best suggestion to put tv episodes on dvd?

[alibubba]

I have 7 episodes of friends i'd like to put on dvd, i was thinking of encoding all the episodes to about 600 megs each using TMPGenc with a aspect ratio of 4:3 with a video resolution of 720x480.

does this sound good guys or did the light blub go off with a better idea?

Any help would be appreciated.

[Hardcoreruss]

Don't see anything wrong with that, then to tmpgenc dvd author, simple menu and then burn.

[ronnylov]

7 episodes, is that something like 3 hours totally? Then I would consider using 352x480 resolution because it may give better quality at the bitrate needed to fit everything on one DVD-R. Or split it to 2 discs.

[hakeemshabazz]

I'm a newbie myself, so don't quote me on this...

but isn't it best to leave the resolution alone (don't change it from the source)? ..and just change your bitrate to get better quality?

Anyone able to correct me on this?

[ronnylov]

When you lower the bitrate you will reach a point where the quality at a higher resolution looks worse than the same video encoded at a lower resolution at the same bitrate. When you lower the resolution less pixels are encoded each second and you get less encoding artifacts (like mosquito noise or blocking) at the same bitrate. It is the bitrate and encoding time together which affects the final filesize. A lower resolution encoded at the same bitrate will give the same filesize but the quality may be higher.

So if the bitrate is enough high then you'll get better results at a higher resolution. The limit where you need to lower the resolution may vary depending of the nature of your source video. A 4:3 letterboxed wide screen movie from a clean DVD source requires much less bitrate than a full screen interlaced home video from a shaky handheld DV camera. By using a variable bitrate encoding you can use a lower average bitrate compared to encode at constant bitate.

In my own experience I can sometimes fit 3 hours of video at full resolution (720x576 PAL) but that is my absolute max limit if I have a clean movie source, maybe letterboxed. But from interlaced home videos I have set my limit to 90 minutes. The limit for TV shows is somewhere between 2 hours and 2 and a half hour maximum per disc. If I want more on one DVD then I use half D1 resolution (352x576 PAL or 352x480 NTSC). Sometimes when I want to put 2 movies on one disc I use full resolution on one movie and half resolution on the other one because it would have been a waste to use half resolution on both (like when putting 2 movies of total 3 and a half hour on one disc).

So this is why I say that 7 TV shows on one DVD may be better at half D1 resolution because it seems to be close or above the limit where half D1 looks better. Maybe you can encode 2 episodes at full resolution and 5 episodes at half resolution if you want better quality of your favourite episodes. But your source may not be much better than half D1 resolution anyway (TV shows are usually not the best quality) so I guess it is easier to encode them all with the same settings at half D1 resolution to one disc or use more than one disc and use the best quality on all episodes.

[Will Hay]

Spot on ronnylov.
If it was me, being in PAL land....
....352 x 576 and for circa. 150 mins (7 x 22mins on average) I'd encode with TMPGEnc at around 3000VBR.
If I'm not mistaken you'll get 110 minutes of full quality encoding (4000CBR 352 x 576, equievelent to 8000CBR 720 x 576).
Will

[jaxxboss]

7 episodes is more or less 2 hours 20 min so there shouldnt be any problem at all getting great quality. Assuming ur cutting out the commercials.