"The obsession videographers have with cramming everything on a single DVD is mind boggling. Customers don't care if you give them two DVD's with nicely done artwork in a double DVD case as long as they don't have to pay more for it".
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So, this videographer had kinda done the "soul-searching" already - Craftie - and had come up with a rational, non-obsessed rational and logical solution. 2 DVDs weren't/isn't an option ................
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Grazie,
Been on the forums for a few years and have seen endless posts asking about the best way to fit 2 hours and above on a single DVD. The statement I made wasn't directed toward you, it was just a generalized statement and a wrong assumption in this case. It's too bad dual layer isn't ready for prime time yet in terms of what is currently available to videographers.
In terms of compatibility, I find CBR almost foolproof as compared to VBR even for some customers' really old DVD players.

I would recommend a CBR with a single page menu in DVDA combined with DVD Shrink as a solution. DVD Shrink does work really well.

John

Sure Craftie - understood. I promise I really DO want an easy life.

So, DVD Shrink takes my MPG and squashes it? And it is THIS mpg that I point DVDA3 at, yes? Would your suggestion be to do CBR and then DVDshrink and then DVDA3? Sounds FAR too easy!!

. .and yes . . I too would prefer to CBR stuff - period. And yes DUAL layers will kill a lot of this. Until . . . . !

Thank you for your "wishes" that I don't loose the plot amongst the math - I can, I do AND I can let it go .. too!!

Anyways, I think with everybody's assistance I'm just about there now. I'm suspecting that I've done some awful compression templates that will only be obvious in the final DVD. But there again IF I find this is really stupid, I will DVDShrink the biggest MPG and see how it turns out.

OR do I create a Prepare DVD in DVDA3 and then DVDShrink it? What do I do if DVDA3 refuses to Prepare? How do I force the issue?

. . .

Grazie

Sorry,
that should read of Average, not Max.
I just use Bitrate Calc, gives perfectly workable answers.

At the end of the day if you're going to have problems, you'll have problems. Changing the numbers doesn't make a huge amount of difference quality wise.

I don't have a clue how big the buffers are on DVD players but I know they'll only hold a few seconds of video (if that). It's for this reason that it's very hard to have transitions between menus.

Bob.

Thanks Bob. But don't you mean Average not MIN - you say are saying now "that should read of Average, not Max."

I'm gonna try out this DVDShrink thingie.

Grazie

I think what Bob means (forgive me, Bob, if i've got it wrong) is that the min should be no less than 25% of average.

I notice you've raised substantially the Min. Why? What exactly does this do?

I really can't answer this other than to say that I remember reading on one forum (this one??) that the 192,000 bitrate is far too low a setting to be used.
If my videos are less than 1 hr., I use a CBR of 8,000,000. Anything more and I use the values from the bitrate calculator I mentioned above.

What do I do if DVDA3 refuses to Prepare? How do I force the issue?

Options - Prefs - Burning. Set "Space available" to 8.5 GB. This way, DVDA thinks you're going to burn to a dual layer device and will allow you to make larger than normal files. Then use DVD Shrink to read the prepared VIDEO_TS folder and magically squeeze it down to fit on a standard 4.7 GB DVD :-)

Mike

Mike! Whoaa . .. .

DVDShrink! - Downloaded > It's now doing its thing. I pointed it at the Video folder > Gobbled all that up > It says it has produced something like 4.2GBs > Now I've gone to Backup > and the next stage is??

This is a weight off me .. .

What next? I've read the info hw do I now burn - wherever this DVDShrinked DVD to a DVD-R?

My stuff is screaming through DVDShrink! It's buffering up to 0.670GBs!!!

This is ONE smart piece of software . .

So? What's next?

Thanks

Grazie

Mike??? It just started burning all by itself .. now THAT's User Software!!

DVD-Video files relocation completed. It says no Video files were modified!?!

"DVD-Video files sorted" u-huh?

Caching going on . .

Burning at 4x . . . Is that IT? I don't DO anything else?

Grazie

That if pretty much it Grazie. Let us know what you think of the results.

Dave T2

Bob (farss)

Ditto on the noise thing. I have found that the Mike Crash noise reduction plugin does WONDERS for the fine grain noise from my 1 CCD camera. I routinely run all of my footage through the NR process using his minimum preset, and the resulting DVD looks a lot better. Sometimes I bump the setting up higher with footage from a noisier D8 camera, but you can't go too far without plowing into the detail.

