Lets start with the video format. A format consists basically of a set of rules and parameters that define the video. This is the native resolution, color depth, the frames per second among other parameters. Video format examples are the DVD video format, the 3GP video format or 1080p and 1080i formats.

A video codec acts as a interpreter for the video format or formats it supports. Devices and software use codecs to compress and decompress video.

It is used by video players to determine how the video needs to be played correctly on the system. Many video players on a computer system come with their own set of binary codecs that only they can use. Codec packs on the other hand install codecs system wide so that applications like Windows Media Player can make use of them to play specific video formats.

A container more or less bundles multiple files. For videos, this is usually the video and audio track. More advanced container formats can include other data types as well like menus for example. Popular container formats are avi, mkv or mov.

One advantage of using a container for a video is that programs can use different codecs for the tracks of the video. It is therefor possible to use one codec for the video and one for the audio, which is often preferable to using a single codec.

To paraphrase: The video format sets the rules, the codec interprets them and a container format is a meta format that bundles multiple files into one container.

Download the latest version of VirtualDub from the official website. Unpack the portable software to your hard drive after download, and run the VirtualDub.exe afterwards.

You load the first movie with a click on File > Open Video File. Click on File again and select Append Avi Segment for each additional part that you have as a file on your hard drive. You can only load one movie at a time, which makes the process somewhat unhandy if you have many different parts.

Switch to the Video menu and make sure Full Processing Mode is selected there. Click on Compression under Video afterwards, and select one of the available video codecs. Please note that you need suitable codecs installed on your system for a solid result that offers a good image quality and suitable file size.

You can furthermore add filters to the process, for instance if you would like to resize the video, change the brightness and contrast or add a logo to one of the corners. You can preview the changes by pressing enter or by selecting File > Preview Filtered.

Once you have made your selection select File > Save as Avi and pick a directory on the local hard drive to save the video to.

VirtualDub will display a status window where you can get information about the current processing status, as well as an estimation of the file size of the new video file. You can jack up the process priority if your computer is idle otherwise.

And that’s it. Just wait for the process to finish. It is recommended to play the video once on your hard drive to make sure that the merging was successful and without errors like out of sync audio.

An avi to mp4 converter can be used to convert the videos so that they can be played on these devices. Probably the easiest to use avi to mp4 converter is Convert Avi To Mp4 which can convert avi videos with minimal user interaction to the mp4 format.

The main advantage of this software program is that it supports a wide variety of input formats ranging from avi to mpeg, wmv, divx and xvid. All of these formats can be converted to mp4 without the need for external programs or codecs. Everything is built in and it only takes a few seconds to start the conversion.

Convert Avi to Mp4 is compatible with most Windows operating system including Windows XP and Windows Vista. Some users might find the avi to mp4 converter to easy to use as it does not come with any settings or parameters that can be changed. Users who simply want to convert a video format to mp4 without having to set any conversion parameters will find Convert Avi To Mp4 the perfect companion for that undertaking.

A much better solution is to check which codec is missing to play a video and install only that codec. I reviewed several programs that could do that but never on that was as easy to use as AVIcodec. You can load files or entire folders into AVIcodec by dragging and dropping them into the main program window or using the buttons to open the files and folders this way.

The videos will be analyzed as soon as they have been added and the codec used for video and audio is displayed. This is giving you the main information about the codecs of the files. If you select a file in the list detailed information are displayed at the bottom and this is where it gets interesting.

The three rows File, Video and Audio list information about the file. The important information however is the last word in the video and audio row which either says Supported or Unsupported.

Supported means that a codec that can play the audio or video is installed on the computer. Unsupported however means that no codec was found and this is the reason why the video is not playing properly.

A click on the WEB button on the right side of each line loads a website that has the codec. Just download and install the codec and you are good to go and can view (and hear) the video without problems. Links are leading to the official websites of the codecs as far as I can tell which means there is no (well almost) chance that you will download a virus or trojan.

I would not say it is the perfect media player yet but it surely has some nice interesting features that no other player offers yet. The drawback is that it currently supports only a limited amount of filetypes and not enough possibilities to change the configuration of the player at all. It took a while until I was able to remove the logo of the player from the upper right corner. I had to edit the lua file which was used to init the interface.

Removing everything that had to do with citus and juicy helped and got rid of the logo that overshadowed the movie. It is possible to rotate, zoom and change the aspect ratio of the movie in realtime which is a nice feature.

Playing videos is easy as well. Just drop a movie into the player and click on play. It is working on all versions of Windows including Vista and is free to use.

DVD Flick is a powerful DVD authoring software which is able to automatically create a DVD from various video formats such as apple quicktime, divx, flash video and mpeg. There is no need to convert them into a DVD compliant format, just load them into DVD Flick and it will do the rest for you. All that needs to be done after DVD Flick finished generating the files is to burn them.

You should take a look at the projects settings before proceeding to generate the DVD. You may select a different target size such as CD, DVD-Ram or Mini-DVD, change the target format between PAL and NTSC and change the quality of the encoding process. A better quality or a second pass results in a longer generation time but also in a better video and audio quality.

You may select the audio format and bitrate and opt to generate a iso file instead of a video_ts folder. It is also possible to burn the new DVD right after the generation finishes.

