Burning more than 3hrs of Home Video's onto a single DVD??

[Mugambo]

Hi
As you can guess, by posting in this section I am new to the whole DVD arena.

I have both ULEAD VideoStudio 6 & 7, and Ulead Moviefactory 2.

I have tried all three programs to upload old family films so that I can burn them onto DVD, however, 3hrs of footage is approx. 10GB.
This is using a standard template in Ulead V6 which is:

MPEG-2 720x576 PAL(25 f/s)
nb I'm based in the UK

How can I compress 3-4hrs of footage so that I can burn onto one DVD??

I have read in other posts on this forum that to get more onto one DVD, I need to run the entire video tape again, setting the video bitrate of the file to 900.
I get two options:
1) Constant bit rate (default)
2) Variable Bit Rate

The performance is set on 8 where, 1 is fast and 15 is slow.

Which of the two values need to be changed and to fit four hours of home footage, what bit rates would you recommend?

Also, as another method, I tried using DVD Shrink to compress the file but I don't think it recognised the MPEG 2 format - maybe an error on my side.

I would appreciate it if someone could help me out and let me put 20yr old home movies onto DVD and surprise my folks with their memories.

Thanks

[macleod]

What you could try is after capturing them to convert them (with TMPGENC for example) to 352x480 (NTSC) 352x576 (PAL) and 48mhz audio. This is a valid dvd resulting that can be burned to a DVD R called Half D1 or modified CVD.

The 352x480 has been argued a number of times as being a little inferior to 720x480, however, it is also argued that your VHS tapes or other non dvd material is max resultion of 352x480 anyway, so you wont lose anything.

Hope that helps.


ps. I have capped for quite awhile and now use a dvd recorder (like the panasonic E30) and the results have been a hell of a lot better than with a capture card, but again, thats been my experience. Got mine off of ebay for $200'ish. Funny thing, I was at Aldi's and they had a dvd recorder for $200. Didnt know that aldi's was the mecca of electronics, LOL

[Mugambo]

Thanks for the advice.
I'll give it a shot and let you know how I got on!

[Garibaldi]

I can help, all you have to do is run the video through TMPGENC at DVD low resolution template. Then set the bitrate to CBR at around 1800. This will give you over 4 hours of video on 1 disk. Don't worry about quality loss with a bitrate of 1800 because home videos aren't perfect anyway. You could probably go even lower and get more on. Please note, all the above has been done on video that is d1, or 720x480 NTSC, I bet that if you did like macleod suggested and captured the video at 352x480, you would get an even smaller size running it through TMPGENC.

As far as dvd shrink goes, you have to download and put your mpeg 2s into IFOEdit. Then use the dvd author feature of IFOEdit to make your mpegs into vob files. Then import the vobs into dvd shrink.

[Supreme2k]

You could always author an oversized single-layer project, then run it through DVDShrink. I've done that for a few DVDs where I wanted to re-author and make new menus. I've done a few where it was nearly four hours, and the quality was fairly close (using the Shrink sharp option)