Burning .avi files to DVD

[Lourdan]

Hi
Sorry, I am an absolute tyro at this - have searched the faqs but can't find out how to burn avi files to DVD.
I have captured .avi files. shortened them a bit by editing to fit onto DVD, and can only seem to burn as MPEG. The only reason I'm trying to do this is to save the original files for posterity in their original state - ie backup in case of emergency in the future.
A seconf question must be - is there any disadvantage to just saving them as mpeg? eg loss of quality etc.
Many thanks

[Ken Berry]

Video Studio is a video editing program which has a video DVD authoring capacity -- but the stress is on 'video DVD'. And a video DVD MUST, by international standards, use mpeg-2 (and mpeg-2 in some circumstances). A video DVD also has specific feed-in code and a file structure which a DVD player can recognise and play accordingly.

But I get the impression you just want to archive the original .AVIs as files or data, rather than video. If so, you cannot do this with Video Studio. You just use a normal disc burning program, the same as you would if you burn any other data files to disc. Windows itself will do it, and a huge variety of other programs, including Nero, Roxio Easy Media Creator, Ashampoo Burning Studio etc.

You don't say what kind of AVI files you have. There are over 800 formats of video which use the .avi extension ranging from uncompressed (which is huge -- 65 GB an hour, which makes it rather impractical to store on a 4.3/8.6 GB DVD), through DV/AVI (13 GB so you need 3 single layer or two dual layer DVDs just to store one hour of this type) up to the very compressed types at the other end of the spectrum, such as DivX or Xvid where 1 hour takes up only around 700 MB and so can be burned to a CD or 6 hours to a single layer DVD.

Note that if indeed you have DivX files, if you burn them (as you have to with this type of video) as archive/data files to a CD or DVD, and you have a DVD player rated to play DivX, you can just put your data DVD with such files into the player, it will recognise the format and play them as though they were a video DVD.

[Ron P.]

In VS, the "clips" you see on the timeline are just thumbnail representations, not your actual video clip. So what you need to do is create a video file from your project. This is done in the Share step. You can select Same as first video clip or Same as Project settings (provided that your project settings match that of your video clips).

Now from that newly created video file, you need to use an application that can burn a data disk, not a video disk (which is what VS burn module will create). With DVDMF 6+ you have the ability to burn data disks as well as video. Since you must have a DVD burner or even a combo CD/DVD burner you should have a program that came on your PC that will allow you to burn data disks.

MPEG video files are considered a lossy format. Every recoding risks loosing some quality. How many times before it is noticeable, that has been speculated on, and varies. One other risk is OOS (Out of Sync), audio / video.

With all that said, what "avi" are you referring to? Raw uncompressed which takes up a whopping 65 gig per hour of video, DV, which is slightly compressed, and uses up about 13 gig per hour, or one of the other 798+ avi possibilities?

Ken you're post had not shown up when I started typing my response..

[Lourdan]

Many thanks for this Ken and Vidoman. - Much appreciated. My files are captured from Handycam DV, about 37gig from a couple of hours of tape (4 yrs of grandchildren growing up). My intention is to do two things, split the files up to managemable lengths for DVD burning/archiving, and secondly to make some decent family film. I will use something else for the archiving and VideoStudio for the latter. many thanks once again. Alan (Lourdan)