more complex menu generation you will have to use DVD authoring software. I personally use TMGEnc DVD Author 3 for this but it does cost money to buy. I do still use FAVC for encoding however.

Here are some screens of the DVD I made while writing this guide:





Cheers!

[Dement]

Some people have been experiencing issues with the HC encoder and batchmux not completing the dvd files properly because of bitrate spikes. If you get this problem it might be advisable to both lower your bitrate (6000-7000 range) and use the QuEnc encoder instead.

If you use the above tutorial and you go to your completed dvd folder and you see that only some of the vob's were created then your having this issue. This usually only happens if you are trying to make a DVD with many different video formats. For example it happened on my AMV DVD in my tutorial and you may have noticed I had QuEnc activated this is why.

I noticed this thread has quite a few views and no comments if you experience any issues you can pm them to me or post them in this thread and I will try to help or you can head over and ask the author of FAVC yourself: http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=106677

In other news Mr_Odwin is working on the 1.07 version which is supposed to bring better menu support! ^.^

[Dement]

I've been getting asked a lot how to lower subtitles so they aren't so high on your TV. Also note overscan ranges from severe to minimal so my settings might be too low/high for some it will take some tweaking on your part. I also posted this in the doom9 forum if for some reason you cant see this forum...

Go to FAVC folder > SubtitleCreator > Data
Open Profiles.xml in notepad
Scroll down to the two NTSC ones (if your using PAL I cant help you on the positions sorry)

For those you will see something like this:

<Profile Name="FAVC NTSC 4:3">
<Font Name="Trebuchet MS" Size="18" Style="Bold" Outline="5" />
<Window DistanceToLeftBorder="80" DistanceToTopBorder="380" Width="560" />
<Stretch Horizontal="100" Vertical="100" />
<LineHeight Value="100" />
<Formatting Lines="2" Wrap="True" VerticalAlignment="3" VerticalFont="False" />
</Profile>
<Profile Name="FAVC NTSC 16:9">
<Font Name="Trebuchet MS" Size="18" Style="Bold" Outline="5" />
<Window DistanceToLeftBorder="80" DistanceToTopBorder="380" Width="560" />
<Stretch Horizontal="100" Vertical="100" />
<LineHeight Value="100" />
<Formatting Lines="2" Wrap="True" VerticalAlignment="3" VerticalFont="False" />

Ok, so here is where you can change font, font size, style, border outline, etc. The setting you see up top are my settings and I find them to work the best for my subtitles. The font I use is something I found online recommended to me for this very use and it works good (the font isnt rough it looks smooth). If you dont have my font I'm told that Verdana also works very well for subtitles.

Save the xml file and now you can open up the subtitle program to view the profiles they should be changed. It's pretty hard to tell via the program though you kind of have to do a convert and burn to see if it looks good on your TV.

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People also are asking, "Why use MKV over AVI it seems like such a big hassle!?"

First off video quality is better from MKV's most are using H264 as their codec which is the "best of the best" codec-wise right now. Not only that but fansubbers have been getting pretty good with quality releases I'm starting to see a lot of 1280x720 resolution videos popping up which have VERY good quality to them and guess what? Most of those high resolution releases are MKV's.

Secondly fansubbers of shows often do not put emphases on placing their subtitles high enough in AVI files and this results in your subtitles getting chopped off on your TV even if you have overscan borders your TV might still clip them off if they are low enough.

This is why it is advisable to use H264 / MKV releases over Xvid or AVI releases because you rip the subtitles yourself and have the ability to adjust their position for your own TV so it's worth the few extra steps for a good DVD.

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Lastly people are asking about what program I use to convert .ASS files to .SRT

You can find it here: http://www.videohelp.com/tools/Subtitle_Workshop

Just open the .ass file and save it using SubRip (its in the list of icons) this will convert your .ass into a .srt

[Dement]

I got a pretty humorous AIM message from someone the other day concerning no subtitle file in their MKV. So I will explain this really quickly.

Some fansubbers feel the need to use MKV but also hardsub their work (I'm assuming to avoid people from stealing their subs? But why not just release mp4's?). This is all well and good in that you dont have to rip subtitles! Bad news is you have to be sure that the subtitles will fit properly on your screen assuming your using a TV.

You can check if a mkv is hardsubbed quickly by seeing if you can turn the subtitles on and off in your player like Windows Media Player Classic if you cant its hardsubbed.

Generally you can eye it easily on the video itself. If the subtitles seem to be a few enter spaces (think notepad) above the videos boarder you should be fine.

[Drahken]

I wrote a brief guide a while back on how to convert most video files to DVD using freeware, which uses entirely different software than your tutorial. While the software & methods used in my guide are much simpler/easier, the results are probably less satisfactory than the ones from your tutorial. The programs I used don't give you any direct control over quality settings, and I don't think they can deal with softsubs, but they'll work well for anyone who wants a quick fix.


