Getting 2hrs on a DVD?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Guest
  • Start date Start date
G

Guest

hi,

I just don't understand how to get 2 hrs of A/V on a DVD.
I make my movies/slideshows with MM2 and save them as DV-AVI.
If I use Sonic MyDVD authoring program on the DV-AVI file, then I get only
about an hour.

This is somewhat well-discussed on Papa John's website, so I try using
TMPGEnc but that opens up its own can of worms. Either it crashes
(about 90% of the time I have to repeat the conversion 2-3 times),
or the mpg file it creates is just as large (still only 1 hr in MyDVD),
or the mp2 file it creates is small but then no audio. When I add the audio
then I'm back down to ~1hr on the disc available.

This can't be so unreasonable and difficult. There must be some simple
steps to going from MM2 to 2hrs on a DVD. Can anyone help?

Thanks,
n3twk
 
You'll need to find a DVD app that lets you choose the bitrate (compression)
and compress it more than MyDVD does.

Try asking on one of the DVD specific newsgroups if you don't get an answer
here - or google it up - or try dvdrhelp.com
 
It doesn't seem "right" that I have to compress the heck out of my video to get it to fit at the cost of quality, when commercial DVDs fit many hours. Yes, I suppose some commercial discs have dual-layers, but does that mean all home DVD authors are stuck with either 1 hour good, or 2 hours poor?

Seems then quite pointless to bother with things like TMPGEnc.
 
Please note that the quality loss people talk about when suggesting
compressed format is only hypothetical. In practice a good compression
scheme can give you a lot of compression with no "visible" quality loss.
Consider the digital cameras which save in JPG format... In this situation
the source images are already in lossy format so even if you loose a few
more bits (without compromising visible quality) by saving your output
slideshow in WMV is not a real qualty loss...

I would say you should not worry too much about low bitrates. Do your own
tests. A bitrate of 2500Kbps will give you good SVCD quality and should fit
about three and a half hour video with two sound channels (192Kbps) on a
dvd....

Most of the current camcorders do not capture in anything near DVD
quality... For such video, using a higher bitrate and hoping you will bring
out some non-present quality is a folly.

Rehan





In your case if your orignal video is taken from a good
 
Hmm, yes, that's a good point, and I should have thought of that. Here's why: I bought my wife an iPod as a gift, so she could carry her 400+ CDs in the car (a bonus for me, too, because then there aren't jewel cases jammed under the seat when I try to adjust it).

Anyway, in reading about the compression methods and bit rates, everything said things like, "oh 160kpbs is absolute garbage. 192kpbs is the bare minimum, and you really ought to use 320kpbs."

Gee, I thought, now I can barely get all of her CDs on there. But I did a comparison and I sure couldn't tell one bean of a difference. I use 128kpbs all the time for that! (And these folks weren't just saying it wasn't as good, most everything I read said 160 was crap -- pretty extreme considering I can't tell 128 from 320.)

cheers,
n3wtk.
 
I never said compress the heck out of it, just compresss it more.

Most of the companies that make the popular DVD burn software that are
bundled with drives make more than one version.

-- The affordable version that has few options and is optimized for most
people (People with 1 hour tapes who want to get their home video to the DVD
player with little hassle or even editing for that matter)

-- The costly version that has many options and is optimized for no-one but
you get to dial in everything



n3wtk said:
It doesn't seem "right" that I have to compress the heck out of my video
Click to expand...
to get it to fit at the cost of quality, when commercial DVDs fit many
hours. Yes, I suppose some commercial discs have dual-layers, but does that
mean all home DVD authors are stuck with either 1 hour good, or 2 hours
poor?
 
Commercial DVD's are generally a dfferent type with larger capacity

Here's something i copied from a hardware site desccribing 2 types of dvd's.

DVD-5 One-sided, one-layer DVD with 4.38 GB gross capacity. Usually, however, this is given as 4.7 GB. This reason for this is that 1 KB is defined as 1,000 bytes rather than 1,024 bytes. All writeable DVDs to date are in the DVD-5 category

DVD-9 One-sided but dual-layer DVD with 7.95 GB or 8.5 GB at 1,000 bytes per KB. The bulk of all DVD movies are based on this standard, because they cannot be copied onto a DVD-5 without considerable effort.
 
I never said compress the heck out of it, just compresss it more.

Most of the companies that make the popular DVD burn software that are
bundled with drives make more than one version.

-- The affordable version that has few options and is optimized for most
people (People with 1 hour tapes who want to get their home video to the DVD
player with little hassle or even editing for that matter)

-- The costly version that has many options and is optimized for no-one but
you get to dial in everything



n3wtk said:
It doesn't seem "right" that I have to compress the heck out of my video
Click to expand...
to get it to fit at the cost of quality, when commercial DVDs fit many
hours. Yes, I suppose some commercial discs have dual-layers, but does that
mean all home DVD authors are stuck with either 1 hour good, or 2 hours
poor?
 
Back
Top