In MyDVD - Can't put 2hrs of video on disk

[patrickjos]

I just produced an MPEG 2 file from a 2hr movie (from a VCR). The MPEG file itself is only about 4.1 Gigs but when I import it into the MyDVD project the capacity indicator shows that I've exceeded the 4.7 Gig limit on the output DVD.

Does anyone know why this is? If the 2hr file is only 4.1 Gigs, why is it max'ing out the 4.7Gig DVD ?

Patrick

[Dr. Swirl]

I haven't used MyDVD in a while, however, I know that when I used to capture with it, the size of the file would depend upon the quality of the video I wanted to record (Good, Better, Best). When you imported it into MyDVD, did it have that option, and if so, wht did you choose?

[patrickjos]

I selected "best" - I had previously tried the "better" option but the output MPEG was so buggy that it froze the application being used to view it (tried two distinct apps). This would happen at a fixed point approximately 36minutes into the clip. It happened with more than one capture. I'm using an Adaptec Videoh card to convert from analog to MPEG2 (with MyDVD) -which seems to work well overall on the "best" setting.

What I can't figure out is ...
...why can't I fit the 4.1Gig MPEG onto a 4.7Gig disk? I find it hard to believe that the overhead could be as large as 600Megs. Anyway, I thought that it was somewhat standard that a 4.7Gig DVD can take about 2hrs of Good quality video. The actual run time on my video is below 2hrs -it's 1hr:50min.

Patrick

[Zabbo]

What is the Audio bitrate of the mpeg ?? MyDVD will re-encode the audio to 1536kbs Linear PCM.. if your audio in your mpeg is say like 128k, the file is 4.1Gb but once MyDVD re-encodes the audio it bumps up the file way beyond the DVD 4.7Gb limit.
Try TMPGEnc DVD Author this will allow you to burn your file without re-encoding !!

Hope this helps...

-Z

[chinoman]

Or you can just burn the oversized DVD files to hard disk, then DVDShrink the DVD files to fit. You will loose any menu created when you DVDShrink the files.

[pauln119]

I don't believe you will lose the menus after using DVD Shrink. That's how I normally fit 2 hrs of home videos on 1 DVD. I use Ulead MovieMaker 2, and I burn everything to a file folder which usually comes to about 7 gigs. Then I use DVD Shrink to process all the files down so that it fit on 1 dvd. If MyDVD can write the output to a folder, then you can do the same thing. The results are excellent.

[kpkilburn]

I used MyDVD only a couple of times and ran into the same problem. I found that MyDVD automatically converts the MPEG video to 8mbs, regardless of the original encoding, if it's not DVD compliant.

Since you used the capture at "best", then MyDVD used the 8mbs data rate. Your best bet is to do what's been suggested already -- use DVD Shrink. It maintains the entire DVD and the compression is really good in terms of video quality.

I also didn't like MyDVD because it re-encoded my video and in all cases, it degraded the quality to an unacceptable level -- highly visible artifacts that weren't there before.

[patrickjos]

Thanks, Zabbo for this excellent advice...

I downloaded "TMPGEnc DVD Author" last night and it is the solution to my problems. It is an outstanding piece of software. I'll continue with the trial and if it works out as expected I'll definitely pay for it.

I had originally started with Ulead MovieMaker (weeks ago) and found it to be a very low quality piece of software. It crashed repeatedly - was unusable. "MyDvd" has a nice interface and seems to be well tested but it seems to have too many built-in limitations ( encoding, menus, etc. ). Perhaps this is a marketing scheme intended to get people to trade up from bundled versions to more expensive packages.

TMPGEnc looks like the real answer - it's a straightforward piece of software. The names are somewhat confusing ("TMPGenc DVD Author", "TMPG Plus" etc. ) - but that I can live with !

-Patrick

What is the Audio bitrate of the mpeg ?? MyDVD will re-encode the audio to 1536kbs Linear PCM.. if your audio in your mpeg is say like 128k, the file is 4.1Gb but once MyDVD re-encodes the audio it bumps up the file way beyond the DVD 4.7Gb limit.
Try TMPGEnc DVD Author this will allow you to burn your file without re-encoding !!

Hope this helps...

-Z