Let me explain what am I doing. I have a Sony TRV-280 Digital 8 camcorder.
Im using Nero Vision Express 3 to stream the video directly to hard drive
from the camcorder via USB cable. I select 'capturing template' as DVD. Nero
saves the files with .MPEG extension. The details of the capturing template
are:
Destination file type: MPEG-2
Video mode: NTSC (29.97 fps)
Aspect ratio: 4:3 (Frame size: 720 x 480 pixels)
Audio format: LPCM
Basically, DVD format, right? Okay, but when I go to burn my movie clips to
make a regular DVD with menus and all that, it says it is transcoding the
files to be burned. It does this on the fly as it burns or maybe before it
actually begins burning. I cant tell for sure. But what is up with this
'transcoding' step. If the files are being saved as regulard MPEG-2 files
aren't they ready to be burned directly to the disc? Somebody please give me
some pointers on this. I need to speed up my burn times and this transcoding
step just seems uncessesary. Thanks for any tips or comments you can give me
to help me on this.

Show quote Hide quote Not necessarily.  Retail DVD's (like from Blockbuster) are in ifo/vob
format.  I'm not too familiar with Nero Express but it is probably
transcoding the file so you can burn it to play in a stand alone dvd
player.  "Transcoding" basically means changing from one format to
another, however, I've also seen the word used in conjuction with
downsizing the file in order for it to fit on a 4.7GB dvd disc.
Transcoding, as opposed to encoding, attempts to remove minute parts
of the video while trying to preserve optimal video quality.

Simply burning the mpeg2 in iso format will likely play on the dvdrom
of your pc, but probably not on your stand alone player.


Show quoteHide quote

Your right. I looked at the directory stucture of the DVD and it looks like
a commercial DVD structure with .IFO and .VOB files. It looks like the
conversion from MPEG-2 to .VOB actually reduced the file sizes by about 10%
as well. Thanks for the help.

Nero always says "transcoding...".  What you want to do
is check the Details button.  The details describes
the percent of the file that (video and audio) will be
"smart" rendered (no new encoding).  Depending on how
much you cut/edit, that would be somewhere around 99%
(i.e., no actual transcode needed 99% of the file, other
than around the cuts).  However, it doesn't always work
as it should, and may deem your file, or parts of it,
not compatible and so (sloooowly) encode it (or parts
of) all over again.  The most current version still
goofs up on perfectly valid mpeg-2 files, though I hear
it's not as bad as it has been.

check out vso divx to dvd program  is freeware and handles avi and
mpeg (among others) conversion to vob etc

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