[Archived] Video Conversion to DVD

[Paul]

We have a huge amount of family video tape, some of it going back to the early 1950s (this is some form of film which was updated to video years ago). Needless to say for the family this is really important stuff, weddings, parties, birthdays, suitably embarrassing "small child in bath" stuff being saved for future wives etc!!!

I have spent many hours successfully transferring the video to both external hard drive and the laptop. About 120gb in total. It all plays perfectly on the laptop from either the C drive or the external drive.

I now want to write some of this to DVD. Every time I try to burn a DVD, using Roxio, the programme tells me the DVD has been written successfully and seems to take a suitably long time to do it. It looks to be very similar to burning a CD. However when I try to play back the DVD on the laptop all I get is the title page. The files saved on the DVD look OK but are small suggesting although the programme appears to have created the whole file.

I've tried using Windows Media Player but that appears to only burn CDs??

Help, this is driving me insane.

[Sandiway Blue]

We have a huge amount of family video tape, some of it going back to the early 1950s (this is some form of film which was updated to video years ago). Needless to say for the family this is really important stuff, weddings, parties, birthdays, suitably embarrassing "small child in bath" stuff being saved for future wives etc!!!

I have spent many hours successfully transferring the video to both external hard drive and the laptop. About 120gb in total. It all plays perfectly on the laptop from either the C drive or the external drive.

I now want to write some of this to DVD. Every time I try to burn a DVD, using Roxio, the programme tells me the DVD has been written successfully and seems to take a suitably long time to do it. It looks to be very similar to burning a CD. However when I try to play back the DVD on the laptop all I get is the title page. The files saved on the DVD look OK but are small suggesting although the programme appears to have created the whole file.

I've tried using Windows Media Player but that appears to only burn CDs??

Help, this is driving me insane.

what file extension is it? i use `image burn` for most things and it seems to do the trick.

http://www.imgburn.com/

pretty easy to use as well.

(it must be easy,even i can use it! )

[LeChuck]

It sounds like you might just be burning video files to disc and not actually converting the files into a video DVD. A bit like if you just stuck mp3 files on a CD instead of making an audio CD.

I suspect Imgburn will be no use here as that will only burn images, not convert video files.

I haven't done this for ages, but I used to use ConvertXtoDVD. Very easy to use. It does cost but there is a free trial. There are plenty of free programs out there that do this sort of thing though, just Google for "free convert video to DVD" or something similar.

[brian_gallagher85]

I used to use Nero for all my burning on my previous system but I don't use discs all that much nowadays. I needed to burn a data disc the other day and stumbled across Ashampoo Burning Studio and found it to be quite good.

[Rover Down Under]

It sounds like you might just be burning video files to disc and not actually converting the files into a video DVD. A bit like if you just stuck mp3 files on a CD instead of making an audio CD.

That would have been my first guess but Paul says there is a title page. Paul, when you look at the contents (right click the DVD drive and choose "Explore") is there a "Video_TS" and/or "Audio_TS" folder? If not then it is NOT a DVD disc.

BTW how did you convert from video to PC?

[RovertheHill]

I did this some years ago. I ended up buying a cheap video to DVD recorder to do it which is now the house video/DVD player.

However, self-burned DVD's do degrade and some I struggle to play now. So I'm in the process of ripping them back to the computer and putting them on cheap USB sticks. 7Dayshop do a 32G one for £19.99

So if you are burning to DVD buy good quality blanks

[Glenn]

At the risk of doing what I berate others for an answering a different question to the one asked ... for such valuable data, don't make DVD your only copy. They degrade quickly over time and have a high failure rate after a few years (especialy CD-Rs). I strongly encourage a second copy of them on either on SD cards (which do degrade, but much more slowly if not repeatedly written to) or somewhere private on the internet (private cloud storage is getting quite cheap now).

[Hughesy]

Convert x to DVD is the one I always use - it needs to be in AVI format though to convert.

[LeChuck]

Convert x to DVD is the one I always use - it needs to be in AVI format though to convert.

You sure about that? I'm almost certain it can handle lots of different video formats.

Isn't that why it's called "ConvertXtoDVD"?

[Paul]

That would have been my first guess but Paul says there is a title page. Paul, when you look at the contents (right click the DVD drive and choose "Explore") is there a "Video_TS" and/or "Audio_TS" folder? If not then it is NOT a DVD disc.

BTW how did you convert from video to PC?

