MP4 to DVD

I would like to put some of the MP4s on lds.org on a DVD.

We've tried but the quality is poor and the audio and video are out of sync.

Any recommendations for software to make the conversion?

Can a MPEG-2 version of the MP4s be downloaded?

Posting on the assumption that the Church is okay with the practice of making personal DVDs of downloaded content...

Last May, I was working on the following C-shell script to do this operation on my home Linux machine. However, I just tried it on the 360p version of President Monson's opening address to the April 2011 General Conference, and it didn't work. I'm not sure whether the problem is with that specific MP4 file or some ffmpeg options.

#!/bin/csh -f

# C-shell script to convert a video to a playable DVD.
#
# Syntax:
#
# video2dvd input-file title
#
# It reads input-file, in whatever format it is.
#
# It creates the intermediate files with "title".

if ( "" == "$2" ) then
echo usage: $0 input-file title
exit(1)
endif

set infile = $1
set title = $2

ffmpeg -i $infile -y -target ntsc-dvd -threads 2 -mbd rd -trellis 2 \
-cmp 2 -subcmp 2 -pass 1/2 $title-final.mpg

dvdauthor --title -o $title.dir -f $title-final.mpg

dvdauthor -o $title.dir -T

// mkisofs -o $title.iso $title.dir
mkisofs -dvd-video -o $title.iso $title.dir

growisofs -dvd-compat -Z /dev/cdwriter=$title.iso

Hope that helps...

DVDVideoSoft has several free converters. Their YouTube-to-DVD converter is the one I typically point people to who want to show a Mormon Messages clip in a class. I would start there.

You can use ffmpeg (Linux or Windows) to convert it. There's also as GUI (Graphical User Interface) named WinFF.

I have had great success using http://www.dvdflick.net it converts and burns to dvd in one program. And the best feature is it's free.

http://handbrake.fr/ or http://www.erightsoft.com/SUPER.html are both free converters that will do what you need... DVDflick as mentioned above will also author and burn, so it is a more complete solution, but I don't know about the encoding quality. If you are taking a low res video and converting it to DVD, it will look terrible no matter what you use- garbage in = garbage out. Use at least a 480p source... or something close to DVD resolution of 720x480

It costs a small amount of money, but also is useful for other applications is
WmCapture ( http://www.wmrecorder.com/wm_capture.php ), a screen capture program. It can capture anything you can watch on your screen in either MPEG-2 or WMV format. Use any player you want to play your mp4 file, and capture it with Wm Capture.

Have used Dvdflick but its way way to slow .

If you are looking for scripts to help in the encoding process, that wheel has been etched, burned and burned again. If your using any nix, or have access to ffmpeg librarys then you might like these. These are on the sourceforge.net page if your curious. Look for xvidenc, and also h264enc. Also as some other have stated, lots of applications are based on ffmpeg, such as handbrake, and others. In fact most Mac tools for this type of thing probably are based on open source.

If you use those scripts, or any scripts you will soon find that it really depends on the input quality, sometimes you will have to tweak the setting and yes a encode can take up a few hours for good quality.

Also if you hang out on sites such as AVSforum and a few others you will get a good idea of what the people are using and might find something you like. For average folks, some like dvdfab, and you can not forget the king pin, that is almost standard software if your a video type guy. Company is called SlySoft, and make AnyDVD, bunch of other products. Don't forget you can us DD for ISO's and mount under loopback if your on Linux.

Of course we assume that you are following the law, and don't forget about coypright. Sometimes the act of changing formats might be claimed as a violation. ie rip it to hard drive.

My daughter uses Windows Live Movie Maker quite successfully, which is free to download and use and works on any Windows 7 computer.

It can be a bit slow in "conversion" when producing the DVD, but what I do for multiple DVDs is rip the created DVD to an ISO file, then burn that ISO to the additional DVDs needed (avoids repeating the slow "conversion" step).

Once again, you must look for and comply with all copyright restrictions, which should be listed on the site (hopefully page) where the content you which to burn resides.