I think hotdoge3 was asking in another thread about putting some video on a DVD. That & other comments that have been posted from time to time prompted me to write a bit more about the process. It's something I find challenging to write about because video DVDs are kind of like an iceberg -- the more you explore the topic the deeper & broader it gets. You can successfully create video DVDs without seeing or knowing about anything beneath the surface, but a little bit of knowledge can go a long way, particularly if it helps avoid one or more of the crevices people sometimes fall into. The 1st question to ask is if you should create a video DVD, or if some other format, e.g. DivX on a CD is more appropriate.
Copying &/or converting video DVDs is pretty straightforward, but creating them can be a whole different story, *depending on your expectations* -- video DVDs were never designed to be created by non-pros, & the spec was created for really primitive electronics, so the scripts they use don't translate that well into the software commonly used to create them. If the video you want to watch on your TV is DVD size & quality or greater, creating a video DVD is a decent option that offers cheap, convenient storage, works with very cheap stand-alone players, & with all the millions & millions of video DVDs out there, you can expect most people will be able to play them for the foreseeable future. An added plus, the mpg2 video encoding used is easy to work with & doesn't require a lot of computing horsepower. If you're not going to watch it on TV, or if your video's not DVD quality & size [or better], it's probably best not to bother. Very good quality video on a DVD can look as good as a lower to average quality Blu-Ray disc on a HDTV. How good other formats look on TV depends on both the quality of the video & the player -- I think you can normally expect most DVD or Blu-Ray players to give the same high quality playback, while media player boxes can vary a lot since many cut down on the electronics inside to reduce costs. Note that most retail DVDs you'll watch are not the highest quality video, possibly because the studios don't like to put top quality out there in case it could be copied, so please don't think that the retail video DVDs you've seen are examples of the best quality you can hope for.
To create a Video DVD the video usually has to be sized at 720 x 480 NTSC or 720 x 576 if you live where they use PAL, though alternatives may be available depending on your authoring app & the choices it gives. For NTSC video needs to be at 29.976 fps -- PAL at 25 fps. Editing, encoding, &/or DVD authoring software may take care of some [often most] everything for you, but there are some details I should mention...
Video on a PC [or Blu-Ray], for example the old standard 640 x 480, is square pixel, meaning essentially that what you see is what you get. Old style TVs, those using picture tubes [CRTs], [and this is oversimplified] don't use square pixels, meaning very roughly that a 720 x 480 video *On Your TV* looks about the same as 640 x 480 on your PC. When it comes to TV viewing you usually don't have to worry too much -- whatever sends the picture to a TV will generally alter the video if it has to so that the TV gets what it expects. When it comes to looking at 720 x 480 or 720 x 576 video on your PC, how it looks depends on software -- DVD player apps will change the frame size displayed [e.g. Power DVD will make the window taller for NTSC]. Windows Media Player will show it as-is, with the wrong aspect ratio. Video apps may show you as-is or corrected video frames, & you may or may not have a choice in the matter.
Another thing you'll encounter with video DVDs is anamorphic video... Wide Screen [16:9] video is stored on DVDs in the same frame size as full screen or normal [4:3]. Wide screen video is re-sized to the narrower frame, ignoring the existing aspect ratio, & when the player sees the 16:9 flag it knows to show the video spread out at close to its original width. Where 720 width video might look wrong in something like Windows Media Player, anamorphic DVD video will look terribly off. If you want to get more confused, consider that players like PowerDVD will both increase the window height to compensate for non-square pixels, And, stretch the window sideways to get 16:9. Want to get even more confused? While the 720 frame width is a standard, there is no standard size for the 16:9 video before it's sized to 720 -- there is no standard size for the frame when it's stretched back out. The details of how & why & formulas etc. would take a while, if your brain didn't go numb part way through it -- in practice it's more a use your own eyes, use your own judgment sort of thing. If/when what your software comes up with doesn't look right, it isn't. If it looks good to you, & you've got a decent eye, it'll look good to your viewers too -- even if you get it wrong most viewers won't notice... with cable TV I gave up pointing out aspect ratio errors in the programming & ads years ago because there were just too many.
Finally there's Interlaced video... I'm mentioning it mainly because it's hard to research anything video related without comming across something about Interlacing, or maybe more commonly, reversing the effects, de-interlacing. Usually you don't have to worry about it unless your newly encoded video seems to stutter during scenes with some movement -- in that case you've likely got an interlaced source video & the field order settings for your encoding or editing software are wrong [that's another reason to run short test encodes before encoding or converting an entire project]. A few years back deinterlacing could make interlaced video look better on PCs [but worse on TVs], particularly if you were looking at it frame by frame during editing. You'll still see it sometimes being recomended. Without going overboard in detail, run a short test or two if you want, but usually deinterlacing reduces rather than increases visual quality.