Mike . .and other well wishers . . simply amazed. AMAZED!!

It just did what it said it would do!!!

How do I burn another? Can I use the Backup? It isn't;t clear as to how I burn another?

Now, this makes me ask the question . . . and you can hear it bubbling up from me already . . . . How come DVDA3 wouldn't allow burning - as I was over the limit - AND DVDShrink reported that it HADN'T changed any files, just what doesn't DDVA3 don't do that DVDShrink DOES?? Hmmm???

Anyway this s/w has got me well outta scrape now. I was even capable of adding more outtakes and an extra bit of arty-farty-artwork as well.

Yah lives and yah learns . . hopefully!


Gawd Bless yah Mike! And no mistake!


Graham "Grazie" Bernard

Grazie, I'm glad you finally got it working. Yippee!!!

How come DVDA3 wouldn't allow burning

Was the original file more than 4.3 GB? If so, and you don't have a dual layer burner, I'm guessing that's why - but it's just a guess.
I'm also surprised that Shrink says it didn't change anything, especially if the original file was over the DVD limit. Very strange!!

How do I burn another? Can I use the Backup?

Whenever I've used it, it creates a new VIDEO_TS folder and that's what I use for subsequent burns.

Gawd Bless yah Mike!

A sincere thanks Grazie. Glad to have been of help.

(a blushing) Mike

The best way to burn another one is to just copy it using Nero or other software.

Dave T2

That's correct.

And after all this what has been gained?
I suspect just doing this the normal way would have produced exactly the same outcome.
Just because you tell the encoder you want 8Mb/sec doesn't mean it fills all that with usefull data, it'll just pad the stream to achieve that data rate. DV25 from your camera is the same.

Bob.

And after all this what has been gained?

Using DVDShrink I got my project completed. That'll do me!

Grazie

Glad it worked. I tried to do a test to see if the extra step with DVD Shrink would really be any better. I posted here: DVD Shrink Test

I don't think the test was all that useful, given that I picked some video which wasn't very difficult for the MPEG-2 encoder to handle.

Oh well, I tried ...

John! - Aw guy! C'mon . . you added to the wealth of knowledge hereabouts. However I wasn't exactly "sure" just what you wanted to achieve? It was only here that you spelt out that "I tried to do a test to see if the extra step with DVD Shrink would really be any better."


However, your "I don't think the test was all that useful, given that I picked some video which wasn't very difficult for the MPEG-2 encoder to handle." wasn't the result I got. The result I got was kinda different.

DVDShrink fitted a marginally largish 5.3gb - for a 4.7gb disc - WITHOUT changing a file! Well that is just what DVDS reported back to me. So just WHAT did DVDShrink do that DVDA3 was NOT doing. OR was DVDA3 being over zealous about NOT allowing me burning my material?

Bottom line for me is that I had edited and reduced the BIG movie to give me what I thought was enough space to choose between 2 extra outtakes. DVDA3 wouldn;t give me that option. For some reason AND without altering the rendered MPG files, made it happen.

I suppose, if I have time, would be to do a truly AWFUL test. Meaning forcing DVDA3 to gobble up something like 6gb of stuff and see what DVDS does with it. Burn to DVD and observe the results.

So, does DVDS "compress" the files - something akin to zipping - where the Main Concept also reduces file size but uses the elegant maths that goes on to actually ALTER the file? Which in turn begs the question to be asked - why is this NOT happening within DVDA3? I guess the short reply is, "Hey Guy!? - Just how much do you WANT DVDA3 to do?". I can live with this .. . as long as I know. As long as I know then I/we can do something about it. Again, with this last project I was really "fiddling" at the edges of DVD-"fit".

However, John, now that I DO have DVDShrink amongst my armoury of everything digital, I might be tempted to offer my clients much larger "grouped" media that can indeed fit onto one DVD. Heaven only knows when dual disc players/burners will get to penetrate the establishments I work with. Offering them say a 2>3 hour collection ON a single DVD may just get me the job! Local authorities, and the like, are very slow to change. I still walk into hi-tec suites that have VHS VCRs flashing 00:00:00 ! LOL!

