Well you guys/gals need some help shrinking…

[slicemaster101]

Well, I am new to this whole DVD-R thing but I have been doing VCD and SVCD for some time. I was wondering if you guys could help me out. I am creating a DVD from an AVI DIVX file and I have already done all the conversion and everything. The problem is that the video is too big to fit on one disk and I was wondering how I could get it to fit without compromising quality all that much. I have already constructed the menus with DVD-lab and am ready to author but I need to fit it on one disk. So I was wondering how I would go about doing this? Should I just re-encode from the AVI or should I compile the DVD as a finished product and use some program like DVD Shrink, DVD2ONE, etc to make it fit on one disk? How should I go about this? I could just re-encode and make a whole new video file if that produce better results but I would need help with setting up the custom settings for TMPGEnc. Note that I used custom settings in the guide “Configuring TMPGEnc for high-quality, DVD-compliant MPEG-2” with basically all the best settings. If someone could help me I would love it.

Thanks,
Slice

[andkiich]

I think you answered you own question.

Either transcode the finished product or re-encode the source so it wil fit.

I personally beleive that the best solution would be to re-encode the original source. I've found that I get better quality that way.

[slicemaster101]

so what do you think would be good settings for the VBR ES video stream?

thanks,
Slice

[musher70]

well, how big is it???

[negon]

Depends on the filesize and the current settings...more info...

[slicemaster101]

Here is the info:
this should be sufficient but if you need any other info tell me what it is.

well, here we go...
Rate Control Mode: 2-Pass VBR
Aspect Ratio: 16:9
Resolution: 720x480
Video format: NTSC
Frame Rate: 29.97fps
Average Bitrate: 6000 kbits/sec
Max Bitrate: 8000 kbits/sec
Min Bitrate: 4000 kbits/sec
P picture spoilage: 0
B picture spoilage: 0
DC Component Precision: 10bits
Motion Search Precision: Highest Quality

NOTE: Current file size using these settings is 4.73GB; also NOTE that this is only the video it is a ES (Elementry Stream) video; Runtime is 2hrs 11min

that should be enough data

Signed,
Slice

[slicemaster101]

BUMPBUMP

[Skynet107]

You have no choice but to re-encode the video. Use a bit-rate caclulator it is essential.
http://www.wiredinc.com/bitrate.html
Using the data you provided, you will have to lower your bit rate by a lot.
Assuming 448khz audio (usually dolby digital 5.1) you need an average bit rate of 4.08 mbits/sec. It is not necessary to use the highest quality setting in TMPGEnc when using bit rates above 3-4 mbits/sec. It hardly improves the image quality and increased encoding time by tripple or more. Use Motion Search Estimate it will look almost exactly the same.

TMPGEnc tends to be conservative in its encoding so you can probably increase the bit rate to say 4500 mbits/sec. If the movie has very little fast motion scenes than the file size will be much lower than estimated.

[slicemaster101]

that bitrate calculater sucks! it doesnt even work or out put a value so could you link to or reccoment a good program based bitrate cal?

PS: what do you reccomend for max and min bitrates?

thanks

[cplevel42]

This site has bit rate calculators. Not too hard to find.

[andkiich]

I get good results with the bitrate calculator on this site as well, I highly recommend it.

[MOVIEGEEK]

slicemaster wrote:"PS: what do you reccomend for max and min bitrates?"

I find using a min:2000kbps and a max:8000kbps gives good results.If you use TMPGEnc then I would use CQ and set quality to 65-75.

[slicemaster101]

thanks alot i'll give it a try.

signed,
Slice