Authoring oversized DVD, then shrink to fit on a disc?

[adamberkey]

Any way I can do this? I've used DVD Shrink (man I love that app) to individually shrink authored DVDs, then extracted them and kept track of all the files to be able to identify them when re-authoring, then shrunk them again and again until I've been able to cram quite a bit of info on a DL DVD, but man, if only I could author a oversized DVD first, and then just shrink it down as an already authored set.

Quantity of content is MUCH more important in this case than quality of content! Is there any app that will let me author an oversized DVD on the computer and save it to a folder oversized, rather than burn to disc? The intent would then be to use DVD Shrink to get the overall size down enough to be able to burn it to disc within the compliant size.

I'm expecting that nobody knows, or does know that it is absolutely not possible to author an oversize "DVD" even if it is meant to author to a hard drive. Might as well ask the question to verify that it isn't possible.

[yoda313]

I'm not entirely sure there are dvd authoring apps that will let you author over a 8gig dvd. Its not to say there aren't any I just don't know of any off hand that do.

For quality sake you are really better off encoding to the proper bitrate first before authoring.

But the best thing would be to limit the overall length of the videos you are putting on the dvds. Then that way you can allocate more bitrate per video rather than shrinking the hell out of it.

I haven't looked but avstodvd may have an unconstrained output option. You may be able to simply author a dvd of any size you choose. I don't know this for a fact but you could look.

Like I said though you are better off limiting the total length of video on each disc and using more discs so that you can increase the bitrate for the videos on the disc themselves for better quality.

Edit - yes avstodvd does have a custom disc size option. Load your titles in the main screen then choose the disc size selector from the options menu. When you select custom you can set the number of mb's the disc will be. It can be 20,000mb or even 500,000mb. I don't think there is a real limit. (of course roughly 1000mb in a gigabyte but than again the actual size you can fit on a disc isn't the same as a 1.0gigabyte readout - I forgot the math but if you've burnt discs before - obviously you have - you know what I'm getting at).

Edit 2- but I still believe quality wise you are trying to squeeze too much video onto a disc. Yes I know it probably looks ok to you. That is fine if you want to go that way we can't stop you. But I think you are trying to get something for nothing. The quality will probably suffer a little by squeezing it like this.

You could use a bitrate calculator to target your encodings better so they fit the disc without transcoding them. But if they get pretty low you really should consider putting less on each disc to preserve quality.