I have a bunch of 30 minute television shows and I want to try and put as many of them on DVD as possible without losing too much if any quality from the originals. The originals have been taped straight off of analog cable so the quality is not pristine to begin with. I'm simply making a library of these shows to play later for my personal enjoyment.

I downloaded the most recent NTSC KDVD 352x480 template and was able to encode an .m2v video file with TMPGENC no problem. I did not change any of the settings in the template; I just fired it up and let it do its thing.

I realize the finished file is video only. The original file (audio & video) was 584mb and this new video-only file is 215mb.

Wading through a ton of messages of the KVCD boards, I was not able to clearly find a post that shared what to do from here. Nor am I clear as to whether or not my video encoding is that easy or if it requires some kind of Quality or Rate change in TMPGENC in order to achieve a varying end-result. In other words, whether or not I need to tweak the KDVD/TMPGENC settings to shrink these files even further during the video encoding process.

The television files are obviously only 2-channel stereo. What is the most simple way to take it from here?

I have VirtualDub and I was able to strip the audio out of the original file as a .wav but don't know what to do with it. Or even if that is the next step.

I do assume there's some sort of audio encoding and then remuxing into a DVD format but I have only read limited information about such.

I'm just trying to get the finished product ready to burn.

I will likely be authoring the DVD in TMPGENC DVD Author as I assume it will be the most friendly about the non-standard DVD files. I know for sure Sonic MyDVD is not and will re-encode anything it finds non-standard...

Please help me from here.

Thanks in advance!

The most simple way (or one of the easiest) that I use is to do what you've done so far.

I rip the wav audio from the avi with VDub and then I personally use BeSweet to encode to ac3 format.

I have used the results of the KDVD process successfully in DVDLab (by Mediachance) and have had excellent results with chapters. The nice thing (and it removes a step for the process) is that DVDLab can now access an external encoder for audio. So I simply drop the PCM wav format file into the assetts bin and tell it to encode. I have it set to ac3 (BeSweet.exe) at 224kps and it just encodes it and adds the resulting file.

I've never used TMPGEnc DVD, so unfortunately I have no suggestions there.

Hi hijax20012,

My suggestion, because you are encoding TV shows, is to use HeadAC3he to encode your audio to .MP2. Just feed the WAV file to HeadAC3he. You can get an idea on how the process goes by looking at the "KVCD From Scratch" guide, link available on the main page at www.kvcd.net.
I think TMPGEnc DVD Author is the easiest way to go. As fas as the quality settings, please take a look at the file prediction forum area. There you'll find how to calculate correct CQ for your target. Or look into the program "ToK", which will do that automatically for you. Just set ToK with the same parameters (GOP size, bitrates, resolution) that are in the KDVD template, and the process will be automatic. Any doubts, just ask

-kwag

Thanks guys! With your assistance, I was able to put 15 half-hour shows (actually approx 22 mins each with the commercials edited out) on 1 DVD!

In summary, here are the steps I took:

1. Downloaded the KDVD Half D1 template for TMPGEnc.

2. Ran each original source file through TMPGEnc using the template, changing only two things in the settings - If you don't go to the Advanced Tab and change the 16:9 ratio to 4:3 then the files are useless to the DVD authoring software. I also bumped the Motion Search setting in the Video Tab to Highest. Each 22 min file took approx 45 minutes to encode at the Highest TMPGEnc Motion Search setting. The finished file is an .M2V video-only (no audio) file.

3. Extracted just the audio as .WAV files from the original source files using Virtual Dub.

4. Encoded the .WAV as an .MP2 file using HeadAC3he and the exact instructions from here: http://www.kvcd.net/guides/kguide/kv...ep_3._Encoding

5. Used the Simple Mux MPEG Tool built into TMPGEnc to join the associated .M2V video and .MP2 audio files together into one file. Each file takes about 2-3 minutes to be multiplexed back together.

6. Created the final DVD using TMPGEnc DVD Author and burned those files with Nero. Again, I was able to fit 15 shows with room to spare! I might've been able to fit 16 but I didn't want to overdo it...

The finished product looks pretty decent, again considering the fact that these are TV shows taped directly from a somewhat dirty analog cable source. Perfect solution for my archiving purposes!

Thanks again guys!

fullastuff.com

...

UPDATE 07/11: I processed the same original files again, this time using the KDVD Full D1 template. Obviously, I obtained much higher resolution and the shows ended up looking much closer to the original. I was still able to fit 9 shows on 1 DVD!

great hijax20012
welcome!

in your first steps in forum got good results.
we're happy too.