==========================
You can make DVDs with freeware by using 2 progs:
http://www.afterdawn.com/software/video_so...xtodvd_free.cfm
http://www.download.com/Ashampoo-Burning-S...4-10776287.html

Divxtodvd will convert most video types to DVD format, including all the bup and ifo files. Ashampoo allows you to burn a pre-prepared video-ts folder to a DVD. There are some limitations to this technique; While divxtodvd does allow you to put multiple videos onto a single DVD, it doesn't allow you to create menus. Divxtodvd doesn't give you control over quality/compression either. Still, for a completely (and legally) free method, it's not bad. Conversion time is a little faster than realtime with my 2.2ghz/512M ram machine (a 22min vid took about 15mins to convert). Burning with ashampoo is also pretty fast.
The only issue is that when I made a test disc & played it in my DVD player, the picture broke up sometimes & the sound was out of sync on one dvd player, but it was fine on another one & on my comp.
==========================

[Tenchinotokyo]

Okay, so I've gone through all the steps and here are my issues.

-I keep receiving an 'embedded truetype font' message which I say yes to, many times.

-After initial conversion I received an error saying that the subtitles had to be changed because they contained <>. Or at least I think that's what it was.

Please help.

[Mr Hanky35]

iv been messing around in this for awile now, the problem is that i dont always find an mp4 or an avi, 75% of the time i end up with an ISO, or some other format thats not common. and now i really needa clean up my comp cuz i ended up downloading a crap load of bs programs to convert em, and none actually do what their suppost to do.

i endid up with alcohol 120% whitch will play any iso without having to burn a disc, but i wanna watch it on my bigscreen!

[Dement]

Originally Posted by Tenchinotokyo

Okay, so I've gone through all the steps and here are my issues.

-I keep receiving an 'embedded truetype font' message which I say yes to, many times.

-After initial conversion I received an error saying that the subtitles had to be changed because they contained <>. Or at least I think that's what it was.

Please help.

This is because of the formatting that the .ass subtitles have. Some characters are not permitted in the .srt format. I'm assuming you converted them over using subtitle workshop correct?

Weird characters is mainly what will give you this error. Instead of using a u some fansubber felt the need to use a "µ" or some other goofy thing. This rarely ever has happened to me but when it did in place of them characters was usually some alien looking characters.

To make this more clear say the anime is taking place in the city of Ruda Śląska (some Poland city if you care). So some fansubbers will use that exact spelling of Ruda Śląska instead of Ruda Slaska. If you look at it you will see un-normal characters, both Ś and ą. These characters will be converted into something goofy like, "Бъл" because those characters aren't supported. All in all there are a few things to fix this...

You can go through the subtitles and change all instances of Ruda Śląska to Ruda Slaska manually OR you can just deal with the funny syntax on your DVD which is what I normally do. These funny characters are usually used for character names or places and I generally know the name or place already so I don't need it shown correctly in plain english.

Also you should use a font like Verdana.

iv been messing around in this for awile now, the problem is that i dont always find an mp4 or an avi, 75% of the time i end up with an ISO, or some other format thats not common. and now i really needa clean up my comp cuz i ended up downloading a crap load of bs programs to convert em, and none actually do what their suppost to do.

i endid up with alcohol 120% whitch will play any iso without having to burn a disc, but i wanna watch it on my bigscreen!

The whole process is mainly meant for h.264 (.mp4) conversion however our gaol in converting is to get one of two outputs an ISO file or a Video_TS folder.

If you download an ISO this is a format you can burn straight to disc using IMGburn. This format will be recognized by your DVD player. You must know though ISO's come in two sizes, 4 GB and 8 GB in order to burn a 8 GB ISO straight to disc you need a dual layered DVD. I have found ISO's to contain awesome quality (it should be its a DVD RIP), but it fails in some aspects.

1. Since the ISO is a copy of a DVD it generally has 2-4 episodes which if you download a whole series means a TON of burning DVD's. In my process I can have 8 episodes (minimum if I please) per disc with the benefit of better subtitles (come on fan subs beat official subtitles hands down).
2. ISO generally means the DVD is out for sale denoting that you should purchase the show because it is probably licensed in your area.

[Mr Hanky35]

Originally Posted by Dement

If you download an ISO this is a format you can burn straight to disc using IMGburn. This format will be recognized by your DVD player. You must know though ISO's come in two sizes, 4 GB and 8 GB in order to burn a 8 GB ISO straight to disc you need a dual layered DVD. I have found ISO's to contain awesome quality (it should be its a DVD RIP), but it fails in some aspects.

i dont use IMGburn and that might be the reason it dosnt work. i use the burner already built in to my laptop. when i put it into the DVD player it dosnt play, same with my 360 and Ps2. when i put the disc in my laptop it asks what program i want to play it in, just like when i put a DVD in. it plays on my laptop of corce but i wanna use my tv.

[Zainox]

Does it loose quality through the conversion??
This may be a stupid question but I saw an anime that was MP4 today, but I thought that was a music file?