Tools Tabbed Dialog Box

DVD Format Converter

One of the nice things about making a digital recording is that you are able to burn them to DVD for storage and later retrieval, rather than have them take up space on your hard drive.

The trouble is, that while you can do this without any extra processing using commercially available DVD writing software, the files won't play back in an external DVD player (the kind that you connect to your TV set), or indeed in software DVD players (such as PowerDVD). The reason is that the DVD has to be 'authored' into a specific format that's readable by these players.

Authoring software (such as ULead's DVD MovieFactory II) exists right now, but themselves require your recordings to be a specific format before you can use them as input to the program.

The trouble with broadcast MPEG2 is that it's almost the right format, but not quite! DVD authoring software needs the packets to be a certain length (2048 bytes if you're a techie), and the packet headers have to have certain values in them. All of this means that you can't use MPEG files straight from recording to make DVDs, but you need a little extra processing first.

The DVD format conversion tool aims to do that processing for you:



Use the Browse... button to point the tool at the file you want converted, and you'll see that the default settings will create a file with the same name with 'DVD' on the end in the same directory.

All you have to do is hit the Start Conversion button, and the tool will convert your file to the correct format for use with a DVD authoring tool.

While conversion is taking place, status information is displayed that shows if any errors have been found in the recording caused by poor signal or other interference, and that would normally mess up your final DVD. The tool attempts to correct these errors, but where it can't it will remove the offending pieces so that the result is as continuous as possible.

Note: If your recording has been made in 'DVD Authoring Tool Compatible Format' (File -> Settings -> Recordings), it will have already been converted on-the-fly so you needn't process the recording in the above Tool. Recording in 'DVD Authoring Tool Compatible format' is equivalent to recording in 'Original Broadcast Format' and later processing the file in the DVD Format Conversion Tool.


Aspect Ratio Options

DVD supports a wide range of aspect ratios in which to display your recording's picture. If you want to force a particular aspect ratio on the converted recording, then you can do it here but the recommended option is to have Leave as they are set. This will ensure that the converted file will display at the correct aspect ratio, even if it switches dynamically within the recording.