Of course you tried. You wanted to know!! I, for one, appreciated your efforts.

Best regards,

Grazie

Grazie,
I think you're completely misunderstanding what's going on here.
An mpeg-2 encoder needs a certain number of bytes to encode a given piece of video, without enough bytes image quality will suffer, either temporally (macroblocking) or spatially (loss of resolution, jpeg compression artifacts).

So take a static image, I've managed to encoded these at 2Mb/sec and they look perfect. I could have encoded them at 8Mb/sec and got the same result, the encoder just pads the data stream and DVD shrink could have shrunk it dramatically without loosing anything. I'd be totally deluding myself thinking I'd gained anything by encoding at 8Mb/sec and then using DVD Shrink, in fact I've added another setp to the process, no harm really done I guess.

Now in your case you encoded at 8Mb/sec and DVD Shrink could squash it down to some lower bitrate without loosing anything, fine. Same result would have been achieved encoding at say 7Mbit/sec.

However here's the big problem. Take my initial scenario, a still image. I can as I said encode that at some incredibly low bitrate. Now if I add another still image and have a dissolve between them. Things get messy.
The two still images don't need much bandwidth but the dissolve needs heaps, the faster the dissolve the more bandwidth too. Now at CBR the encoder can't make any use of the surplus bytes from the still part to handle the dissolve. Probably at 8Mb/sec it really doesn't matter. But at say 5Mbit/sec it will, two pass VBR gives the encoder the chance to better optimise where the bit budget gets allocated, even more passes can improve that.

Or one other approach (which is hard to do with our toolsets) is to encode the two static images at a low bitrate and encode the dissolve at a high bitrate and then joing the three mpeg-2 files. Messy and tedious.
If you want to really plumb the depths of optimising mpeg-2 encoding there's some good info out there. Getting a good grip on how it works can help a lot, planning your content with the limitations of the encoder in mind can avoid grief down the track.

One other real no, no I've stuck with mpeg-2 encoding is stobe lights and flash guns. The mpeg-2 encoder encodes frames not fields, in my case the flash was only one field long, so we have two adjoining frames and there is zero in common between them, trust me, that will totally spin out the encoder. No amount of spatial smoothing helped either, in the end motion blur helped enough to get me by (thankfully it was a dream - ghost sequence, it just looked a lot more dreamy)

Bob.

Grazie, I think you're completely misunderstanding what's going on here.

NOT unusual! But without repeating yourself, too much, just exactly which part of what I said made you say this? I read your explanation and I kinda got lost amongst the technology. 8-(

Now in your case you encoded at 8Mb/sec and DVD Shrink could squash it down to some lower bitrate without loosing anything, fine. Same result would have been achieved encoding at say 7Mbit/sec.

So DID DVDS actually change the file? It said it didn't. Please tell me what I haven't understood? I'm willing to learn. :)

Grazie

Well of course it changed the file, it's now smaller!
Thing is did it change anything that mattered?
If the file is full of padding then it matters naught.

But if you had encoded at a lower bitrate in the first place, same result.

Where DVD shrink is most usefull is when the mpeg-2 file is full of stuff you don't need, like multiple subtitle and audio streams. It can remove these (leading to a smaller file size) without re-encoding the mpeg-2 video.

OOhh this is good!

Well of course it changed the file, it's now smaller!Thing is did it change anything that mattered? Well the report said it didn't. Haven't a clue just what it changed. And yes Bob, something was reduced. . .and the DVD plays well . .


If the file is full of padding then it matters naught. I have absolutely no idea what that would mean for me WANTING to get a small project - "padding"? No idea. Apart from why was this NOT done within Vegas when I did this originally? I guess MC doesn't do this .. but guess what does?

But if you had encoded at a lower bitrate in the first place, same result. Yes, and how would I have garnered that without resorting to trying points on graph starting at 5 and going northwards? . .guess what did it quickly for the small addition over 4.7gb?

Where DVD shrink is most usefull is when the mpeg-2 file is full of stuff you don't need, like multiple subtitle and audio streams. It can remove these (leading to a smaller file size) without re-encoding the mpeg-2 video. . . and it did this quickly.

Thanks for the guidance. Of course I appreciate your concern that I don't lead myself astray employing "weak-science". I guess there is no possibility of this happening! Especially on these boards .. ;-)

Grazie