6 hours of video onto 1 DVD?

Billae wrote on 9/23/2005, 5:03 PM

Can this be done? Do I compress it in Vegas or in DVD Architect? Not that it matters, but the video is comming from A DV Camcorder. So it's standard AVI files. I don't mind losing resolution. I just did this "all day training video" and would love to condense it onto one DVD. Any idea's would be appreciated

Comments

johnmeyer wrote on 9/23/2005, 5:51 PM

If you do this on a single-sided DVD, the results will be close to unwatchable, unless the video is nothing but talking heads, or other similar almost-no-motion video.

If you must truly do this on one single physical disk, consider using a dual-sided or dual layer disc.

If you decide to do it on a single sided, single layer disc (i.e., an ordinary DVD-R or DVD+R), you will have to encode at an average bitrate of 1,502 kbps.

You absolutely must encode using Vegas, using one of the DVD Architect templates. Click on the Custom button to change the average bitrate. You must choose VBR and you must choose 2-pass encoding to have any hope of something watchable.

I would suggest encoding about ten minutes of representative material at this bitrate, and then watching the result on your computer monitor. If you can also create a quick DVD, using this short snippet, and then burn it to a DVD-RW (or DVD+RW), and watch it on a real TV set, I'd do that as well. This should only take a few minutes and will save you from spending hours of work and encoding, only to find the results unsatisfactory.

Chienworks wrote on 9/23/2005, 5:53 PM

No problem. You should render to MPEG 2 in Vegas because you'll have more control. You'll need an average bitrate of around 1,600,000 or so, leaving a tiny bit of room for some plain menues. It will probably look pretty bad, but it will work. It may look better if you render to half resolution (360x240 or 320x240) because there will be fewer pixels to compress. However, that may cause some compatability problems with some DVD players.

Billae wrote on 9/23/2005, 5:58 PM

Great! Thanks for your help. As a thank you, I'll give you tommorows winning lottery numbers, 13-45 84-39-05 Billae

johnmeyer wrote on 9/24/2005, 9:16 AM

As a thank you, I'll give you tommorows winning lottery numbers, 13-45 84-39-05

Which lottery?

bStro wrote on 9/25/2005, 6:19 AM

It may look better if you render to half resolution (360x240 or 320x240) because there will be fewer pixels to compress.

Think you mean to say 352x240. :)

Rob

Chienworks wrote on 9/25/2005, 2:01 PM

If you want to use 352 feel free, but you might want to crop the original to 704x480 first. 360x240 works quite well using the whole frame at 0.9091 PAR. 320x240 works pretty well using the whole frame at 1.0 PAR (328x240 would be better). Almost all DVD players i've tried handle either of these quite well. Using 352x240 will distort the image unless you use a PAR of 0.9298, which is rather nonstandard, unless you crop the edges of the frame to get back to 0.9091.