Audio Bit Depth reduction to save space on DVD?

chewbonkay wrote on 6/27/2002, 7:30 AM

My goal is to fit a 105 minute wedding program onto a DVD-R. I typically render to separate streams and drop the .m2v and the .wav file into MyDVD 2.3 (I know everyone hates this package but it came with my DVD-RW and I have been able to use it with unlimited chapters to my satisfaction).

My wave file is currently eating up a chunk of space at 1.16 GB (48kHz, 16-bit). If I re-save it to 8-bit, I can regain plenty of space and therefore render my video at a more acceptable rate. Currently, my combined file is too big and I already decreased my video render to avg. 4.5 max 7.0. The audio is what you would expect from a wedding video, so we're not talking something to rival a Lucas film.

Any thoughts? As always, thanks for any information.

Comments

soundguy63 wrote on 6/27/2002, 7:45 AM

I think you would be very unsatisfied with 8-bit audio, it's really terrible.
You could render a short test of a particular segment and decide.

Chienworks wrote on 6/27/2002, 8:23 AM

I think you'd be better off leaving the audio at 16 bit and resampling it to 22.050Hz instead. This will still give you more than enough frequency response, especially if the audio was recorded with the on-camera mic, and it will reduce the file size to less than half.