How do I compress project to fit exactly on 1 DVD?

Toobad wrote on 1/11/2008, 9:39 AM
I know this must have been asked a million times before but I have read so much lately my head is swimming. I vaguely recall that if I render out in .avi, something somewhere can make it all fit exactly on one single layer 4.7GHz DVD. I am assuming completely filling the DVD in this way would create a file with the least compression and hence maintain the best possible quality.

My project is 40minutes of PAL HDV which creates a 7.22Gb file when rendered as MPEG-2 with the MainConcept codec. I want to pass it around my friends who would mainly view it with stand- alone DVD players hooked up to SD(576i) PAL CRT TVs. If somebody could point me in the right direction and also advise the settings for my Project Properties with regard to fields and interlacing I would appreciate it. I think I am supposed to end up with a .vob file.

Comments

mickbadal wrote on 1/11/2008, 12:12 PM
When you render in DVDA, there is a "fit to disc" option (appears as a little check box somewhere toward the bottom of a dialog.) Check that and it will render the MPG-2 to fit onto a single disc.

Of course that will re-render the MPEG-2, so there will be some loss.
HaroldC wrote on 1/11/2008, 2:28 PM
There are at least a couple of ways to do it. I've never made anything to pal, but I'm assuming it works the same. The better way to do it would be to import your uncompressed video files into dvda. Go through the usual process, but in the section that contains the optimize button click the optimize button. Then hit the fit to disc or slide the button below the 4.7 gig level. Then OK and proceed as normal.

It sounds like you already have the dvd file made. I don't know if it works for pal or not, but I have used dvdshrink to compress a dvd file to fit onto a single layer disc. I wouldn't recommend this for a significant amount of compression however.

The first method is the better one. DVDA takes longer to render into mpeg2 though.
Toobad wrote on 1/11/2008, 11:40 PM
Thanks for setting me off on the right path guys. After learning both the camera and VMS, I hadn't even looked at DVDA. I thought it was just for doing chapters and stuff for that professional look. All I've done so far is render out to .mpg and have been viewing my film from my hard drive. I have an external 500GB e-SATA drive where I could send an uncompressed .avi render (that's got to be one enormous file) and take it from there. I now have the DVDA Quick Start Manual in front of me so I guess that will pass the time productively whilst the render gets done.

What should I set my Project Properties to regarding Fields/Frames and Interlacing before I render, given my end requirements?
Chienworks wrote on 1/12/2008, 3:54 AM
There's probably no need for uncompressed. DV is most likely more than good enough. It's roughly 1/8 the size of uncompressed and the process will go a bit faster.
Toobad wrote on 1/12/2008, 9:47 AM
That was close, Chienworks! You caught me just in time so I now have an .avi rendered with DV Widescreen PAL 720 x 576 compression. This created a 8.32Gb file which DVDA has used to generate .vob files. It tells me it only needs 63% of the total space on the 4.7Gb disk (even after I had pushed the default bit rate up to the maximun of 9.8)

DVDA generated "AUDIO_TS and VIDEO_TS directories but the audio one for the AC-3 Stereo is empty! (my music track was .mp3 and my voiceover track was .wav).The collection of .vob files in the video directory play fine in Media Player Classic and have sound.

I have never burnt a DVD before and it looks like I never will. My Samsung 203 DVD drive can handle DVD-Rs at 18x read/write speed although I set an 8x speed for the Memorex media which is rated up to 16X. I can't get past the "Burning Lead-in" stage. How long should this bit last? It goes on trying to complete this stage for 10 minutes then bails out. The reason is given as:

Module sfmmcx.cpp Line 2240
A medium error occurred.
A session fixation error occurred writing the lead-in.

Status: 00020202
Command: 2a 00 00 00 01 40 00 00 20 00
Sense: 03 72 01
Info: 00 00 00 00
Specific: 00 00 00
Extra: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00

I checked other disks by running in simulation mode and they too bailed after 10 mins with the same error report. Any ideas anybody? and is the one disk I did try to burn now cactus?

Trevor

Edit:
Woot! With a bit of lateral thinking I proved both my burner and media are OK. I fired up Windows DVD Maker and pointed it at my .avi file. It is highly automated and simplistic and tore through the task in 30 minutes when set to "Fastest". It puts 150 minutes of video on a disk so my 40 minutes represents just over 25% usage compared to the 67% DVDA was going to consume. I wonder if the increase quality from the higher bit rate is noticible on screen.