4.7 GB or 120 minutes

bhars · #1 (**permalink**) 01-05-2004, 04:28 AM

Taking my first baby steps in converting all old VHS to DVD. I am able to capture my VHS source (using Canopus ADVC-100), MovieMaker. After capturing two hours of VHS video I have approx. 24GB .avi file . I edit this file down to about 1:45:00. according to timeline in MovieMaker and create new .AVI file. I then launch my DVD creation application (Showbiz 2) , select my source to creat the DVD and it immediatley informs me that my 1:45:00 digital video will reqiure 5.4 GB and cannot fit on the 4.7 GB available on the DVD. Only after triming my clip down to 1:27:00 (15 GB)was I able to fit it (burn it to DVD).

Using a DVD+RW drive and DVD+R media

- Should'nt I be able to get at least a two hour movie on to DVD from an .AVI file captured from a 2 hr. VHS source?

- Am I doing something wrong? Using the wrong format.

- Is .AVI not the most efficient way to get max space usage when creating the DVD?

- I'm afraid to ask to ask how a 15GB .avi file can be put on to a 4.7 GB capacity DVD+R anyway but it works so I'll not question it.

HB

Marc Peters · #2 (**permalink**) 01-05-2004, 05:58 AM

Your DVD authoring software converts your rather large AVI into a more compressed MPEG2 format. This MPEG2 codec is the video codec used on DVDs. In order to ensure compatability with standalone DVDs, DVD specifications were introduced which include, amongst others, then minimum bitrate and framesize of your video.

The 4.7G limit is the physical data limit imposed by the DVD writable media, and the 2 hour limit representative of the size of the video at the minimum specs. The better quality your video (i.e the better the bitrate) the less video you can fit on a DVD. Normally you can't fill up a DVD "to the brim" with data to ensure that it plays in a DVD player, so this 4.7GB limit is in reality a little less.

I think you're doing everything right

bhars · #3 (**permalink**) 01-06-2004, 02:01 AM

Cool,

Thanks for the info.
I'll keep doing what I'm doing and just adjust my expectations.

HB

lombana · #4 (**permalink**) 01-06-2004, 03:13 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by bhars

Cool,

Thanks for the info.
I'll keep doing what I'm doing and just adjust my expectations.

HB

Got one more thing that you might want to try, take the video that you're about to burn and run it through a compression program such as TMPEG before you blast it into your DVD writing software.

Here is the deal, I was doing the same thing that you were doing and found that I was only able to burn 1 hour of video to a DVD and not 2 hours. I took my DVD Player and started to watch movies in a diag mode and found that the Hollywood blockbusters were hitting my screen at variable bit rates rarely higher than 5mbps (my movies were set at 8mbps constant).

I ran one of my movies through TMPEG and set the bitrate at 4mbps and compressed the video to where I could fit 2 hours on a 2 hour dvd. There was one more catch, the audio compression in TMPEG stinks, my Hollywood movies show where audio averages 384kbps, the video output that I'm burning is at 1.5mbps which is HUGE! I found an article on the web about using TMPEG and re-compressing the audio, however my authoring program (Roxio) won't allow for a seperate audio and video file so this solution is out for me.

Hope this helps you a little....

Miguel

Marc Peters · #5 (**permalink**) 01-06-2004, 03:45 AM

If you don't want to use TMPGenc internal encoder, you can change this to LAME by doing the following:

1) first download the LAME encoder (LAME originally stood for Lame Ain't an MPEG Endoder - well, now it is

) The latest stable version is lame-3.93.1. Unzip the contents of the zip file.

2) Open up TMPGenc. Now Go Option > Environmetal Setting from the menu. Click the audio engine tab. Click External Program radio button and browwse to the unzipped LAME execuatble. Click OK.

bhars · #6 (**permalink**) 01-11-2004, 06:11 AM

I was able to run my large .AVI clip through Tmpgenc and Lame . The result was a very small or (compressed) .MPG file . However when I fired up my DVD authoring application ( Showbiz : the Win XP freebe) It still calculated .mpg source file as exceeding the 4.7 GB limit. It seems like the .mpg file still looked like a 24gb file to the DVD software.

Is this a limitation of the Showbiz DVD software or is there another step to get a two hour .avi file compressed to fit the 4.7 GB DVD

Thanks
HB

Marc Peters · #7 (**permalink**) 01-11-2004, 11:22 AM

Sounds to me like the software is re-encoding your video - perhaps cos the combined video and audio isn't strictly in the DVD specs? If you want to create the necesary VOB files to burn without any fear of re-encoding, you can use ifoedit. For a quick guide, follow this link: http://www.videoeditingforums.co.uk/...&highlight=vob

bhars · #8 (**permalink**) 01-18-2004, 06:23 PM

O.K.
I think I'm almost there;
- Ran captured avi file throug Tmpgenc using lame as audio engine.
- Result .m2v and .wav
- Can pull .m2v into MyDVD to author and burn and it fits (100 minutes) with room to spare.

Now to push my luck; I understand that the .wav file can be recompressed to AC3 to get more space efficiency and audio quality on the final DVD.

Is this accurate, if so what would be needed to do this. I found a freeware progam called headAC3 but I don't want to go down this path if it does me no good in the end.

Thanks
HB

Marc Peters · #9 (**permalink**) 01-18-2004, 06:28 PM

You can encode to MPEG layer 2 in TMPGenc. Go into Setting, then select audio and change from Linear PCM. This isn't part of the DVD specs, but will probably play in a PAL player.

bhars · #10 (**permalink**) 01-19-2004, 07:41 PM

I guess this means it will not work with NTSC recording?
Thats what I am using.