How to reduce DVDA project size so to not go 2 discs.

david-ruby wrote on 6/27/2004, 12:48 PM

How to reduce DVDA project size so to not go 2 discs.

I am coming in at 5.7 on my project with menus and everything. Audio is the only thing that will be compressed it claims. Am I going to have to go to 2 discs for this project? It is actually under 2 hrs of video audio.
Any clues? Bit rate seems to do nothing to help either. Can't loos the quality on this either.

I am all ears.

Thanx as always gang!!

David

Comments

bStro wrote on 6/27/2004, 1:47 PM

The estimates can be (and usually are) faulty.

Post here how long your video is, what kind of audio your're using, and what bit rate you're using. Someone will be able to tell you what the actual size of your project is.

OR go ahead and prepare your DVD files and check their filesize in Windows Explorer. If less than the amount of space your DVD holds, you're okay.

Rob

david-ruby wrote on 6/27/2004, 2:02 PM

Unfortunatley it will not let me even try to burn this. The actual size as it sits in windows explorer is 4.99. I rendered this in Vegas 5 with the ntsc dvd setting in mpeg 2. Is there any way to make this smaller? Is it the audio that is to big? Since it must be compressed? Vegas 5 renders the audio as 48k.
???
Thank you

Cunhambebe wrote on 6/28/2004, 5:03 AM

There are two ways to do this. One of them is with DVDA 2.0. Hit make DVD and you'll have a screen asking to select operation to perform. Choose optimize DVD. Left click on chosen video files on the left and on the right, choose Video; Recompress and hit "yes". You'll be able to see the amount of compression (I guess - I never compress with DVDA). Click on fit to disk. If you've got a screen saying Media file is too big to fit, repeat the operation and choose more video files on the left to be recompressed.
Note that I've never done this way because I prefer DVD Shrink for recompressing my files (it shows the amount of compression). Here's what I do. I author the DVD with DVDA and select Prepare and Burn (you can select only Prepare, but since DVDA does not seem to estimate sizes accurately, you'll never know if the whole thing is really too big). So, after selecting Prepare and Burn, DVDA will tell you the file is too big, refusing to burn the DVD. Don't care because you've already got your DVD folder.
Now, create a new folder in one of your hard drives. Open DVD Shrink and choose "Reathor". Choose which files you want to compress. Be sure not to compress only one file because the amount of compression will be too high and you'll get a big loss of quality. Try to fix this by selecting, for instance, 2 main videos and the motion menus (if you have them). The compression amount should be at least 89, 80% of the original file FOR EACH FILE. The more you compress, the more you'll loose quality. I've already recompressed videos at 67% of the original file with almost, I said almost, no loss of quality (your regular NTSC TV will not show that much because of its poor resolution). On the other hand, if you watch your recompressed DVD on a computer, anyone can point easily there's a loss of quality. So, please, try to recompress always at 80 ~ 89% of the original file.
Now, hit backup choosing the folder you had previously created on your hard drive. Close DVD Shrink, open DVDA once again and hit "Make DVD", "Burn DVD"; finally browsing for the folder with the DVD Shrink backup. It's a piece of cake, believe me. You can download DVD Shrink for free at www.videohelp.com. OK, this is the address:

http://www.videohelp.com/tools?toolsearch=dvd+shrink&s=&orderby=Name&convert=&dvdauthorfeatures=

;)

SonySDB wrote on 6/28/2004, 5:05 AM

Try the following:
1. File | Optimize DVD...
2. Click the Fit to Disc button

If it is unable to fit to disc, you'll have to recompress one or more of the project's assets. You can set to force recompress in the Optimize DVD dialog or you can recompress your original source at a lower bitrate from Vegas.