Setting to convert AVI to Mpeg2

[sfphoto]

I have an AVI contained DivX 672x288 PAL feature film, +/-1GB. Wish to burn to disc and play in NON DivX player, NTSC TV.

Have this (older) MAC software:
Toast
Sreamclip
iDVD
DVD Studio Pro
VLC
Perian

Tried Toast, selected DVD-Video, made a terrible looking 3.5GB Video TS. Same for iDVD. Neither offer many settings options.

Tried Streamclip, made a huge 23GB DV file.

Am thinking I could use VLC or Streamclip but need to know the settings.
With VLC Export there are many options to select, for example.
codec / default bitrate
MPEG 2 / 1024
MPEG audio / 192
Encapsulate format MPEG 1

Thanks in advance for comments!

 

[Brucewl]

If you want to convert your video to DVD disc and watch it with your DVD player, iDVD can do it totally, you do not need to set any more. If you don't like it, you can also to find a DVD Creator, because even you can convert video to mpeg2, but you still create the folders and convert video to VOB. I still think iDVD is much better than the way you tried. And if you just want to convert video to another format, just get a free mac video converter.

 

[sfphoto]

Used iDVD - ended up with the right file size (3.5GB) but the quality was terrible.

I think the problem is the this AVI contains an MP4 compressed 672x288 PAL at 25fps.

Unless I can use VLC or Streamclip with neccessary setting the only option I can think of so far would be to search for an NTSC version to download (however these torrents are generally unknowns).

Had hoped to burn to disc to archive.

 

[Paratel]

do you not have Compressor? I would use Compressor with the 4.5 Mbps setting and then if it is too large to fit on a DVD after authoring the DVD in DVDSP I would put it in Toast and burn the video_TS folder to the DVD using that with the "fit to DVD" checked

 

[spacepower7]

Basically the divx is bad quality and won't get any better through straight conversions.

Some of those mpeg-2 apps may be stretching the 672 horizontal pixels to 720 h pixels, which could be making it worse.

I used to use Visualhub for these conversions but it is no longer being sold.

I'm not sure if it would help, but you could convert to an uncompressed format (animation codec) and then convert to mpeg-2. The intermediary file would be huge but you could test with small samples.

Another idea, you could play it out of a Divx-DVD Player an capture the analog stream into your computer with an eyeTV or something similar.