Be Excellent To Each Other

Yo.

I occasionally turn (legally obtained home movies -Ed) into DVDs for my momz. I used to use a program called TMPGEnc to convert to MPEG2 and then TMPGEnc DVD Author to make the disc.

My (legally obtained -Ed) versions of the above softwares are no longer working. Can anyone suggest an alternative? Free preferably, but alternatively, cheap.

Ta.

PC or Mac?

Handbrake is a good place to start.

PC, obv. I don't own a turtleneck.

What is this Handbrake? Does it have lots of options? I like options.

Mind you, you could probably save yourself hours of trouble in the long run by spending £25 on a DVD player that will play DivX (etc) things straight.

Hmm, handbrake seems to be fine going the 'other way'. MPEG2 > Avi/MKV, but I need to go AVI > MPEG2.

Ta though.

It's for me Ma, like. They have our old DVD player, which is awesome in every way, except no DivX

I'm well aware of this.

I'm well aware too but

http://www.saverstore.com/product/20035 ... DVD-Player
£28, and it upscales for PHEWCHA PROOF!

I usually use convert x to dvd, which i'm sure can be 'legally' found easily...

I use Formatfactory - its free and converts between most different format

Thanks for the suggestions chaps.

I'm experimenting with the Win7 DVD Maker. It seems to work ok... not very flexible though.

Imma use this 10 year old thread. Sue me.

A weird thing I've noticed since having a 4k TV, is that I don't care about hi-res video any more. Either my TV is too good at upscaling SD content or I can't tell the difference from my perch on the couch. I've ripped a few DVDs and converted them with handbrake (thanks 2010, Grim...!) with a decent bitrate and they look... fine. They're about a 1 to 1.5gig each. I'm ok with that.

You can't tell the difference?

https://www.specsavers.co.uk/

Hang on, I'll go for drive...

Barnard Castle was lovely.

But seriously! SD TV still looks gash, but DVD at nice high bitrate looks great. I reckon the TV's doing some sneaky upscaling

No doubt it is, but SD -> 4K is a helluva big resolution difference so I share markg's scepticism that it's unnoticeably upscaled.

It does depend on where you sit. On a PC with the monitor two feet away for sure the difference is night and day, but four meters from your TV? Not so much.

There is some equation somewhere that works it out.

SD to HD, sure. Or HD to 4K. But all the way from SD to 4K? That's a massive jump and even a few metres away I'd suspect the difference to be appreciable.

I was hasty to say that there's no difference between SD and 4k. I think what I mean is that the DVD rips are basically perfect from the sofa.

As I said in my first post, I basically don't care about hi-res. It's nice if I can get it and streaming stuff in 4k is of course, awesome but for having stuff to keep? SD will do

I've found I tend to care less about things now that I'm, frankly, a bit older and worn down by the family life. The effort of chasing quality or completion (of say a discography, or ROM set for example) has given way to the convenience of 'good enough'. I can tell the difference between the lower quality and the higher quality, but the lower quality in general, will do for me.

For instance, I used to care about music and use relatively decent speakers and all that but now I'm just far less fussy, and I'll even pay for a spotify subscription for the convenience and use a bluetooth speaker or the telly. Also, the Wii looks pretty shit on a 4K 50inch screen but it's still fun. The TV isn't top spec but it's watchable. My car's a bit shit, that's OK it still gets me where I need to go.

The only think I'd say that I can think of right now, that's gone the other way, is that I try and dress a bit better, buying nicer fitting and styled clothes, less band t-shirts and sloppy fit jeans.

For me, the biggest benefit of HD video is that the subtitles don't tend to be so big and blocky and obscure much of the frame.