Burning AVI files to DVD

Look here:

http://lists.apple.com/archives/QuickTime-API/2007/Jan/msg00169.html

Joe

Credit BGreg for:

There are a number of ways to turn an avi into a DVD viewable on a normal DVD player. You need to convert, or render, the avi file to a DVD image and then burn it onto the DVD. Here are a few ways to do that:
Using included Apple iLife apps, you can import an avi file into iMovie, passing it on to iDVD for making the DVD, which includes menu's.
Commercial programs Popcorn 2 and Toast 7 from Roxio are good for converting different file types to DVD, and give you more options than the included Apple iLife programs.
You can use programs like MPEG streamclip, truly the video Swiss army knife for video stream conversion, and DVD imager to burn the image. Both are available through http://www.versiontracker.com/macosx

When you burn your DVD, using quality DVD's will maximize the chances that your DVD player will play them (I tend to use TDK when available on sale). Unless you have a pretty new external DVD player, you should probably stick with DVD-R or DVD+R disks. DVD-RW probably won't work in older DVD players. I've used both -R and +R's successfully.

Joe

I've used Toast 7 to burn avi files many times with success. It does take a long time to finish the whole process so I usually leave it overnight.

I have use the latest version of Toast to burn avi files to dvd and I was actually quite disappointed that some video quality was lost. It was viewable, but not as good quality as the original. I used Maxell DVD+RW blanks and tested them out on my Macbook and the dvds looked the same (worse than the avi original) so I know it's not my dvd player.

Will there always be a loss of video quality when converting from avi to dvd?