Divx to Mpeg 2?

tunesmith1801 wrote on 3/21/2009, 7:28 AM
Loaded an HD xvid file into Vegas and converted it into an mpeg2 file, burned it on a dvd. It played beautifully on my HD dvd player.

I am ignorant about this so I am just asking. I make videos for our school of different events. These productions frequently require two DVDs. The video I referenced above was over 1 1/2 hours long and was only 750 mb, and the quality was beautiful.

Would it make sense to convert my large AVI files to Divx then to Mpeg2 so I could put them on one DVD?

Thanks

Comments

Chienworks wrote on 3/21/2009, 7:42 AM
Probably not. If it looked better than working directly with the large AVI file then you were probably doing something wrong when rendering the large AVI file to MPEG2. You should have better quality working from the larger file.
tunesmith1801 wrote on 3/21/2009, 7:48 AM
No. it did not look better than the AVI but it did look almost as good. The issue was the flle was so much smaller and I could put it on one DVD.

I guess I just need to try it.

Thanks - Jim

Chienworks wrote on 3/21/2009, 8:05 AM
The size of the material on the DVD is almost completely determined by the length and bitrates used for the MPEG2 and (presumably) AC3 files. The source material, codec, format, and file type have almost nothing to do with it in any way, shape, or form whatsoever. You can fit 90 minutes onto one DVD just the same no matter whether you start with a small DivX file or a 500GB AVI file.

750MB is way too tiny for 90 minutes of DVD material. That's more along the lines of web-video size and it would look awful as MPEG2.
tunesmith1801 wrote on 3/21/2009, 8:19 AM
So if I am understanding you correctly, I could take a 500gb avi file and by using the correct bit rate I could convert it to Mpeg 2, and fit it on a single layer DVD.



Jim
Chienworks wrote on 3/21/2009, 8:43 AM
Absolutely. The bit rate and the duration are the only determining factors for the output file size.

An average video bitrate of about 6,400,000 and an audio bitate of about 256,000 would fit nicely. If you have complex menus with motion backgrounds you may want to reduce those a bit.
tunesmith1801 wrote on 3/21/2009, 8:46 AM
Thank you - I will get a calculator and try it.

Thanks again - Jim
rs170a wrote on 3/21/2009, 10:12 AM
...I could take a 500gb avi file...

I'm assuming that was a typo as a 500 gb file = (roughly) 40 hr. of video which would never fit on a single layer DVD.

Mike
Chienworks wrote on 3/21/2009, 12:18 PM
Not a typo at all. 500GB of uncompressed 1920x1080 24bpp 30fps would be about 47 minutes. Render that as widecreen 720x480 MPEG2 at 6.3Mbps and it will fill about half a DVD nicely.
musicvid10 wrote on 3/21/2009, 12:48 PM
"Thank you - I will get a calculator and try it."

Try this one:
http://www.videohelp.com/calc.htm
rs170a wrote on 3/21/2009, 12:55 PM
Not a typo at all.

Thanks for the clarification Kelly.

Mike