Mpg file too big to fit on DVDR

swright007 wrote on 5/18/2009, 1:10 PM

I was recently given a file that is about 2 hours long (one hour 53 min) but it was saved in MP4 format (1.4 Gig). I tried opening it with Sony Vegas Platinum 8 but all that opened was the audio ... no video (so I saved the audio). I took the file and processed it in another program and rendered it as AVI (wound up being 2.10 Gig) but that program only rendered the video. I took the then 2 files I had available and loaded them into Sony Vegas Platinum 8. It took 10 hours to render and the final file was too big to even fit on a DVD-R 5.06 Gig. I tried burning that to DVD anyway using DVD Architect using the "Fit to Disc" option.. but it said the file was too big to be compressed. I tried going into Vegas and altering the bitrate and re-rendering the video to make it smaller but my CUSTOM option was greyed out. Any help or free third party remedies to compress my nice BIG file would be greatly appreciated.

Comments

Ivan Lietaert wrote on 5/18/2009, 1:37 PM

Google for 'format factory' and with this free program convert it to mpeg2.

swright007 wrote on 5/18/2009, 1:39 PM

the 5.06 gig file IS the mpeg 2 version that Vegas made.. are you saying format factory can compress it and keep it the same format?

swright007 wrote on 5/18/2009, 6:21 PM

I used one of those bitrate calculators... The best I could get it down to was 1.69 GIGs... really great squash.. however, the picture quality was lousy. While it does fit on a DVDR now, it isn't watchable... Is there any way to say, reduce it to say 3.5 Gigs or something not so rash? Thank you so much for your help so far

musicvid10 wrote on 5/18/2009, 9:00 PM

Apparently the one you downloaded didn't do too good a job if it recommended 1.69GB. Try this one . . .
http://www.videohelp.com/calc.htm

Ivan Lietaert wrote on 5/18/2009, 9:03 PM

Don't know, but I do know that putting 1h53min on a single layer dvd is stretching it: the normal capacity is something like 45 min. Also, mp4 is already a highly compressed format, and in the video world there is a saying: you can't get silk from a pig's ear...

musicvid10 wrote on 5/18/2009, 9:06 PM

Ivan,
2 hours at 4Mbs on a SL DVD is a totally acceptable figure.
The quality of AVC MP4 is better than any other -- it is not the compression, but the quality. I would much rather use that as a starting point than MPEG-2 !

Ivan Lietaert wrote on 5/18/2009, 9:14 PM

musicvid,
what you write is exactly my point: mp4 is much better quality than mpepg2, so you can never convert a 2h mp4 file to a dvd (=mpeg2) without noticable quality loss.
On the other hand 1.69Gb is much too small, as 4Gb is the target size.

musicvid10 wrote on 5/18/2009, 9:28 PM

swright007 wrote on 5/19/2009, 1:55 PM

Thank you for the new calculator site. It provided me some new information and a new bitrate to try.. however, the format factory program wouldn't accept the figure for the bitrate. it was like five thousand something ...