TalkingSoft.com Forums: Need help- DVD to MPEG4 - TalkingSoft.com Forums

Hi.
I am completely lost and have no idea what I am doing:)

I run a brain cancer organization and we had a DVD made of our conference. Google is going to put it on the web for us, but I need to submit it in this format:
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NTSC (4:3) size and framerate, deinterlaced
Video Codec: MPEG2 or MPEG4 (MPEG4 preferred)
Video Bitrate: at least 260Kbps (750kbps preferred)
Audio Codec: MP3 vbr
Audio Bitrate: at least 70Kbps (128 Kbps preferred)
Frame Rate should be above 12 frames per second
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Can someone point me to the right tool(s) to use (free preferred, but inexpensive would do:) to convert a dvd format to MPEG4? (I assume MPEG4 is higher quality, smaller file size than MPEF2?)
I tried dr divx.. I made a divx that plays, but the file extension isn't MPEG4. It isn't the same thing, is it? The online help says it is mpeg4.

thanks

Here is a good tutorial, along with reccomended programs by the author:
http://www.divx-digest.com/articles/dvd2mpeg4_tips.html

And here is a good transcoder (as long as you have the codecs, it can transcode DVD to MPEG)
http://www.germanixsoft.de/

Hope that helps some

And one more ....

http://www.free-codecs.com/download/ImTOO_DVD_Ripper.htm

I have a dumb question.

Why don't you ask the person that made the DVD??

Before it became a dvd, it was a format that could easly have been saved into the format that you are asking for I would think.

It could be in project form and they would just have to save it again in the format that Google is asking for.

Or it may be in a move file format that could be converted.

I'm hoping for the project part. That's if it wasn't too long ago and they still have it.

I wanted to do this myself beause the people who created the dvd wanted a lot of money for doing the conversion. I thought it would be simple, since the dvd is already edited and cut up into chapters:)

I used the tools mentioned above and created what I think is a mpeg4 movie, but it comes out with the file extension of .avi. Google's upload tool allows you to upload .avi so I think it will work, and it didn't cost anything!

I will find out soon if it worked - thanks for everyone's help!

By the way, google seems like the perfect place to host video files.. free and unlimited size and bandwidth!
video.google.com
anyone else using it? For my last conference, which was about 4 hours of video (this one is about 12 hours of video), we have been paying a hosting company $250/month to host it and they are bogging down. google has the fastest connection I have ever seen.