Help with Render Settings for Home Videos

Denicio wrote on 1/29/2010, 10:16 AM

I've got a boat load of family videos that i am transferring to my HD and rendering down so we can enjoy them on DVD. Here is the deal. I am not needing the most mega quality renders. Just good renders. Some of the videos are Xfrd from VHSC and Regular VHS camcorders, others are Dig 8 and Mini DV.

I am hoping to get as many video's per DVD as possible, without loosing a whole lot in quality.

Do you guys have some rendering setting suggestions? As it stands now, if i use the Default NTSC Mpeg 2 settings.. i wont get as many video's per DVD.

Using Pro 8, btw.

Thanks in advance for any suggestions!

Dennis in Memphis

Comments

Byron K wrote on 1/29/2010, 10:38 AM

One quick way to get the size of your video files down at the expense of some quality is to reduce the Variable Bit Rate (VBR).

Chienworks wrote on 1/29/2010, 11:12 AM

Yep, it's all about the bitrate.

VBR average 9,000,000 = 65 minutes
VBR average 8,000,000 = 73 minutes
VBR average 7,000,000 = 83 minutes
VBR average 6,000,000 = 97 minutes
VBR average 5,000,000 = 115 minutes
VBR average 4,000,000 = 143 minutes
VBR average 3,000,000 = 188 minutes
VBR average 2,000,000 = 273 minutes

That includes leaving room for .ac3 audio and a little wiggle room for a title screen and simple menu.

Former user wrote on 1/29/2010, 11:12 AM

Dennis,

DVDs are cheap. Do not sacrifice quality to save 20 cents. Plan on an hour per disk. Believe me, you will be happy you did.

Dave T2

RalphM wrote on 1/29/2010, 11:21 AM

Dennis,

I'll echo DaveT2's comment. If they were worth gathering and transferring, they are worth the extra discs.

Another issue is that the bigger the display screen, the worse the video will look. Starting by degrading quality will buy you a lot of grief in the future.

I'd also make a suggestion that hard drives are inexpensive. Consider retaining the videos in their captured state even after the DVDs have been burned. This gives the best quality source for any future editing.

xberk wrote on 1/29/2010, 12:31 PM

I agree. Discs are cheap. Render and burn at a high bit-rate for quality and also save the MPEG files on a storage drive. But check out this WD Live from Western Digital, This would be the way to store a library of home video and play it back with ease and quality. DVD players are going to be around for a long time but for a library of home video there are already better solutions and more like it to come, Keep copies of your computer files. You or others in the family will want them.

BudWzr wrote on 1/29/2010, 3:44 PM

I would upsample the bitrate before editing.

And yes, definitely consider a HTPC or dedicated media player box. Not to be critical, but the WD box does not have any analog output, otherwise it's very good.

johnmeyer wrote on 1/29/2010, 6:42 PM

NEVER use the "Default" MPEG-2 templates. The quality slider is not set all the way to 31, and as a result, the quality stinks. ALWAYS use one of the DVD Architect templates.

You are nuts to put in all this time, and then try to cram too much onto a DVD, thus losing quality. When starting with VHS quality, you can fit two hours on a disc, maybe a little more, but once you get to 150 minutes, things start to look pretty bad.

May I recommend a 10-DVD case:

Meritline 10 DVD Case

You can fit a LOT of video into two or three of these, and they don't take up much space. Also, I'd buy a 1 TB hard drive, and put everything on that as well.

Also, you MUST use 2-pass variable bitrate when putting lots of video onto a DVD. I just finished doing all of my brother's videos and managed to fit everything onto ten DVDs, with most of them averaging about 110 minutes per disc.

I have experimented with ultra-low bitrate encoding, back when we were still putting video on CDs (VCDs, SVCD, XVCD, and even more unusual formats). I actually created some pretty spectacular XVCDs using custom MPEG-2 matrices and an external (i.e., not Vegas) MPEG-2 encoder. However, it was a pain in the neck to work with.

One thing not mentioned that is extremely important when doing low bitrate encodes, and that is getting video that is not noisy. If your video has lots of grainy noise, or VHS shimmering, you should consider using Neat Video, or at least using the Mike Crash noise reduction filter. Encoding noisy video at low bitrates is guaranteed to produce absolutely terrible looking video.