Compressing to fit onto DVD

[Jiglet]

I feel that this type of question has been asked alot, but I spent a good 15 minutes searching for similiar questions with no success. I have three .MPG files (MPEG2 I believe) that are roughly 2.7 GB each, but not all that great in quality, and they're about an hour long each. How can I compress these so that I can fit all three of them on one DVD? I feel that this is a very simple question and I should be able to figure it out on my own but I have tried to no avail and any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks alot!

[jimmalenko]

Two ways I can think of straight off the bat.

1. If files are DVD-compliant, author the files using authoring software such as TMPGEnc DVD Author, then run it's output through DVDShrink or DVD2One. Fast, simple, quality may be pretty ordinary.

2. Re-encode to DVD-compliant files (Guide here), making sure that when you plug the running time into the bitrate calculator, you use the entire running time of all three files combined. Author using your favorite authoring software and burn. Will take a while, but is guaranteed to be the best quality it can be.

[daamon]

You need to do what's called "transcoding". The tool ReJig will do this. I've not used it myself, but I'm sure there'll be guides for it...

[Jiglet]

I have DVDShrink and ReJig, tried both... DVDShrink only seems to remove features such as commentaries and subtitles, and rejig, well I haven't figured that one out yet, but I did try for a little with no success. Are there any others you'd reccomend, or are these the best ones for that?

[daamon]

DVDShrink does exactly what it says on the tin - it shrinks.

Part of the description for ReJig in the "Tools" is: "...(recompress MPEG2 to MPEG2)."

Try reading up on some guides before giving up so easily...

[Jiglet]

Daamon, I understand what DVDShrink is for, but in this case I can't seem to get it to shrink the 3 video files to a small enough size to fit onto a single DVD-R. Here's a screenshot if this is any help, I played with DVDShrink for at least 2 hours today and either I'm a complete moron or... I don't know, but any help would be greatly appreciated - Thanks!

[jimmalenko]

You can ignore the error, and then try shrinking the shrunk output, or re-encode as I detailed above. Re-encoding will take much longer time-wise but is guaranteed to work.

[Jiglet]

Thank you! I used DVDShrink twice, and it DID work, although the quality is noticeably lower, as expected. But some parts of the DVD skip, and it's not scratched at all... Any chance this has something to do with the level of compression? The same video, when on a DVD by itself with no other videos and not highly compressed, didn't skip at all.

[jimmalenko]

When the output files are played off the hard drive, do they skip, or is it only after burning to DVDR ?

[Jiglet]

I just checked, and the output files seem to play fine. I was playing it on a PS2 when it skipped, I don't know if that would have anything to do with it. It started to skip and then it said disk error and just stopped playing, but it went straight from my DVD burner to the PS2 so there is no way it got scratched.

[jimmalenko]

I just checked, and the output files seem to play fine. I was playing it on a PS2 when it skipped, I don't know if that would have anything to do with it. It started to skip and then it said disk error and just stopped playing, but it went straight from my DVD burner to the PS2 so there is no way it got scratched.

That truly sounds like media to me. Can you try using a diffferent DVD player (instead of your PS2) with that exact disc, or try a different brand of media with your PS2 ?

[Jiglet]

I don't have any other kind of DVD-Rs right now, and I did try it with another player, it did the same thing. I just got a 100 pack of these DVD-Rs from thetechgeek.com, so maybe they are whats causing it.

[jimmalenko]

Sounds like it to me

[Jiglet]

Oh well, thanks for the help anyway!