Three Movies on one DVD-R

[jester1x]

I've done a little experimenting and discovered that I can put three movies onto one dvdr using TMPGEnc's DVD Author program along with using its' encoder. Instead of using the standard resolution of 352x480, I used the resolution of 352x240. I decided to use the smaller resolution because the picture was not as smooth using the larger resolution. You sacrifice a litle bit of the movie frame, but the movie looks a lot better, plus no blockiness or breakup appears during fast moving scenes. (I used the “no margin (keep aspect ratio)” option on TMPGEnc. (I haven't figured out the right settings for using VBR at that resolution yet!)

I encoded the movies in MPEG2 with (CBR) bitrates varying between 1800 to around 1950kbps to be able to fit three movies on one dvdr. The movies I used were around 90 minutes in length. I'm quite sure you could still fit three movies of a longer length on one disc, but you would sacrifice some quality because of the lower bitrates. Another alternative is putting just two movies onto one dvdr. The quality would actually be better because you could use higher bitrates.

I”ve read on this site that MP2 audio is non-standard along with the resolution I used to fit three movies on one dvdr. But, my dvd player (Panasonic DVD-RV32) plays the movies just fine. The audio sounds great and I haven't had any sync problems whatsoever.

Just thought I would share this with all of you if anyone hasn't thought of it yet. I'm a newbie to this hobby and thought if I could follow the “standards, rules, etc...” of creating a useable dvd mpeg file, then the program should/would accept it. Well, it works!

[ktnwin]

I am doing the same thing. To ensure better compatibility, you can convert MP2 audio to AC3 using the freeware tool BeSweet.

[Vejita-sama]

The DVD standard allows 720x480, 352x480 and 352x240; so you are using a standard resolution. It's odd that 352x480 didn't work for you. If you got 'skips' at 352x480 but not 352x240 I suspect that you have a field order problem (480 you get both fields at 240 you only get one, that's actually a pretty big drop in image quaility). However, at the lower resolution you can use lower bitrates to maintain 'pretty good' quaility, thus fitting more movie (runtime) per DVDR.

Converting the mp2 audio to ac3 is a good idea.

[ben.franklin]

I'm trying to fit 3 films onto DVD - but not having any luck, as TMPGEnc won't let me have the disk space percentage any lower than 50% when I use project wizard. Any ideas?

[ktnwin]

I found that converting MP2 to AC3 with BeSweet will cause problem with Pioneer DVD players. There are many posts on this subject.

[ktnwin]

After 2 weeks fooling around with this, I am able to fit 3 hours on a single DVD-R with excellent quality (identical to original VHS quality).
My process:
1) capture as DV AVI (using PS8, my dig8 camcorder as passthru)
2) TMPGenc to encode to 352x480 MPEG2 (CQVBR, average bitrate 3200kbps)
3) reelDVD to author (and also encode audio to AC3)
I am sure I can fit upto 6 hours if I encode to 352x240. I will do it if the need arises.
DONE DEAL.