2 Hour Captured Movie to Single DVD+R? (Total Newbie)

[badfish]

Here's what I have:

Fairly Recent Dell Computer
Pentium 4
Brand New Adaptec VideOH! PCI Capture Card
Brand New Micro-Advantage DVD+-R Burner
Sonic MyDVD

So far I can only put about an hour and a half of captured video on a single DVD+R, even when capturing at the lowest possible quality setting. This means that I have to split a two hour captured movie over two DVD+R discs. Can anyone help me figure out how to get a whole movie on a single DVD+R? I'm a total newbie, and I'm lost. I'd appreciate any and all help so please reply!

[I'm using MyDVD, but when I burn the project using Roxio 6 it kind of lets me squeeze all of the file onto a single DVD+R by re-authoring or re-encoding (or both) the whole file, but the quality sucks and doesn't play back well on my home DVD player (choppy, hangs and freezes...).]

Thanks in advance for any help. I've got three discs left, and I'd rather use them for three captured movies than only one and a half.

Brian J.

[Turtle49]

Ok Sonic MYDVD converts the audio to PCM (I think), which is a very large audio format. Probably the reason you can only get an hour and a half on a DVD. MyDVD came with my burner too and I threw it away within a month.
What I think you should do is capture from VHS using Pinnacle Studio 8 or some program like it in conjunction with your capture card. I use full DV quality then edit the video and output it as a DVD compliant MPEG2 (this takes harddrive space but you get great results). This will allow you to set the bitrate for the size movie you have.
Then get a descent DVD Authoring program like MovieFactory2 or TMPGEnc DVD Author or even DVDLab to author your DVD. (Keep in mind TMPGEnc DVD author and DVDLab are more advanced and will take a little time to get used to)

I just started using DVDLab and I'm really geeked about the results, just be prepared to learn a LOT.

I don't know if all this rambling helped or not.....Good Luck.

[Turtle49]

BadFish PM
Hi, thanks for the help. I'm downloading trial versions of DVDLab and Pinnacle Studio 8 right now. Can you give me more information on what I need to do? Maybe a short step by step? I'm totally lost. You mentioned that I will be able to set my own bitrate. What should I set it at? Stuff like that. Thanks in advance!

Sure, First pull up Pinnacle Studio 8. Then go to the Capture Tab. Your Capture card should be recognized (hopefully). It should give you some options for capture quality in the lower right. Mine says:
- DV Full quality capture
- MPEG Full quality capture
- Preview quality capture

I capture from a DV camcorder so I don't know how this would look woth a capture card. What I do is select "DV Full quality capture" this gives me a very large AVI file to work with (10-15gb per hour of video). After the capture is complete with no dropped frames I go to the next tab.

Edit;
Drag the captured video down on to the Storyboard into the first space. Now you can stop here but there is a lot you can do. Typically I trim the beginning and end of the video and add fade transitions to the same. you will have to read up on how to do this. Then go to the next tab in Pinnacle.

Make Movie;
Here is where you set your bitrate. Select MPEG on the Left hand side and then hit Settings. You want include video checked and MPEG2 with the "dot". Width and Height is 720x480. I leave the audio setting as they are.
The Data rate is your bitrate setting. use this calculator to figure out what to set it at. https://www.videohelp.com/calc.htm. You can also use the estimated size function within Pinnacle to establish how big the file is going to be but This isn't allways a 100% accurate.


Well this should get you started, if you have anymore questions please post them on the board so everybody can benefit from the discussion. 8)