If you've ever recorded a 3 hr. football game onto a single disc, you know that the quality is horrible.

The motion artifacts are simply unacceptable, for football or dance.

Also, many players do not like burned DL discs. I never use them as a delivery format, but only for my own use.

Explain to your client that the only way to retain acceptable quality is to deliver on two standard DVDs. That way you save your credibility.

If you absolutely must do that (put three hours on one single layer disc), either render a DV AVI (not Divx, not Xvid, not MP4) out of Vegas for DVDA to encode, or render/encode an MPEG2 in Vegas using a bitrate that will give you a file that will already fit so DVDA doesn't have to do any recompression. Use a bitrate calculator to figure out the best bitrate for your video. (If you're using Vegas Movie Studio, you pretty much have to go the AVI route.)

Do not give DVDA an MPEG2 if you expect it will need to recompress it. No way, no how.

But, yeah, three hours of dance on a single layer DVD -- not gonna look good.

Rob

Thanks for the responses.

I agree with the comments about 3 hours on one disk being a bad idea, unfortunately, doing it any other way is not an option.

I'll try the DVD Shrink option. I've never used it before but I'll see how that goes (thanks Mike).

marks

If you do that, you will be rendering with very lossy compression twice -- not a good idea.

Better to follow bstro's advice, which was to render DV-AVI, and let DVDA do the mpeg compression (once).

DVD shrink is a very good tool for making your Video fit. I find that the final quality when using it is better than if you actually rendered at the low bitrate required for this type of project.

Dave T2

How does DVD shrink work?

Do you first prepare and render out your video in Vegas, then shrink it with DVD shrink, then load it into DVD Architect?

Thanks,

I'm still trying to figure out how to get about 3hrs of video onto a DVD.
Quality, not a concern really. It's mostly someone setting at a table talking.
Also would it save me some size if I made the audio mono in Vegas?

Oh, and does it work with Win 7?

DVD Shrink does exactly as its name suggests -- it shrinks DVDs (or, in this case, DVD files). You create your DVD Architect project exactly as you want your DVD to be authored and prepare (but not burn) your DVD Architect project.

Then you use DVD Shrink to analyze and "shrink" the files that DVD Architect created. After DVD Shrink creates new files, you burn them to DVD using DVD Architect (you can use the "previously prepared" option and point it to the files that DVD Shrink created) or another DVD burning app of your choice.

Also would it save me some size if I made the audio mono in Vegas?

To the best of my knowledge, there's no such thing as a mono DVD. DVD Architect would just re-encode it as stereo. The audio hardly takes up any space, anyhow, and cutting it in half wouldn't gain you much.

Three hours of someone sitting at a table talking...? I wonder if you should start by maybe editing down the length first. ;-)

Rob

If I have a project that's slightly too long for a single disc, I always use DVD Shrink. And yes, I agree that the quality is better than lowering the bit rate. If it's way too large, then I go to a DL disc. Only problem I've ever had with that is using a cheapo disc. Using Verbatim DL discs - not one problem in well over a year now.

What hasn't been mentioned is that you should avoid letting DVDA recompress in the first place. Your best results come from encoding the MPG2 file in Vegas with a bit rate set to get a 4.69Gb file. Then, move the MPEG2 and AC3 files into DVDA.

What hasn't been mentioned is that you should avoid letting DVDA recompress in the first place.

Ahem. Fourth post in the thread. ;-)

Rob

Ahem. Fourth post in the thread. ;-)

Or the third. Or the sixth.

Don't compress MPEG-2 to MPEG-2. That's the point. DVD Shrink is a last resort, not a first choice.

I would not consider DVD Shrink as a "last resort". I consider it a good option. As I stated earlier, I get better results shrinking a video that is too big to fit on a DVD than I get lowering the bitrate.

Dave T2

Dave,
Could you post your settings for both renders? My results are quite a bit worse recompressing through DVD Shrink at its best quality settings as opposed to initially rendering to the target size and bitrate in Vegas using my preferred settings (I do understand that the OP may not have this luxury).

My test was with a short HDV clip to DVDA Widescreen template (720x480):
Render in Vegas, 2-pass 9.5 max, 6 av, 2 min Mbs
Render in Vegas, 2-pass 9.5 max, 3 av, 2 min Mbs
Took the first render, prepared a dvd folder (no recompress) and ran through DVD Shrink to recompress to same target size and bitrate as second render.
As a second test I took the original HDV into Architect, and let it compress at the same bitrate as the other two. The results compared to the DVD Shrink file were a tossup. The detail sharpness of the DVDA-compressed file was significantly better, however artifacting in high-motion areas was slightly worse, even though the minimum bitrate was the same as the Vegas renders. This suggests DVDA only does a single-pass encode, as opposed to 2-pass which can be accomplished in DVD Shrink.

DVD Shrink is a last resort, not a first choice.

Hm, I'd put it somewhere in between. 2nd or 3rd choice maybe. The last resort would be letting DVDA do an MPEG to MPEG encode (yuck!). First choice would be to encode the MPEG2 right to begin with.

I'd used DVD Shrink a few times before I even had any idea what it actually did. Then I read a post from John Cline that (by way of DVD Shrink's author) explains the process. Assuming I understand it, you should see hardly any quality loss at all using DVD Shrink.

Rob

Musicvid,

I am surprised at your results. I have seen very little, if any loss of quality when using Shrink. But a few caveats

1) I have not edited any HD footage. I have only worked with DV (Mini DV or Digital 8).

2) I never use VBR when encoding MPEGs for DVD. I don't see the point. I usually encode 8mps, but never go below 6. If it won't fit at 6mbps, I use Shrink.

I don't know if either of these make a difference in the result, but I would assume that a VBR file could be more prone to quality loss as DVD shrink does its thing. But I am just guessing, I don't understand how Shrink works but I have been very happy with the results in those situations where I am trying to squeeze a bit more data on a disk.

Dave T2

Dave, I'll repeat my test with 6Mbs CBR, time permitting. My usual set-top player chokes on 8Mbs CBR program video so I won't be trying that.

I'm starting rehearsals for a world premiere musical next week, and I'm pretty pumped up about that, so pardon if I don't get to it right away.

BTW, VBR seems to be easier on players (esp. older ones) because the high bitrate stuff comes in bursts (or short segments, like titles), rather than as a sustained load.

Musicvid,

Funny how all our experiences vary. I have never had a problem with 8mbps videos.

Good luck on your musical.

Dave T2