4 1/2 Hours of Video and Hollywood

[foochuck]

Hello I have 2 questions.

First question, I have 4 1/2 hours of footage I need to put on a single DVD. How can I fit that on there? I'm guessing I'll need to use CBR but I'm not sure how to calculate this when encoding my MPG-2 files.

Second question, what does Hollywood use to burn DVDs? Their DVDs work on all players and DVD-ROM drives. Yet when I use my TDK 840G and burn either a DVD+/- it doesn't work on all DVD players.

Thanks

Foo

[jtoolman2000]

!st There no way you are goin to fit that much video and expect any kind of quality specially if you stay with full resolution. You could reduce the bit rate, fixed or variable. Two hours per disk is about right.

Hollywood does not burn disks. Once the movie, extras and menus are authored they are rendered and written to DLT which is them used to make a glass master disk. The disk I believe, is used to press the DVDs you buy. They universally compatibe unlike disks burned at home. There are some methods used for short runs of disks that involve burnning that is supposed to create near 100% compatability but I'll leave that answers to the much more expert members in this forum to answer. Frankly, I am not qualitfied comment on that aspect.

[Gazorgan]

Piece of cake. You want 1/2 D1 resolution (352x480 for NTSC). Go VBR, with a peak of 5000, and min of 300, and an average around 2500. I say around because I don't know what type of audio you want. That's what I use to put 4 hours of TV episodes onto a DVDR. You will want to play with a bitrate claculator to get the exact values.

Your finished product should be artifact free, and indistinguishable from the original on any TV 25" or less.

You have no chance of making something that works on every player all the time. Just a fact of life. You can shoot for 90%+ of the newer settop players, and that's all you can ask.

[foochuck]

Hey thanks,

Where can I acquire a bitrate calculator?

Foo

[lordsmurf]

I'd drop the peak down to 4200 or so to be safe about it. You'll need a 2400-2450 average too, as 2500 will yield 4:05-4:10 most times, not enough time for what you want (4:30).

[SquirrelDip]

Bitrate Calculator:

https://www.videohelp.com/calc

[gwoiler]

I agree. 1/2 D1 quality with even 2000 bitrate is better than the 6 hour speed on a VCR. I have put 6 hours on a DVD at 1/4 resolution and it is acceptable when compared with the 6 hour speed on a VCR. It is only talking heads and the quality does not make that much difference. You might run into audio sync problems unless you convert your audio to AC3 at a 192 bitrate. BTW, I did all my 6 hour stuff at CBR and, there is some artifacting in movement, but it was OK. I used 1400 at CBR.

glenn

[foochuck]

I'm going to try and put 2 1/2 hours on a DVD. What format should I go with? I'm exporting my video from Adobe Premiere Pro to MPEG-2. I've tried using this setting 'NTSC DV High quality 4Mb VBR 2 Pass' but about 1 Hour and 20 minutes came out to be a 3.7 Gb file.

Thanks

Foochuck

[jimmalenko]

4.5 got cut down to 2.5 pretty quickly...

I use TMPGEnc, and could certainly offer some help if you choose to use it to encode to MPEG-2.

[foochuck]

I've decided to do 2 DVDs instead of one

[jimmalenko]

I am not familiar with Adobe Premiere Pro, but if there is a way to input custom bitrates it would certainly be handy. Use the bitrate calculator link above and work out the appropriate bitrate of your videos. Then either use the Adobe preset that is closest to those values or use another encoder such as TMPGEnc or CCE to encode to those values exactly.

[foochuck]

I used the bit rate calculator and it gave me:

Calculated Bit Rate 3690 kbit/s
DVD Max Bitrate 9603 kbit/s

How can I plug these values into the Adobe Media Encoder?

I'm not sure what to set these variables as:

Target Bitrate (Mbps)
Maximum Bitrate (Mbps)
Minimum Bitrate (Mbps)

My other settings are:

Quality: 5 (max)
TV Standard: NTSC
Aspect Ratio: 4:3
Frame Rate: 29.97 fps drop frame
Program Sequence: Interlaced
Field Order: Lower
Bitrate Encoding: VBR
Encoding Passes: Two
M Frames: 3
N Frames: 15

Thanks

Foochuck

[jimmalenko]

Target bitrate will be your average of 3690kbps. I would use a minimum if 2500 and a maximum of 4800.

