Due to the rarity of a lot of these movies, a lot are VHS rips. The quality is great considering the source, but after re-encoding, there's usually a big quality loss. In some cases, it can't afford to lose any more at all.

So just wondering if you burn them all, or watch them on your computer.

Also: in some files that I burn, it'll be working fine for the first hour and 15 minutes or so, then it will go out of sync in the last 15 minutes. Anybody else get that?

I don't get the question, unless you re-encode into smelly VCDs? No one here does that kind of 'sabotage' (couldn't think of a better word) ithat i know of, although i'd know some people may want to compromise quality severely to watch them on their DVD players if they don't have a decent pc, xbox or divx player; but i'd imagine that excludes practically everyone here (notice the unpopularity of the svcd section)

No point taking a MPEG4 and then devolving it into a lower quality, larger filesized messy mpeg2/1 in my book. I doubt anyone here re-encodes their files, completely defeats the purpose of releasing as AVI in the first place in my opinion (that being higher quality)

My process --> All avis are burnt to DVDr and watched on TV or if i'm taking it round to my friends, xbox or divx player.

Format re-encoding is a big, big, big no-no in my opinion. The only reason it should be done is filesize compression (DVD --> divx/xvid/svcd, not divx/xvid --> svcd). There is the odd exception but just like converting from PAL --> NTSC or vica versa, i'd never do it. Quality comes first.

hmm was that wat you asked at all?

If it was about re-encoding, then no, i never, ever do it and don't condone it I'm hoping SVCD + VCD die out pretty soon, they seriously compromise reshare possability, quality and potential xvid/divx releases in my book DVD-r will replace it for those that can't afford decent pcs or don't have tv-out

i always watch my movies on the pc and i burn the good ones to cdr. but mostly i erase the well spread ones after having seen them and keep the other ones shared.

oh rite, it was about do we back everything up?

Yes, I always back movies up, no matter what the quality because a) i can reshare b) media is so cheap c) someone may really want to see the movie somewhere down the line.

Its all based on the philosophy, my dying mum on her death bed ten years down the line might say "I've lived XYZ years and I've never seen... Attack of the Mushroom People", and then I can say "actually, I've got that backed up". And then she'd be so happy that she writes my brothers out of her will.... what do you mean it will never happen?

I always back up movies

I back up every movie I got and I'm using DVD-R's for that. You never know when someone asks for reshare a rare file

Wait.. you can just burn .avi files to DVDrs?

Goddamn, I need to get me a DVD burner. What I've been doing is converting the files to SVCDs and burning them. Jesus, if I'd known you could burn .avi files straight to DVD without converting, I would have saved up for a DVD burner instead.

Thanks for the help, spud, avatar, and decypher.

avatar: You've said you burn them to cdr. That means you convert to an SVCD, right? Have you ever had one go out of sync, but the file was fine? I've had this happen to me several times, getting irritated. :-o

Guess I'll just save up for a DVD burner.

no, I burn avi files to DVDr for storage purposes, I playback the avi files off of the DVD. You need to re-encode if you expect to play em on a standalone that doesn't support MPEG4. I do not re-encode any files apart from when i release files, then they are always DVD/TV --> divx/xvid because of the substantial quality and filesize advantage they hold over svcd/dvd

and as for avatar, i'm 100% sure he means he just burns the avi files to cdr. Not many people like SVCD/DVD and as he said "i watch them on the pc"; re-encoding to a really low quality format would defeat the purpose of having the high quality rip in the first place

You want to get yourself a tv-out/ modern gfx card kyle, quality is significantly better, no re-encoding is needed.

spud is right. i wouldn't dream of converting to vcd. the quality loss is just too big. so i burn to cdr to make room on my harddisk. then i can watch the movie later again on my computer.

that's the way things work at my place...

of course there is also the other possibility of buying a standalone mpeg 4 dvd player. see this discussion between john and me...

http://forum.dead-donkey.com/viewtopic.php?t=3333


oh, and to answer your question. one reason for your problem could be the fact that you burn at fullspeed (40x maybe faster?). try to burn your SVCD's at about 1/3 of the max speed of your burner.

I burn then to whatever I have available and then watch them through my PC via a Tv-out.Got it hooked up all through my house so I can watch whatever I want wherever I want

Damn, thanks for all your help, guys. So you CAN burn .avi files to CDrs and watch them on your computer later? Gotcha.

avatar: I've heard burning at lower speeds is bad, too, because the longer you burn the CD, the more heated the CD burner gets, and that causes problems or something. No matter though, because...

Everyone: Would this play burned avi files on a CDr?

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vi ... gory=50599

Yes,Might want to shop around though and see if you can't find one cheaper.I see they have a firmware patch already posted as well and there is another player made by them that is the upgrade to that one,although more spendy

imo tv out is the best option, otherwise get a xbox and then divx player. Bottom of the barrel is re-encoding though

Spud and I differ on this one

I'd say Xbox first

ATI tv out second

Standalone Mpeg4 player third

then a HUGE drop in quality to :-

Nvidia TV out

then another massive drop to

Re-encoding to s/vcd

Depends on the chipset, only the shit geforce 2 and mmx (and a few 3). Oh and you missed out monitor before re-encoding

And my Geforce4 ti, the quality of the TV out is dismal, every film I watched on that card has backgrounds by Lego?

that's why you use ATI IMO its about the same as the Xbox media center though, although that might be just my tv being uber The only issue would be sound i'd say, if your pc isn't quiet then xbox is better (although one noisey mofo if your fan breaks:lol:

They're drivers are optimised by divx networks so its super smoots playing it back, but then again, all the stuff looks great on it anyway so that's probably a cashcow deal to scare the straits.

There's also a cost issue, I cannot understand why people buy those mp4 standalones when for a couple of quid more you can get something which will play ANYTHING and continue to do so for sometime to come

As well as being a console and emulator fan's dream

I got a MSI Nvidia gforce 4600 Ti gold and I have never had a problem with TV out or pixel issues.I have had an Ati all in wonder card and it gave me nothing but headaches.I guess it depends on alot of things you have with it in the long run...but I would never buy another Ati product.