How much space for transcoding?

quarkmachine · #1 (**permalink**) 07-29-2004, 05:18 PM

Hi everyone, new to the forums and video editing. Once I purchased my first DVD-R/RW a couple of weeks ago I thought I'd give this stuff a go. I've had really good luck thus far, after having found tons of great info at this and other forums.

It was bound to happen but the other day I finally encountered my first major issue. First off here are my hardware and software specs that I feel pertain to this issue: 2 40GB HDD's in RAID 0, partitioned into 3 drives, "system", "apps", and "other". I use Nerovision (as well as Nero 6 Ultra) for transcoding and burning my movies to DVD.

Nero is using my "other" drive for the transcoding/authoring, this drive has roughtly 25GB of free space for this process. I have made many DVD's using this setup, so far they have all had 2 avi's of 350MB each (700MB total), including menus.

Now where my new problem has arisen is I'm trying to burn 1 700MB avi to a DVD. About 3/4's of the way through Nerovision transcoding this video (before actual burning has started) I get an error that my HDD is out of space. So I close down Nero and check the drive, sure enough I'm down to about 50MB.... out of 25GB!! So I have to go clean up all the temp files nero created to get my 25GB back.

Now why is it taking soooo much space to transcode this 700MB AVI? Especially when I can do 2 350MB AVI's and everything works fine? On the off chance that it does in fact require more space than that I went ahead and ordered a new 120GB drive that I really needed anyway. But I just want some reassurance that it is going to work and it's not something wrong with the AVI. Any guidance/answers/advice would be much appreciated!

Marc Peters · #2 (**permalink**) 07-29-2004, 05:46 PM

The only way you'd use so much disc space would be in transcoding in two steps: once to a lossless format, and then again to MPEG2. To me, this sounds a) implausible and b) a complete waste of system resources!

I'd question whether transcoding in Nero was the best idea. Try using something link tmpgec xpress to encode to MPEG2 first.

quarkmachine · #3 (**permalink**) 07-29-2004, 06:10 PM

Thanks for the quick reply!

Well since I have TMPgec but havn't used but once, I took your advice to use it for transcoding the .avi to .mpeg.

I havn't let it start yet as it estimates the finished .mpeg will be over 8GB! That is twice as large as I would like. I guess I don't understand why I can take 2 350MB .avi's and transcode and burn them to 1 DVD but I can't seem to do the same with 1 700MB file. Any other ideas? Or am I just going to have to edit this .avi into two seperate videos and use 2 DVD's for this little project?

Here is the video info provided by AVIcodec:

File: 700 MB (700 MB), duration: 1:06:51, type: AVI, 1 audio stream(s), quality: 57 %

VideoL: 640 MB, 1340 Kbps, 23.976 fps, 672*368 (16:9), DX50 = DivXNetworks Divx v5, Supported

Audio 59 MB, 124 Kbps, 48000 Hz, 2 channels, 0x55 = MPEG Layer-3, Supported

Thanks again!

Marc Peters · #4 (**permalink**) 07-29-2004, 06:12 PM

You need to reduce the video bitrate.