[foochuck]

How did you define the minimum and maximum bitrates?

Just estimating?

Foochuck

[jimmalenko]

How did you define the minimum and maximum bitrates?

Just estimating?

I would call it guestimating.

I don't think it has been proven but it has certainly been rumoured that you should have the average bitrate halfway between your maximum and your minimum. You then need to work out the lowest acceptable bitrate, which I think is around 2000-2500kbps at full resolution. Then add the difference between the minimum and the average to the average to get the maximum.

[foochuck]

I just want to double check one thing

3690kbps

is the same as

3.6900 Mbps

is this correct?

Foo

[jimmalenko]

I just want to double check one thing

3690kbps

is the same as

3.6900 Mbps

is this correct?

No. It's 3.6035Mbps.

Don't forget 1MB=1024KB, not 1000KB.

[pyrohydra]

No. It's 3.6035Mbps.

Don't forget 1MB=1024KB, not 1000KB.

Wait a sec...don't most encoders use 1 KB = 1000 bytes to calculate bitrates?

[jimmalenko]

Wait a sec...don't most encoders use 1 KB = 1000 bytes to calculate bitrates?

If they're any good they don't...

[pyrohydra]

Wait a sec...don't most encoders use 1 KB = 1000 bytes to calculate bitrates?

If they're any good they don't...

Whoops! I meant bits...not bytes

[foochuck]

Alright I'm gonna bring this post back to the other end of the spectrum really quick. Say I have a half hour of video that I want to put on a DVD.

The Bitrate Calculator tells me that I can use 9570 kbit/s (9.3457 Mbit/s ??).

What should be my minimum and maximum settings for this estimate?

Is there such thing as too high a bitrate? If there isn't alot of video I'm putting on DVD, should I have a limit on my maximum bitrate?

Thanks so much.

Foo

[Arky]

The DVD spec does place a limit on bitrate, but this is largely irrelevant if you are distributing your projects on DVDR, because DVDR is incapable of handling the maximum bitrate allowable by the spec.

I would suggest that you keep well under 8mbps, and that you encode all your audio to .AC3 as well.


Arky ;o)

[vhelp]

I also wouldn't put too much worry on trying to make your final encode totally
or 100% comptatible to all DVD players. Do you really think that your final
product (assuming your giving to groups of people (based on your post)) will
be seen on EVERY dvd player ?? -- most liekly not. So, don't shoot for this,
else you'll be short-changing yourself due to change/revision or whatever
Just encode and test a few players. Chances are, it will play on most, and thats
all that really matters :P

I would also experiment w/ other encoders too, (to get a feel for quality)
And remember, since your source if home footage, I wouldn't expect Hollywood
quality anyways .. except to be playing around w/ your bitrate settings
with this in mind, unless you used a tripod (fluid as minimum tripod) and done
your panning shots smoothly, and not jerky-like. I'm still breaking this one
in.

Hope that helped a little, at least.
-vhelp

[muskgrave]

Heres a thought:

Could we possibly author a dvd that is say 6 or 7gb, leave the dvd folders on the hard drive, then use DVDShrink and let it do all the guesswork for us? Just slide the little compression bar till you've filled up the DVD? Will TMPGEnc DVD Author let you author a disc that is over the single layer DVD's capacity?

[FulciLives]

Heres a thought:

Could we possibly author a dvd that is say 6 or 7gb, leave the dvd folders on the hard drive, then use DVDShrink and let it do all the guesswork for us? Just slide the little compression bar till you've filled up the DVD? Will TMPGEnc DVD Author let you author a disc that is over the single layer DVD's capacity?

Quality is better if you encode to your target size than if you overshoot it then "fix" it by using a transcoder such as DVDShrink.

I usually aim to have my final DVD be around 4200MB to 4400MB and I usually hit that target using the bitrate calculator located on this site.

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

[muskgrave]

thats a good point...and one that should always be taken into consideration..each alteration produces degredation of quality..makes me want to go back and do my wedding video again