mpeg to dvd converter

[rents]

what is a good (free) mpeg to dvd file converter-that will work with windows ME?
thanks

that's a very good question.

what type of source material MPEG videos are you planning on using? i ask because of this: DVD video format is MPEG-2. so if your source material MPEG videos are in MPEG-2 format at 29.97 frames per second in 720x480 (a.k.a. NTSC format), then you're looking for a DVD authoring program.

if you're wanting to convert VCD, and other low quality, type MPEG videos to DVD format to burn on a DVD disc... DON'T. seriously, the quality will not be good for these types of conversions (VCD resolution is around 352x240 for NTSC system videos). and when you blow up that resolution to watch using a DVD player hooked up to your TV set, the resolution is basically having to be upsampled (by conversion software). VCD MPEG videos re-encoded to DVD-standard MPEG files will *NOT* look better than, or even as good as, the original MPEG video files. by its nature, MPEG video (MPEG-1, and MPEG-2, et al) is lossy. this means each time you re-encode it, you're losing more quality (even if you convert it to a 'higher quality' standard setting).

frankly, i've only seen a handful of VCDs that were surprisingly *good* quality. (and i don't say that lightly, the few VCDs i'm referring to were blow-you-away type quality... made me wish the source material was used for DVDs instead, it was so good.)

having said that, if the MPEG videos you want to convert to DVD are not DVD-compliant to begin with, please don't pollute the trading pool by seeding your converted files. so if you're intent on converting MPEG videos > DVD compliant MPEG-2 videos, you can do it quite easily using encoders such as CCE, ProCoder, TMPGEnc, MainConcept, etc. (those 4 are the best i've come across, listed from best to worst encoder, IMO.)

after encoding the files to MPEG-2 video (and WAV a.k.a. PCM a.k.a. LPCM or AC3 or MPEG audio), you will need an authoring program to mux the video with the audio, add chapter points and/or menus, and so forth. there are a very few free programs out there that can author DVDs, e.g. IFOEdit.

there are a manifold of good tutorials for this type of thing over at videohelp.com. happy encoding.

[RainDawg]

Yeah, read through the information on videohelp.com. There is a lot of information there on what all the terms mean, what software can be used, what the standards are, etc.