I borrowed a package from a friend who bought it in Aldi. It's made by Tevion, usually quite good. You get a lead with a choice of connecting red/white/yellow cables or red/black/green cables into the laptop via a small box which has a USB lead. The software is called Total Media Extreme by Arcsoft. After connecting this all up, one opens the software, plays the video and it stores the video on the PC.

[Paul]

The process creates two files - a VLC media file(.mpg) and a second much smaller file called an MV file (.tdp). I can play the .mpg files perfectly. I don't know what the .tdp file does but there is one associated with each .mpg file. If the .mpg is 4.09gb, the .tdp is only 162kb.

The important thing is I now have all this on a hard drive rather than video.

At the risk of doing what I berate others for an answering a different question to the one asked ... for such valuable data, don't make DVD your only copy. They degrade quickly over time and have a high failure rate after a few years (especialy CD-Rs). I strongly encourage a second copy of them on either on SD cards (which do degrade, but much more slowly if not repeatedly written to) or somewhere private on the internet (private cloud storage is getting quite cheap now).

Quite agree Glenn. I have all our personal stuff backed up on an external hard drive and a seperate EHD as a double backup for the family video and photos. The DVDs are just to send to ageing aunts!!!

[Biddy]

The process creates two files - a VLC media file(.mpg) and a second much smaller file called an MV file (.tdp). I can play the .mpg files perfectly. I don't know what the .tdp file does but there is one associated with each .mpg file. If the .mpg is 4.09gb, the .tdp is only 162kb.

If that is what is being burn to DVD then that will not work. As someone said above, there needs to be a VIDEO_TS directory on the dvd (if browsed) and within there there needs to be .vob and .ifo files. the VOB's are just mpeg2 files in 1gb chunks.

You will need a program like the aforementioned convertXtodvd which I can testify is a brilliant little program and only £35. I've used it loads and its well worth the money.

Of course the free "Windows DVD Maker" which is part of Live Essentials will also do the same job but doesn't support as many formats but does support .mpg files.

[Rover Down Under]

The process creates two files - a VLC media file(.mpg) and a second much smaller file called an MV file (.tdp). I can play the .mpg files perfectly. I don't know what the .tdp file does but there is one associated with each .mpg file. If the .mpg is 4.09gb, the .tdp is only 162kb.

The important thing is I now have all this on a hard drive rather than video.

That's a VERY big file! The encoding settings are probably incorrect so you are saving detail that isn't really there, it doesn't really matter as long as you have the space to store it all. Anyway as Biddy has pointed out writing these files to a DVD disc does not create a DVD. You need to author the DVD yourself, the free Windows DVD maker is fine (useful guide: http://www.windowsdvdmaker.com/guides/Beginner/) , however with the size of the file it will take a long time to create each DVD.

I had some of our precious family stuff professionally converted (it's gone from 8mm to video to DVD to MPEG - crazy!) but it's expensive and I have a load of old Rovers videos I want to convert - including all the '92 playoffs (complete with Elton Welsby ) and '95 game at Anfield on Sky. A mate of mine has a dual DVD / video deck that he reckons can do it easily so I'm gonna give that a go.

[Paul]

That's a VERY big file!

Yep! It is 4 hours of video tape. Don't know if that means the file is too big or not! You would not believe the pile of VHS littering our dinning room.

Aside from the family stuff we also have hours of MOTD, the Anfield game, the play offs, The FMC (I think but haven't got round to that one yet) and The House That Jack Built, the ITV programme on how Jack put the club back on the map.

Watching a young Alan Shearer scoring for Rovers on MOTD is wonderful. Some of the other goals we scored were just outstanding.

[Biddy]

Yep! It is 4 hours of video tape. Don't know if that means the file is too big or not! You would not believe the pile of VHS littering our dinning room.

Aside from the family stuff we also have hours of MOTD, the Anfield game, the play offs, The FMC (I think but haven't got round to that one yet) and The House That Jack Built, the ITV programme on how Jack put the club back on the map.

Watching a young Alan Shearer scoring for Rovers on MOTD is wonderful. Some of the other goals we scored were just outstanding.

I put all of those onto DVD a good few years ago. I even transferred the official Worthington cup final VHS back then. Then recently I noticed to club selling it on DVD so I bought that only to find it looks like they have essentially done the same thing. The quality is about as good as my copy and the VHS warning is still there. I'll stick with my versions from now on.