MPEG (VCD) to DVD, bitrate question

[Kronos2000]

Hi

I have some MPEG files (about 45 mins in about 450 MB, guess its VCD format) which I want to burn to DVD.
Using TMPEGEnc for it, but unsure how big the resulting file should be.

How many of these movies can i burn on one DVD without losing very much quality?
If i go for 4 files per DVD, i get a file of about 1 GB with a bitrate of 3000.

Not sure what the difference between MPEG-1 and MPEG-2 is, but shouldn't MPEG-2 be able to create smaller files, not bigger ones, with same quality due to more advanced compression?

The movies are in 320x240 or 352x240 so i don't mind using 352x576 resolution...

So what bitrate is "safe" to use?

Thanks for your help

[ZippyP.]

How many of these movies can i burn on one DVD without losing very much quality?


Not sure what the difference between MPEG-1 and MPEG-2 is, but shouldn't MPEG-2 be able to create smaller files, not bigger ones, with same quality due to more advanced compression?

Mpeg1 and 2 give about the same quality if the bitrates and resolution are the same. There are some capabilities that mpeg2 has over mpeg1 but the amount of compression is not one of them.

If your files are in fact VCD, then the video is DVD compliant and should be burned to DVD as is, do not re-encode. Re-encoding will only result in a loss in quality, you cannot make it any better. The audio may have to be resampled to 48 KHz though and how many will fit on a disk depends on the size of your files. Look in the guides for VCD to DVD.