[HowTo] Burn a 720p TopGear MKV on a DVD

[Alufelge]

Of course there will be many ways to do this. I will now show you an easy one with two freeware programs.

What you need=

• a fast CPU (this is oldschool Encoding, your Videocard won't be used)
• some Gigabytes free space on your HDD
• basic IT Knowledge
• an Episode of Top Gear (I used the South America Special here)
• and these two programs:

Xmedia Recode
DVDStyler

What you get=

1. a DVD that can be played on all standard DVD-Players
2. DVD files (the AUDIO_TS and VIDEO_TS) if you want to burn them with another program
3. or an ISO file which contains the same as 2.

Step-by-step Walkthrough=

I thought of writing tons of text here, but finally I decided to give you a easy-to-understand and simple picture based tutorial. You will see every single step you have to make, every settings that have to be set up and so on.

Just follow this Gallery link here and then -> click on the first picture <- in the upper left corner. There is a title plus description above every picture so you'll know what to do to at any time. To see the next picture, just click the Arrow up there to the right.

Side Note=

• The Gallery shows my work, I am living in a PAL country. If you are using NTSC, you have to change some settings according to your video standard.
• Don't worry about the remaining time for converting -I used an old Pentium 4 with 1,8Ghz, because I don't want to knock out my main System. If you are using a modern Core2duo or higher (Core2quad / Core i5), expect only 2.5 hours or less than that.
• Since I don't know how reliable the burning device driver is, you have the option to generate files in DVDStyler. If you already have another program for the job on your machine (like Nero, CDburnerXP etc), use it.

Update= It's been clear to me that I cannot expect real DVD quality, because MKV is a compressed format and transcoding it into another compressed format doesn't make it better. But the result is ok for me.

Here is a shot of the final product (slow 1/10 exposure time)=

[Black Z Eddie]

Wow, does it really take 5 hours to encode?

[idk]

Yes. That's why it is not worth the trouble imo. The quality that you win by re encoding the HD version to PAL will be barely noticeable, unless you compare the image quality directly. Especially considering the point converting a compressed format to another compressed. Quality losses will be multiplied, but the resolution will go up.

If you've got too much time, a spare computer you can run it on, or insist on re encoding the video while at work or so, why not if you like.

But for me, I'll just get the SD version. Will be downloaded in 1/3rd of the time. Many players support divx video, so you can just burn it on a DVD and you're done. 20 minutes instead of hours.

But thx for the tutorial anyway!

[Alufelge]

Don't worry about the remaining time for converting -I used an old Pentium 4 with 1,8Ghz, because I don't want to knock out my main System. If you are using a modern Core2duo or higher (Core2quad / Core i5), expect only 2.5 hours or less than that.

This is the important part

I am using an old machine for some overnight jobs like this. Since I'm always busy on the Notebook I have to share with my wife this is my way to offload some work from it.
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When it comes to visual quality there isn't any improvement by converting the 720p file into a DVD VOB file. On the other side, just downloading the SD and watch it on the TV isn't good either.

a) put the SD on a Stick to watch it on your TV and you should notice that it won't be stretched up to fullscreen. You have to activate Fullscreen Zoom manually. This is because the file doesn't have the 16:9 Flag.
b)burn the SD on a DVD and it will be shown on full screen.

The big drawback by doing so is that

for a) the SD has to be stretched up to the full TV Resolution. Even on a HDready TV the difference between 640x360 and 1366x768 is the space that is filled up by interpolating the file. I think everybody knows how bad this looks like. Now imagine this on a FullHD...

for b) at first the file will be blown up to match the DVD Resolution and then again on the TV because there is the 16:9 Flag present. With this, your TV automatically goes into Fullscreen Mode.

This tutorial is dedicated to those who can't watch the Top gear HD files on their TV.

I still recommend buying a device like the PS3 or a Blu-Ray Player with MKV Support (at least via USB). Especially if you own a FullHD TV -or worse than that: the Philips Cinema 21:9 Hyper-Widescreen.