movie to mpg for dvd by toast too large; "keep in" been ignored

[jboyd]

0.0.9x (v0.0.9x r2)

i've just converted a movie file using the "DVD to mpeg2enc" setting -- i've done many files like this and usually all's fine. i'm converting to mpg's to then burning as dvds in toast.

this time the original was pretty large. under the video tab it was, as always by default, set to "1 CDs of DVD 4GB" but this has been ignored and not had any effect unfortunetely. the resulting mpg file (i had the "author as DVD (VIDEO_TS)" tick box unticked) is 4.89gb. (i still have the .m2v and .ac3 files as well as the reulting mpg file).

does the compression occur between the .mpg and VIDEO_TS stage, therefore that's why i haven't seen any effect?

any advice how to, preferably in the shortest least processor intensive way, get this 4.89gb mpg onto a (playable on a dvd player) dvd somehow?

any thoughts/advice much appreciated.

thanks.

[Case]

Toast 7, 8 and 9 allow you to "requantize" a slightly oversized VIDEO_TS folder, making it a bit smaller, so it will fit on a single layer DVD-R. Requantizing compresses the video in a special way that is much faster than re-encoding. It also allows for a fairly precise target size.
Toast calls it "Fit-to-DVD video compression". It is a checkbox in the Video>VIDEO_TS folder options panel.
To get your .mpg file into a VIDEO_TS folder, use Tools>Author in ffmpegX.

ffmpegX (registered version) also can requantize. This works from a VOB file input. To recompress to DVD-R SL, use the dvd4 tool in the Tools tab. It uses the same technique as Toast but with less features, although those extra features may be useless for movies that you convert yourself.
Perhaps it will work with a renamed .mpg to .vob, but I haven't tried that.

under the video tab it was, as always by default, set to "1 CDs of DVD 4GB" but this has been ignored and not had any effect unfortunetely.

It is a bitrate calculator. If you do not press the "Rate" button, then nothing is calculated, and the bitrate isn't matched to your desired output size.

[jboyd]

i see -- excellent, thanks very much for the info.