Help required fitting 1.36gig avi onto 2 CD-R's !?

[MICOL]

Hi,

I have aquired a 1.36gig movie and wish to copy it onto 2 CD-R disks.

I have tried Virtual Dub & successfully split the movie into 2 equal parts and saved as separate parts. My problem is when I try to burn (using Nero 6) the first part is say 650mb and will fit on no problem, but the second part is say 800mb and is too big!

I do not understand why I have ended up with 2 different sized files even though I cut the movie straight in half. I tried it by taking the overall number of frames and dividing by 2 and then by the total movie time and divinding by 2. Both methods failed (with the same result).

Please can someone tell me what I am doing wrong or point me in the right direction.

Many thanks in advance.

[rhegedus]

what media was the movie on whwn you acquired it?

[MICOL]

I downloaded it from the net.

It's an XviD Mpeg-4 with Ac3

[mats.hogberg]

...and the two pieces of AVI are 650 and 800 MB respectively? That's 1450 MB in all. Did you save the parts using Direct Stream Copy for both audio and video? The size difference might be due to VBR encoding of audio and/or video.

/Mats

[MICOL]

The file sizes I wrote were approximate. I can't remember the exact size. The point I was making was that even though I cut the movie directly in half, I got 2 different sized halves (in mb).

The only way I know of getting each part to fit on a CD-R is trial and error. I'll just have to keep cutting at different frames until I get it right.

There must be an easier way (or calculation) to cut the movie into 2 parts and fit on CD-R's though.

[mats.hogberg]

Not if it's VBR. In theory, the first 30 mins of a 1 hr movie might be a still image, taking virtually no bits at all, while the 2nd half hour is full of action, taking all available bit rate. That would leave you with almost all data allocated for the second half (using an intelligent enough encoder and bit rate settings), with "half file size" at 45 minutes. So for a VBR encoded AVI, this can't be calculated, no.

/Mats

[Gazorgan]

It's not the Audio, which is AC3.

It's the Video, with is 2-pass VBR(XviD standard). Cutting it in 1/2 via the timeline won't work.

So what's the problem, cut it 5 more minutes along in the timeline?

[Suntan]

vdubmod 1.5.4.1 direct stream copy for both audio and video. In the save as screen select option for splitting file up, select size and type in 695 (for a 700MB CD)

[MICOL]

Thanks for your help guys. I did it via trial & error in the end!