The easiest video DVDs to create are ones without any menus [so only the most minimal script] -- you play the DVD & you see the movie. Nero, Roxio, & Sony are the easiest I've used, where you can import your video, optionally set the chapters, & when you click the button they'll encode the audio & video as necessary, putting the results into a DVD layout on your hard drive in a VIDEO_TS folder you can test and, assuming it works & looks OK, burn. Your video however will likely not look as good as possible -- to do better requires more hands-on work [e.g. re-sizing &/or filtering & encoding, entering required settings yourself, often using more than one app]. You can do better [& faster] re-sizing &/or filtering using VirtualDub &/or AviSynth, but it's more complicated, & you'll create an intermediate video file that you'll encode to mpg2, so it's not recommended if your original video is not high quality. You can use free apps or tools to create your mpg2 & AC3, but you'll have to learn more to use them. The free version of Muxman does a great job of putting your mpg2 video & AC3 audio into a DVD layout on your hard drive.
There are lots of apps that'll encode mpg2 video &/or AC3 audio, & many that'll create video DVDs, but it pays to be careful... As you'd expect Adobe apps work well, but I've read loads of horror stories from people trying to run their DVD authoring app [& keep it running without repeated re-installs]. Many DVD creation apps, like those from the same companies that make the ffmpeg converters, create DVDs with scripting that's different from the norm, so they may not play everywhere [bear in mind that even if something works on your current DVD player, that doesn't mean it will work with the new player you buy when your old one quits]. When DVD authoring software 1st appeared, you had to encode the video you were including in the DVD -- not accepting & passing through already encoded, DVD compliant video was a liability that was soon corrected... the DVD creation apps I've tried from the ffmpeg converter folks haven't learned that lessen yet. If you go through the free software at a site like videohelp.com, some of those apps have very poor installs -- that's why I don't recommend Format Factory, which otherwise seems very popular, at least in the comments on the GOTD download page... What much of this software does is install the individual apps & things like codecs that they need, often in non-standard ways. If you have & use a variety of video-related software that can break most of it, & it can damage or break video handling in Windows. The AC3 audio format is owned by Dolby, & apps you pay for should use licensed AC3 encoders -- there are free alternatives, but some people can hear the difference. Lots of apps, including many of the ffmpeg converters, will encode Constant Bit Rate [CBR] DVD-spec mpg2, but for movie length video you don't want CBR -- you want/need Variable Bit Rate [VBR] encoding which uses more compression during quite scenes, less during scenes with lots of action... to compress 1.5 - 2 hours of video so it'll fit on a ~5 GB DVD you'll have to lower that CBR to where scenes with action [even stuff like mild zooms & pans] can look horrible.
Most people will be happy taking the easy route, importing video into the DVD authoring window & clicking the button to somewhat automatically create a DVD -- many enthusiasts feel that's not enough [with pros it depends on what the job pays :) ]. Nero, Roxio, & Sony apps will also let you get more involved, will let you do some filtering, will let you make the encoding settings yourself, & when you're done you import that finished video into the DVD authoring part of the app [or authoring app if separate]. Nero & Roxio will import more video formats, but Sony will let you encode your video with pulldown [24 fps video with special flags telling the player to repeat frames to = NTSC 29.975 -- mainly a concern where NTSC is used, & then only with 24 fps video, it means higher quality because of less compression]. Roxio's easier & often faster than Nero, but Nero's more like pro software, i.e. you can do more. Both have high impact installs, though Roxio can be downright nasty to get installed & working. [There are no doubt other quality apps besides Nero & Roxio, but a couple of years ago when I was looking for something that also encoded for Blu-Ray (at a time when Sony's Blu-Ray encoding was poor), I spent a bit of time comparing any/all trials I could get my hands on, & those were the 2 I found worth paying for on sale.]
Where DVDs get complicated is when you add menus... Adding menus to your DVD ranges from super, super easy to feeling like you're taking a complicated series of college courses -- it all depends on how fancy & involved you want those menus to be. At the most basic level you import your video, set the chapters, drag your video onto the DVD menu in the Nero, Roxio, or Sony authoring app or window, & click the button to create your DVD layout [VIDEO_TS folder] on your hard drive. You can customize the menu background, you can customise the buttons, & Sony lets you create both from scratch if you're so inclined. Sony's DVDA also lets you use custom button highlights you create. All 3 will create chapter menus for you, & those can be similarly customised. But every step beyond dragging your video onto the menu means learning & doing more -- creating a DVD menu setup comparable to some retail DVDs can very realistically take days of solid work if you create the menu backgrounds, buttons, button highlights, design the menu system, add the necessary scripts etc. yourself.
I'll wind this up with a warning about a potential Gotcha... above I mentioned that DVD scripting doesn't translate into software very well -- as each company or developer has tried to bridge that gap they've come up with their own solutions, which means that skills you master in one DVD creation app can tend to be meaningless in another. Expect that most of the time you'll spend learning you'll spend learning that app, not about DVDs. That also means that if you go to the forums for whatever DVD authoring/creation app, most of what you'll read &/or be told relates to that software -- not DVDs. Those people & companies that have spent a lot of $ for a copy of the DVD spec had to sign an NDA, so the companies making DVD software cannot legally tell you how they work. Most of what is known comes from reverse engineering & posted a bit scattered on-line.