The only thing that is really missing is the missing menu feature. There is no way to create a menu at this moment which means all files are played in a row which could get confusing if you have many small movies on a DVD.

You do need two freeware programs for the whole procedure. The first is called Super. Super is a great converter that is able to convert to many formats including a DVD compliant MPEG II format. The second freely available application is DVD Styler which we will use to create the navigation of the DVD and the DVD iso file. We can finally burn the iso image using a program that is able to burn such images.

Start Super the video converter and change the following settings. The output container should be mpg (MPEG II). Everything else can remain the way it is. Drag and drop a avi file into Super and click on Encode (active files). Super will start the conversion and output the new mpg file in the directory where it is installed. The process might take a while depending on your cpu, graphics adapter and the size of the movie.

Once the conversion is finished we start DVD Styler and create our DVD menu which will later be used to navigate the DVD and start the movies that have been added to it. DVD Styler has a somewhat unusual interface which requires some explanation.

Action defines the next step after the first button is pressed. We want to play the first movie which is the default value for the first button. Add a second button to the menu and name it accordingly. Now we want the second movie to start which means that we have to select Jump to Title 2 instead of Title 1.

Continue this for all the movies that you want on the DVD.

Start by selecting a background from the left background menu. Now add the newly created mpg files by dragging and dropping them into the lower bar of DVD Styler next to Menu 1. The movies should appear on the right side of Menu 1.

A very basic menu would look like the following. Click on the buttons tab on the left side of the program. Drag and Drop one of the buttons to the right pane. You can move it around and make it smaller or bigger. Right-click the button and select properties.

The first thing that we should do is change the label that appears in the menu. Rename button 1 to the name of the first movie.

You could also create separate menus for every movie. Do this by right-clicking the lower pane which contains menu 1 and all the movies that we have added to it. Select Add New Menu and Menu 2 will appear in the pane.

You do need to create a button that opens Menu 2. The process is similar to linking to a movie. Right-click the button and select properties. Choose Menu 2 in Jump to and the link has been created.

Adding screenshots or boxart is easy as well. Just drag and drop them into the menu area and place them accordingly. Once you are satisfied with the results click on File in the menu and select Burn DVD. Select the temp directory and the output directory. Make sure you have enough space in both.

You can find further help in the DVD Styler wiki.

Divx Repair is a tool that is very simple to use. Just unzip it to your hard drive and run it from the location that you have unzipped it to. Divx Repair does not need to be installed and does not alter your system files or registry. Double-click Divx Repair to start the program. You can add files with the button Add Files (who would have guessed that, hehe).

The button Repair files starts the automatic repair process which tries to fix bad frames automatically. Only the bad frames will be deleted not the keyframes which means that you should be able to play the movie without errors from now on.

A error report at the end of the repair displays the amount of bad intervals that have been found. If a fix was necessary a new version of the movie will be saved in the same directory as the original movie file.

Please note that the following method to convert DVDs into Avi files works only with DVDs that are not copy protected. I will take a look at the possibilities to convert copy protected DVDs in the coming days. The freeware that we are going to us is called Auto Gordian Knot. It is a very simple utility. You basically select an input file from the DVD that has been inserted into your dvd drive.

You will find a so called IFO file on most DVDs and that is the file to choose normally. Sometimes you have to choose a VOB file instead. As a rule of thumb you should view the VOB files that you want to choose before you actually select them to avoid errors such as selecting a menu to be included in the rip.
Once that is done the contents will be read and you have to choose which audio tracks you want to rip as well. You may choose up to two audio tracks, the first audio track is always preselected.

If subtitles are present on the disc they can be included as well, same principle as with audio tracks. After that you define the output size of the movie, the default value is 2 CDs but you may choose anything from 1/4 of a CD to 2 GB.

Size is up to you of course. The smaller options such as 1/4 or 1/2 of a CD should only be applied to single tracks such as  episodes of tv series for example. It does not really make sense to add five episodes of a tv series and make the output size 1/4 of a CD which is only about 200 megabytes.

AutoGK has many advanced settings which are not that relevant if you want to quickly rip a DVD. You might want to take a look but you have to know what you are doing in order to change the settings there.

I especially like AutoGK because you may rip DVDs in one go easily. It takes between three and six hours normally depending on the source files and settings that you have choosen. Faster computers will probably need less time.  Oh, all codecs needed in the converting process are included which is another great plus.

The Riva FLV Encoder helps us to convert the downloaded flv files into avi, mpg, quicktime or wmv files. All you need to do is add a local input file (flv in this case) and select an output format by adding the extension to the file. If you want an avi file you simply name it video.avi in the form destination video file.

You may change additional parameters like movie size, bitrate, framerate and audio if you like. Please note that the results will not be good if you choose to increase the movie size for instance. Hitting Encode will start the process. Once that is finished you may preview the result and try again if you do not like the result.

How to convert Avi, Divx and Xvid to DVD describes the software needed and the procedure with detailed screenshots. The method uses only one tool and everything is completed after five simple steps. The guide does not tell you how to use menus for your new dvd but the program supports this option as well and you can chose from several different preinstalled templates.